BBC Big Read #174 – The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco

Disposition

Brit Boy:

Although not familiar with the book or the author, I have heard of this story purely because of the film which was made in the eighties (1986 to be precise), I knew that Sean Connery plays the the chief protagonist and Christian Slater his novice. However I cannot even recall whether I have seen the film, maybe the book will jog my memory. We should watch this once we finish the book American Girl.

American Girl: 

When I was a child my mom went out and bought the VHS of the movie “Dangerous Liaisons” (the original) from the movie store the very day it was released. It cost $80 which I still can’t comprehend even today! Needless to say, considering this was the 80’s we only owned about 2-3 movies, so I watched this VHS copy relentlessly. Ironically, “The Name of the Rose” was featured as a preview. I can still remember the preview to this day, so I was excited to actually read this book when I saw it on our list. I felt I had a “vision” of what the characters looked like from the moment I began reading, based on my memories of this preview. I would definitely be interested in watching the movie once we are finished reading!

Editorial

OK, so this was not quite what I expected, as you can see from the date we published Sophie’s World this has taken us 7.5 months to read. Obviously life does sometimes get in the way, but I don’t think we can necessarily apportion all of the blame there. Unfortunately, I feel a little let down by this book as I felt this would be a ‘straight forward’ enjoyable read, more of a classic whodunnit, Sherlock Holmes in a habit. This however was not to be the case with Eco’s heavy attention to detail, with descriptions covering multiple pages, he describes the carving on a door for pages and pages, something which I failed to really notice the relevance.

I can’t believe this has taken 7.5 months to read… I really hope we have some more engaging novels coming up on our list, because this was definitely a long trek. It is a relatively long book (502 pages) and there are multiple times I was tempted to skip multiple pages because of the amount of detail but I didn’t want to miss imperative clues. Unfortunately, now having finished the book, I feel a lot of the information was not needed, and would have been a much better book with 100 pages cut out.  

Set in the 14th century this book draws heavily on religion, heresy and the conflict between the Emperor and the Pope. It is these themes which made this a virtual swamp for me to wade through, putting this book down multiple times and forcing myself to read vast swathes without really knowing where I was going. This lead me to something which I feel a little guilty about, after reading 2/3 of the book I downloaded the audible version and finished “reading” it on the plane and in the car. It was at this point that the book took a new lease of life, something which was a chore in paper form sprang to life when my mind was occupied with just listening and comprehending what was being read to me rather than having to navigate the long prose myself.

This is an era (14th century) and a topic (religion) that I have read very little on until now. I found it difficult reading this right after Sophie’s World, they are very similar in a lot of ways and very different as well. In fact, the teachings of Aristotle played a strong (yet completely different) role in both of these novels. I did enjoy some of the history, but wonder how much if it is actually “true”. Regardless of the historical facts, the book does provide some interesting insights. In particular there is a quote on page 203 regarding the leper colony, unbeknownst to me this group of individuals extended well beyond individuals with leprosy and I believe “lepers” still exist very much today in society. 

“…the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that I am saying ‘lepers’ we would understand ‘outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities’.”

The main protagonist in this story is William of Baskerville, his name I think is a clever nod to Sherlock Holmes, his syllogistic approach mirrors Sherlocks powers of deduction. This is shown very early on in the book when William and Adso (his young novice) approach the monastery. The interaction between these two characters brought me the most enjoyment, often light relief from a very descriptive passage or a lengthy theological story. In fact this theme is similar to Sophie’s World with long passages of prose which were often difficult to grasp without a theological / historical background (something I definitely don’t have).

I was able to breeze through the chapters focused on William and Adso’s interactions/explorations. The book is written from Adso’s perspective, and when Adso went on a long retrospective (whether it be a door, a dream, an experience he had) I found my mind wandering and unable to focus. At times I was jealous that Brit Boy converted to the audio version, because I am sure that made it much more engaging. I managed to finish reading this book in entirety but I don’t feel  a lot of it “stuck” with me because it struggled to hold my attention.

I will say however, that Eco did an amazing job laying out a mystery, which did leave me constantly guessing who did it, and what William was deducing during his investigations. I felt one quote on page 305 really grasped his ability to solve crimes, which reminded me so much of the movie “Murder on the Orient Express” which I happened to have watched recently:

“I was trying to tell you that the search for explicative laws in natural facts proceeds in a tortuous fashion. In the face of some explicable facts you must try to imagine many general laws, whose connection with your facts escapes you. Then suddenly, in the unexpected connection of the result, a specific situation, and one of those laws, you perceive a line of reasoning that seems more convincing than the others. You try applying it to all similar cases, to use it for making predictions, and you discover that your intuition was right. But until you reach the end you will never know which predicates to introduce into your reasoning and which to omit. And this is what I am doing now. I line up so many disjointed elements and I venture some hypothoses. I have to venture many, and many of them are so absurd that I would be ashamed to tell them to you.”

I think this heavy religious theme is where the book falls down for me, once again I felt like I was reading to learn rather than reading for pleasure and I often felt myself rereading prose as if there was going to be a test or a paper I would have to write afterwards. It is because of this that I would not recommend this book and will not be reading it again, I am very pleased I finished it and that it was on our book-reading journey but I very definitely feel a sense of achievement for finishing this rather than any enjoyment. My suggestion would be to save some time and watch the film, which is what I will be doing next. I’m looking forward to some of the lighter reads coming up.

I am so glad to be done with this book, back-to-back tomes regarding philosophy and religion have made me long to read books not on this list. I truly hope this list begins to improve with novels about a story and not a text book trying to teach me something. Perhaps after watching the movie I will develop a better appreciation of the story.