Here’s something for Valentine’s Day.
Have you ever fallen out of love with a favorite author? Was the last book you read by the author so bad, you broke up with them and haven’t read their work since? Could they ever lure you back?
In college and for a time afterwards, I was obsessed with Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. I must have read it at least 8 times. I read Eco’s other works, including his semiotics, and would have considered him a favorite author.
A few years ago I decided it was time re-read Foucault’s Pendulum. I delighted in the prospect of rediscovering a work that I remembered to be rich, suspenseful, mind-bending, and fun.
Sad to say, I found a book that was thin, tedious, obtuse, and dull. I think it’s a book that only makes sense to a pseudo-intellectual twit in his/her twenties.
I was disappointed, to say the least. And I also recently discovered that the movie version of Eco’s The Name of the Rose doesn’t hold up so well, either.
