Wicked ecstasy

After having my fun with some of the descriptions in Adso's big love scene, I was actually pretty touched by his experience. What about you?

The library

Christy mentioned the library should have its own post. I agree. It was probably my favorite thing about the book — that the library is a labyrinth, that it's in many ways more sacred than the abbey's church, that physically it's a just a fire hazard of mouse-chewed parchment and vellum — it's so heart-breakingly fragile — but it's the very foundation, the sum, really, of centuries and centuries of human knowledge.

And the fact that it houses the last copy of Aristotle's "Comedy." Brilliant. And the fact that old Jorge couldn't bring himself to just destroy the book. He could have just thrown it in the dung heap, but he didn't! But he had to poison the pages so anyone who read it would be destroyed. The book would live. But the reader wouldn't. I love that. And also the fact that it was Aristotle. Jorge knew that not even the church could offer up an authority to counter the wisdom of that eminent Greek philosopher. (The time setting is interesting, because the Renaissance was just around the corner, when all of that beautiful, pagan, humanistic Greek stuff would be rediscovered and flood the world of arts and letters and politics. So maybe the end of the world, at least Jorge's world, the world of the Middle Ages, really was at hand).

What were your impressions of the library?

The apocalypse

Isn't the staying power of religious-based fear remarkable? I couldn't help thinking that, reading about the millennial fears in NOTR, and the conviction among the cranky monks that this old whorish world was going to implode any day now from the weight of its sin. Then you turn on the TV and here are all these conservative politicians and teabaggers 700 years later saying essentially the same thing: that we have to chase the Evil One from the Oval Office and bring religion to the fore of public life before God smites us.

I mean, there's old Alinardo who's telling William the millennium has arrived and the Antichrist is going to show up any second now, and William says, um, the millennium was 300 years ago, dude. Undaunted, Alinardo employs some self-serving math and says, no, the millennium doesn't date from the birth of Christ but from 300 years later, when Constantine ceded control of Rome to the pope. Tricky, huh? Our public life is rife with this kind of junk, with spinning the facts and math when they don't work out the way you want!

Do you think Eco is tapping into some fundamental, timeless truth about people and how susceptible they are to being controlled by fear and misinformation? And it's sort of sadly humorous that at least in the Middle Ages the populace had illiteracy to blame for their ignorance and herd mentality. Jorge believed you controlled people through controlling access to knowledge. I wonder what he would make of a world where access was completely unfettered, was available with the click of the mouse, and yet a large segment of the population still chose fear and misinformation and explanations based on demonology not reason.

Jorge of Burgos

Did you like him even a little?

The manuscript

Any thoughts on the narration — Adso recounting a story of his youth in old age — and what about the introductory part about his manuscript floating around in the 20th century? Do you think that adds anything to the story?

The mystery

Did you find the mystery absorbing? Was there anything you particularly appreciated or disliked about it?

The setting

I think one of the strengths of "The Name of the Rose" is that the tone and style vividly evoke a Medieval setting. I've tried to read other historical novels by contemporary authors, and for the most part I'm rarely convinced, perhaps because modern sensibilities creep in here and there and threaten the feel of authenticity. But, with this, I felt totally immersed in the 14th century, complete with sometimes tedious religious/philosophical asides. (There was that one part where William says "elementary" to Adso, and that made me think of the Sherlock Holmes era). What was your experience?

Adso and William

What did you think of this pair?

"The Chatham School Affair"

I've wanted to read this book by Thomas Cook for a while now. He had a new release this year, "The Fate of Katherine Carr," which was quite good and very dark. This is a better-known title by him, and I think the premise from Publishers Weekly sounds interesting:

"Elizabeth Channing is trying to change the path of her life as, in 1926, she arrives to teach art at a small boys' school located in the Cape Cod village of Chatham. Believing that "life is best lived at the edge of folly," she immediately enthralls the novel's narrator, Henry, the headmaster's son. But Elizabeth is drawn to a fellow teacher, Leland Reed, a freethinker who is unhappily married and has begun to have serious doubts about his life. The inevitable tragedy and its aftermath is narrated by a mature, melancholy Henry looking back at the strange, bleak fates of those involved."

Does March 20 sound good?

Next pick:

A Medieval mystery (about monks!) for winter. Shall we start on Feb. 18?

