name: The_Prague_Cemetery isbn13: 9780547577531 isbn: 0547577532 title: The Prague Cemetery title: Il cimitero di Praga author: Umberto Eco publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt year: 2010 acquired: 2012-12-25 start: 2013-01-21 stop: 2014-01-05
Governments, especially 18th Century European governments, need an enemy to focus public discontent away from themselves. Simonini, the main character, provides forged documents to assist one faction or the other in their quest to hold on to power, as he lives through the Italian unification and later the numerous troubles of Paris in that century. A product of his age, he is a misanthrope, a misogynist, an anti-semite, sometimes an anarchist, sometimes pretending to be a freemason. The novel wants to be a historical novel, where the background and much of the action is grounded in actual history. Simonini is a thread that anchors the story through those tumultuous times and gives us a unique point of view of all these secret services, secret societies, and charlatans. This allows Eco to weave Garibaldi, the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune, and even the Dreyfus Affair into the story, setting the stage for 20th Century events to come.
It took me a whole year to get through this novel, not because of it is particularly dense (it is actually quite light for an Eco novel), but simply because the main character is so antipathetic. Eco went to great lengths to make him as unlikeable as possible. There is not one shred of humanity in him that the reader can associate with, not even the gourmet eating, which is lavishly described throughout.
There are all kinds of characters involved in manipulating history from the shadows. Eco needs different narrators to help convey the principal archetypes. Simonini is a forger, in it for the money. Abbé Dalla Piccola is a manipulating priest, led by a grand plan, a more noble ambition. To help transition between the two, there is an omniscient Narrator who can fill in as needed. This Narrator can also serve to humanize them, so that they can succumb to human frailties, such as confusion or willful forgetfulness or fatigue.
As in The Name of the Rose, we get a brief sex scene between an inexperienced male and a lusting female. We share the point of view of the male, who is so overwhelmed that he gets utterly confused. It is awkward and totally misses on the sensuality of the moment. I could have done without.
Eco uses an open-ended narrative device to reinforce the role of the reader in constructing the story for themselves.
* * * Spoiler Alert * * *
Did the bomb explode? Did Simonini die in the explosion? Did Gaviali set him up to extract revenge? Was it Rachkovsky cleaning up loose ends and getting rid of a potential witness, just as Simonini had done numerous times? Or maybe Simonini survived, somehow, and realizing the danger he is in, has gone into hiding? It is up to the reader to finish the story for themselves.
Nothing is more original than something that's already been published.
somewhere between pages 331-378
What he means is that when trying to convince people that a fake document is genuine, it helps if the target audience is already familiar with the material. Previously published material will strike a resonance in the reader's mind and prime them to treat the new material as authentic. Especially if the material was published some time ago and the audience's recollection is a little fuzzy. It will feel right since it matches prior recollections. Most people won't go through the trouble of double checking.
Most of those who join secret societies are opportunists who seek to make their own way and have no worthy purposes.
page 421
This is said in the context of jews-are-infiltrating-secret-societies-as-part-of-their-plan-to-take-over-the-world. What it means is that members of secret societies are looking for a sense of purpose, which the leaders can provide and then use to manipulate the group and get them to support the leaders' agenda, sometimes against their own best interest. Eco's character makes that statement about secret society membership, but I think it can easily be applied to most organizations.