Re: The Name of the Rose — the book probably worked for me because it’s my own field of study and I did get a fair bit of the back reference, though by no means all of it, and certainly not the Greek. If you know something about the monastic debates in the thirteenth-century, it’s actually very funny (and yes, I realise that’s a limited audience). But Eco didn’t write it for a mass-market audience — it was picked up and marketed by the publisher and received a fair amount of success from word-of-mouth recommendations. It isn’t, and was never intended to be, pop fiction. Clearly enough people outside the medievalist academy liked it that it went on to be an international phenomenon. I didn’t get very far with Foucault’s Pendulum, partly because I think it lacked the playfulness of the The Name of the Rose, and perhaps because I know less about its background. So, I suggest that the issue about these books is one of audience.

The movie of The Name of the Rose is also one of my favourites. I don’t think it was a dumbing-down of the book at all, rather exactly what it says it is — a palimpsest, that is a text which has been written over another text so that you can glimpse the first text beneath it. And I also think the movie is very funny too. A friend of mine described it as ‘containing the largest concentration of ugly men in once place outside of the SCA’.

@mpesce: Yes, “pretentious” is the word. I just skipped over the Latin, Greek etc with the thought that a good writer makes thing clear to the reader. But then Eco is a good writer. Paradox!

That is probably the most pretentious pop fiction I’ve ever read, or ever will read.

I found Foucault’s Pendulum to be incredibly intimidating, it demands a notebook or a constantly open browser to be able to penetrate the extremely thick layer of specific references. It simply can’t be puzzled out from context alone, at least not at the beginning. That is one I set aside for another time. (Honestly, that might be a good bench test of the Kindle’s lookup capabilities, if I had the opportunity to play with one.)

@Quatrefoil: There’s a lovely commentary on last week’s Germaine Greer Tour of Australia over at Lavarti Prodeo, entitled On Rage: Raging against Germaine:

I was interested to see Gary Sauer-Thompson observe that most of the reaction (and there’s been tons of it) to her writing and various speeches and appearances in the press has completely avoided the issues she actually raises, and concentrated on interweaving loud denunciations of her — and claims that she’s irrelevant — with already well established “media narratives”. If she’s in fact got nothing of relevance to say, as one of our commenters observed, you have to wonder why all the energy expended.

Well, the answer to the commenter’s question is easy: In the increasingly-busy lives of producers and editors, Germaine Greer’s semi-regular visits, where she parachutes into Australia and says something that will almost inevitably sound controversial, it’s an easy way to fill your program or publication. Too easy, in fact. I think I’d brand it “lazy”.

(Yes, when I worked for ABC Radio I, too, relied on the “author tour” to fill airtime.)

The implication of that answer is that if you want an issue to be taken seriously, then Germaine Greer should not be your spokesperson. Any discussion will always descend into a battle about GG’s relevance, and the original point will be lost. Still, GG will have gotten her airtime, her reputation as an enfente terrible (or mad old cow) will be reinforced, and her book will sell.

Similarly, Melbourne University Press presumably knows that the gift-set market is another niche to exploit, and the aim is to provide names that the buyer recognises, not the eventual reader. Putting GG in there means that at least one of the authors will have been seen the Daily Telegraph — perhaps quoted well out of context, but that doesn’t matter.

The Lavartus Prodeo piece makes another interesting point:

I think the post is unfortunately all too typical of one of the weird confusions that swirl around Greer’s thought and indeed have a much broader contemporary purchase — that to explain something is to justify it. Greer appears to be setting out to explain Indigenous male rage. From what I’ve seen of her interviews over the last few days, she is insistent that this is not a justification. But apparently people either can’t understand that distinction, or believe that any reference to the origins of phenomena in Indigenous Australia in dispossession and colonisation signals justification. It does not.

@Giania: The “back story” of The Name of the Rose is, perhaps, Umberto Eco’s entire brain, filled as it is with obscure observations about the cross-linkages of signs and symbols throughout history. That’s his gig. I much prefer his witty and far more accessible essays and newspaper columns.

I do think The Name of the Rose will reward the persistent. But in the competition for my attention, in 2008 it would fail.

I like GG — she’s a ratbag, and you can’t get much more Australian than that. If ratbaggery were an Olympic event we’d win lots of gold. Then again, I have read The Name of the Rose many times and it’s in the all-time favourite box. Foucault’s Pendulum on the other hand…