FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM (BY) UMBERTO ECO

Published 1988, 623 pages

Characters: C+

Writing: B

Plot/Pacing: D

Poignancy: B-

Umberto Eco, an Italian medievalist and semiotician, wants you to know that he knows a lot of things.  About a lot of things.  That's why he wrote Foucault's Pendulum, a conspiracy-theory driven mystery novel, forever dooming himself to comparisons with Dan "Encyclopedia" Brown.  Though The Da Vinci Code was written over a decade later, you can hardly find an Amazon review that doesn't compare the two.  (Great.  Now this review does too.)  Eco, often praised in literary circles as a "difficult" and highly "intellectual" writer with "demanding" "labyrinthine" plots, has expressed amusement over the irony of this situation, since Foucault's Pendulum is actually about the foolishness of conspiracy theorists and the obsessive personality required to buy into such fantastical beliefs, even calling Brown "one of [his] creatures" in interviews.  I see another level of irony in this comparison: both men are arrogant writers with grossly exaggerated opinions of their own talent, flaunting their research skills at the sacrifice of literary standards.  Both would do well to realize that "informative" is not the same thing as "intellectual."  Foucault's Pendulum is informative, no doubt — to the point of tedium.  But does this make it smart?

The problem with Eco's novel is (again with the irony) the exact problem that Brown doesn't have — Foucault's Pendulum does not want to thrill you.  Ignore anyone who says this book is a thriller.  Foucault's Pendulum does not want you to turn the page, but rather linger on all the clever witticisms and decades of research Eco poured into the pages you're already looking it.  If at any point that Eco's interesting premise begins to build suspense or tension, he runs up and buries a pickax in the skull of Narrative Momentum.  Here's the summary presented on the back cover of the book:  A Colonel Ardenti starts it all: He tells three editors that he has discovered a coded message about a centuries-old Knights Templar plan to tap a mystic source of power greater than atomic energy.  The editors, bored with rewriting crackpot manuscripts on the occult and amused by his claims, decide to cook up a Plan of their own.  Into their computer they feed manuscript pages on Satanic initiation rites, Rosicrucianism, the measurements of the Great Pyramid — and out comes a map indicating a point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled, a point located at Foucault's Pendulum in Paris.  Sounds intriguing, right?  Eco certainly doesn't think so, which is why the Colonel Ardenti who "starts it all" doesn't appear in the novel for over 100 pages.  Well, alright, Eco.  That's cool.  He had a lot of research to get out of the way — not exposition, really, but he had to set the tone for the novel and introduce his characters as pompous blowhards who will pontificate at every and any academic tangent.  But, begrudgingly, he's got to get to the story we all came to read.  Eventually.  He has to, right?  Of course he does.  After 365 pages.

For fuck's sake, man.

I realize this is partly a marketing issue, which probably isn't really Eco's fault — maybe he had a different explanation of "what the book was about" when he was writing it, and never intended to position it as a thriller with, you know, a plot.  I'll give Eco the benefit of the doubt, but it doesn't excuse his meandering, disjointed storytelling, or using his characters as thinly-veiled avatars to show us how much he knows about... everything.  Again, it's not intellectualism to accumulate decades worth of obscure knowledge.  It's just research.  Some of it is interesting, and Eco certainly has a fine understanding of secret societies and medieval cults, as well as the particular mindset necessary to cultivate their mythology.  This, more than anything, is the real strength of the novel, and likely the reason it's regarded as a minor classic of the genre.  Foucault's Pendulum is ultimately satire, an anti-Da Vinci Code.  Yet even Realism is not enough to excuse your main character going on holiday for 50 pages immediately following the first major turning point of the novel, presumably because he wants to take a break from Dramatic Tension.

When the main character isn't vacationing in Brazil with his girlfriend, talking to various professors about the occult over drinks, he's lounging about Milan with other academic types, talking about the occult over drinks.  None of the characters are interesting enough to justify their verbosity, considering the entire novel is carried by dialogue. Eco does provide a solid backstory for some of his characters, but as with everything else in the novel, it's tossed out in big awkward chunks that seem to go nowhere.  It isn't enough to simply present more and more information to the reader, as if information were inherently self-justifying.  This is not the internet, Mr. Eco.  As an author, you're obliged to also present that information in such a way as to make it interesting and engaging.

"Hey, what's this about [Obscure Secret Society] during the [Obscure Historical Period]?" one character will ask, causing another character to take an exposition dump all over your face for the next 10 pages or so.  Foucault's Pendulum is the poster child for "show, don't tell," and oh, does it tell.  Granted, this structure is intentional and designed to make a certain point, but the fact that the novel was designed this way doesn't justify the tedium.  Eco's point, after all, could have been made in about 300 pages, maybe even in 15 pages.  He found a rich, interesting setting in which to place his novel, and perhaps if the characters spent more time doing, well, anything, they might have been able to carry the slower passages.  As it is, their lives and background are buried, becoming irrelevant when they don't disappear entirely.  Still, I can see why others might praise Eco's work — if the subject matter interests you, this is undoubtedly your best resource, and the book's thesis is surprisingly sound, its denouement fairly memorable.  Ultimately, this is a book that will make the extremely patient feel that special, masochistic feeling of accomplishment, and all others feel desperate and a bit panicked.