AUTHOR: UMBERTO ECO
Pages: 222
Date: 18/09/2013
Grade: 4
Details: Essays on Everything
Received from Vintage Books
Through Nudge
Own
According to the introduction this book was originally
going to be titled “Occasional Writings”. Which leads us to the question what
“occasional writings” actually are. To quote the author:
“They are generally
on topics about which the author had no specific interest. He was, instead,
encouraged to write each one after being invited to contribute to a series of
discussions or essays on a particular theme. It captured the author’s interest
and encouraged him to reflect on something he might otherwise have ignored
(…).”
As for the reason why the publisher decided to use the
title of the first essay for this book instead of the author’s original idea,
well those reasons should be obvious. “Inventing the Enemy” sounds a lot more
intriguing than “Occasional Writings” ever could.
What we have here is a collection of 14 essays. The
problem, when reviewing a collection of essays, is that there are always going
to be pieces on subjects the reviewer knows little or nothing about and/or has
no real interest in. That problem gets even bigger when the essays are written
by a brilliant mind like Eco’s. While I can honestly say that every single word
in this book was fascinating to me, I also have to be honest enough to admit
that quite a few of those words went straight over my head.
I have been in awe of Umberto Eco ever since I read “The Name of the Rose” and “Foucault’s Pendulum”, years ago. Here we
have a man with what appears to be endless knowledge about numerous subjects. A
thinker able to share his thoughts, both serious and absurd, in a way that
intrigues his audience, even if the audience is not always capable of following
his reasoning or establishing the accuracy of his ideas and assertions.
This book contains essays on a wide variety of
subjects varying from light-hearted to serious, from historical to contemporary
and from philosophical to factual. Below I will share thoughts on and quotes
from some of these essays. That selection is however rather arbitrary since it
is very personal and limited to those pieces that struck a cord with me.
Inventing the Enemy
“Having an enemy is
important not only to define our identity but also to provide us with an
obstacle against which to measure our system of values and, in seeking to
overcome it, to demonstrate our own worth.”
Examples ranging from Cicero to Ian Fleming, illustrate how the
enemy has always been described using similar, if not identical,
characteristics, regardless of who the portrayed enemy is. It seems that we
cannot manage without an enemy and will create one when we find ourselves without
an opponent.
Absolute and Relative
And the question whether or not there is such a thing
as an absolute or relative truth.
Treasure Hunting
“The cult of the
relic is to be found in every religion and culture.
Not so much philosophical as a listing of where to
find which relics, which immediately makes the reader realise that certain
relics can be found in more places than should logically be possible. But, of
course:
“It is not the relic
that makes faith, but faith that makes the relic.”
Censorship and Silence
Two forms of censorship: censorship through silence
and censorship through noise.
“To avoid causing
behaviour considered to be deviant, don’t talk about it, (…) To avoid talking
about deviant behaviour, talk a great deal about other things.”
“Nothing is more
difficult to dispose of than an irrelevant but true story.”
“In losing the
condition of silence, we lost the possibility of hearing what other people are
saying, which is the only basic and reliable means of communication.”
Imaginary Astronomies
From the way we saw the world and the skies in the
past to the emergence of science fiction. Including the fascinating question
whether, if science fiction is influenced by science, the opposite is also
true?
Living by Proverbs
The idea is fascinating; creating a society in which
people live their lives based on the wisdom contained in proverbs as the way to
happiness. That this is of course doomed to fail is obvious, but it makes for a
very interesting idea.
Ulysses: That’s All We Need
A denouement of Joyce’s Ulysses that I can’t help
feeling shouldn’t be taken seriously, although I’m completely lost as to what
the purpose of this essay might be if that assumption is right.
Thoughts on WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks is of course, a false scandal since
everybody knew, although nobody acknowledged, that embassies had turned from
representatives of their countries into information gathering operations.
Furthermore, the information sent to America was not actually secret.
While modern technology makes the Big Brother scenario
all too realistic – it is next to impossible to go through life unobserved –
WikiLeaks has shown that this is actually a two-way street. Those in power may
be able to observe us, but we, at least those of us proficient at computer
hacking – can discover the secrets of that Power.
Like most, if not all, collections of essays this is a
book that is best read in bits and pieces. Reading this book from cover to
cover would in all likelihood be quite exhausting. Moreover, the essays in this
book are all of a rather high intellectual quality and require the reader to
think along with the author, which is really only possible if they give
themselves the time to absorb the information provided and the luxury of
pondering it at their leisure.
What intrigued me most about this book is that while
some of these essays appear to deal with subjects we completely take for
granted and rarely give a second thought, Umberto Eco reflects on them from
angles I had never considered and would never have considered if I hadn’t read
about them here.
Overall this book provided me with a fascinating,
thought-provoking and at times eye-opening reading experience. While I can’t
say that every essay grabbed me to the same extent I can honestly state that
they all interested me, even when – or maybe especially when – I wasn’t quite
sure exactly what it was I was reading.
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