Corrigan

What did you think of Corrigan and his religious convictions/charitable quests? He never moralized to the people he was "working" with. He never really encouraged them to seek a different life. He just offered them various small comforts and a place to use the bathroom and helped them with various errands (like appearing at court dates). Most importantly, I guess, he offered them the feeling that someone cared about them and didn't judge them, the comfort that they had somewhere to go, someone to turn to. His religious charity seemed to consist in asking himself, "What might this person really need right now to feel connected to humanity?" And the answer would be not a lecture, but a hot cup of coffee, or, in the elderly, racist curmudgeon's case, a tryst with the hookers.

And then there's his relationship with the immigrant mother — a chance for love and connection for himself. Why was it hard for him to give into that? Did he think it would detract from his "mission"? That it would make him selfishly concerned with his own happiness?

Man on wire

What did you think of the narrative hook of the tightrope walker? What did it add to the stories? Was it metaphorical?

Narrators

Did you have a particular favorite narrator? Were there any you thought didn't particularly work?

Why do you think most chapters were in first person but some weren't?

"Let the Great World Spin"

Thoughts? First impressions?

What did you think of the writing? What did you think of the narrative style of switching perspectives every chapter?

Steps Through The Mist

Hi, everyone. I'm sorry to start posting so late here. Hope you enjoyed your holidays, if you've had them yet.

First impressions on "Steps": What did you think? Did it meet, exceed, fall below your expectations? Did it read like a fantasy? (I think I harbor back to days when fantasies included dragons or hobbits or whatnot. This was more like quality literature to me.)

I found myself eager to jump into each "dream" sequence and was surprised by how quickly the stories unfolded.

How did the dream premise work for you as a paranormal element?

Next pick

"Let the Great World Spin" by Colum McCann

Here's an excerpt from the Amazon review:

Colum McCann has worked some exquisite magic with Let the Great World Spin, conjuring a novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later.

'Soldiers are dreamers'

And not to bore with you passages from other books, but I also found this passage at the beginning of O'Brien's war memoir very moving.

Now, war ended, all I am left with are simple, unprofound scraps of truth. Men die. Fear hurts and humiliates. It is hard to be brave. It is hard to know what bravery is. Dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are dreamers, drill sergeants are boors, some men thought the war was proper and others didn't and most didn't care. Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme?

Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

The first paragraph as a summary of the war experience is just amazing ("most didn't care"). But the question in the second, "Do dreams offer lessons?", seems to foreshadow the format of "Cacciato," how it's one big daydream in a way. So, do you have any thoughts on how Paul Berlin's dream offers a lesson?

Courage

I really loved this passage from "If I die in a Combat Zone." It's about how true courage can't exist without other qualities. I think it informs some of the scenes in "Cacciato," scenes where apparent cowardice might more properly be interpreted as courage.

For courage, according to Plato, is one of the four parts of virtue. It is there with temperance, justice and wisdom, and all parts are necessary to make a sublime human being. In fact, Plato says, men without courage are men without temperance, justice or wisdom, just as without wisdom men are not truly courageous. Men must know what they do is courageous, they must know it is right, and that kind of knowledge is wisdom and nothing else. Which is why I know few brave men. Either they are stupid and do not know what is right. Or they know what is right and cannot bring themselves to do it. Or they know what is right and do it, but do not feel and understand the fear that must be overcome.

The girl

Any thoughts on Sarkin Aung Wan and her determination to play house in Paris with Paul Berlin?

Best and worst

What was your favorite aspect of the book? And least favorite?

My favorite: I loved the notion of traveling overland from Vietnam to Paris and the descriptions of the places they saw: Mandalay, India, Tehran, Greece, etc. And I admired the depiction of the war-without-a-front as a psychological battle that occurred in each man's head. I also found the events leading up to Lt. Martin's murder eerie and awe-inspiring.

My least favorite: Maybe this is a comment on my own comprehension rather than the author's skill, but I found many of the characters hard to picture and hard to distinguish one from the other. Even Paul Berlin. I didn't feel I had a great grasp on who he actually was. (I did like the portraits of the two lieutenants: the strict, by the book Lt. Martin and the more realistic, more humane Lt. Corson, who fell in love in India and wanted to stay).