Foucault's Pendulum Author:Umberto Eco, William Weaver (Translator) Foucault's Pendulum is divided into ten segments represented by the ten Sefiroth. The novel is full of esoteric references to the Kabbalah. The title of the book refers to an actual pendulum designed by the French physicist Léon Foucault to demonstrate the rotation of the earth, which has symbolic significance within the... more » novel.
Bored with their work, and after reading too many manuscripts about occult conspiracy theories, three vanity publisher employees (Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon) invent their own conspiracy for fun. They call this satirical intellectual game "The Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled -- a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real.
The three become increasingly obsessed with The Plan, and sometimes forget that it's just a game. Worse still, other conspiracy theorists learn about The Plan, and take it seriously. Belbo finds himself the target of a real secret society that believes he possesses the key to the lost treasure of the Knights Templar.
Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semioticadventure, Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment. « less
This is an amazingly rich and complex book about a series of mysteries, codes, conspiracies, and hidden lore. The ending certainly isn't what you expect going into this book but I found it to be serious food for thought.
I won't kid you, it is a very hard book to get into initially, but if you stick with it and don't focus so much on keeping track of every tiny thread, you will really enjoy it. When I feel a need to challenge myself mentally I pick up my hardcover copy and dive into it again and again.
One more thing, I did love his Name of the Rose book a great deal, but this is nothing like it. Please don't pick this up expecting it to be...we are talking apples and oranges here. Two really great fruits, but in essence nothing alike.
Hang in there! It takes a while to get into Midnight's Children but the storytelling is astounding. Rushdie's writing in this novel reminds me of Marquez/Love in the Time of Cholera. A great read.
A masterpiece. As noted by another reviewer... this is not the most accessible of books. Having some familiarity with medieval history, secret societies and occult traditions is a huge help in really appreciating this book. But... that being said, I think it's an amazing book. I've read it several times and would highly recommend it.
This is a very cerebral book, it requires alot of focus and knowledge of some cultural points that quite honestly even I'm not aware of. I bought it because it was recommended to me by a friend, but Umberto Eco is far too difficult a write for me to swallow. Perhaps someone else may be able to break through the complicated and rather boring first chapter.
One of the most amazing books I have ever read! Literaly changed my world view. There are so many levels to this book. Opened my mind to things I had never thought about. I read this book when I was 17, and it just blew my mind. One of the few books I read over and over again. I have probly read it at leat 50 times. I also give this book as a gift to everyone I know!
One of the few books I've had to read with a dictionary at my side, but I enjoyed it immensely. It reminds me of The DaVinci Code, but with some more meat on its bones.
A long, rambling and utterly fascinating book about the Knights Templar and conspiracy theories in general. If you liked Da Vinci Code but would love to read something with a little more "meat", this is the book for you.
If a copy (often unread) of The Name of the Rose on the coffee table was a badge of intellectual superiority in 1983, Eco's second novel--also an intellectual blockbuster--should prove more accessible. This complex psychological thriller chronicles the development of a literary joke that plunges its perpetrators into deadly peril. The narrator, Casaubon, an expert on the medieval Knights Templars, and two editors working in a branch of a vanity press publishing house in Milan, are told about a purported coded message revealing a secret plan set in motion by the Knights Templars centuries ago when the society was forced underground. As a lark, the three decide to invent a history of the occult tying a variety of phenomena to the mysterious machinations of the Order. Feeding their inspirations into a computer, they become obsessed with their story, dreaming up links between the Templars and just about every occult manifestation throughout history, and predicting that culmination of the Templars' scheme to take over the world is close at hand. The plan becomes real to them--and eventually to the mysterious They, who want the information the trio has "discovered." Dense, packed with meaning, often startlingly provocative, the novel is a mixture of metaphysical meditation, detective story, computer handbook, introduction to physics and philosophy, historical survey, mathematical puzzle, compendium of religious and cultural mythology, guide to the Torah (Hebrew, rather than Latin contributes to the puzzle here, but is restricted mainly to chapter headings), reference manual to the occult, the hermetic mysteries, the Rosicrucians, the Jesuits, the Freemasons-- ad infinitum . The narrative eventually becomes heavy with the accumulated weight of data and supposition, and overwrought with implication, and its climax may leave readers underwhelmed. Until that point, however, this is an intriguing cerebral exercise in which Eco slyly suggests that intellectual arrogance can come to no good end.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal:
Student of philology in 1970s Milan, Casaubon is completing a thesis on the Templars, a monastic knighthood disbanded in the 1300s for questionable practices. At Pilades Bar, he meets up with Jacopo Belbo, an editor of obscure texts at Garamond Press. Together with Belbo's colleague Diotallevi, they scrutinize the fantastic theories of a prospective author, Colonel Ardenti, who claims that for seven centuries the Templars have been carrying out a complex scheme of revenge. When Ardenti disappears mysteriously, the three begin using their detailed knowledge of the occult sciences to construct a Plan for the Templars[...] In his compulsively readable new novel, Eco plays with "the notion that everything might be mysteriously related to everything else," suggesting that we ourselves create the connections that make up reality. As in his best-selling The Name of the Rose, he relies on abstruse reasoning without losing the reader, for he knows how to use "the polyphony of ideas" as much for effect as for content. Indeed, with its investigation of the ever-popular occult, this highly entertaining novel should be every bit as successful as its predecessor. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/89. -- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
I finished this by mere force of effort. It lies somewhere between Joyce and Garcia Marquez, but without the sexual perversity or obscenity of Pynchon. You wont miss anything be skipping this book.
It has been a while since I read this book, but I remember that what I liked about it (and I did like it very much) were some of the same things I liked about the Da Vinci Code. Mysterious consipracies involving anceint sects, that kind of thing. A little tough to get into at first, but worthwhile in the end.
