Monday, February 27, 2012

Prague Cemetery / Umberto Eco 444 p.

A gigantic question mark hangs over the middle of the 20th century: why did such incredibly awful things happen? And how? Eco attempts to answer the how in this complex work. Specifically, he creates a single 19th-century conspiracy mastermind, Captain Simonini. This urbane, Italian gourmand relocates to Paris and takes up a career as a master forger. False wills and real estate documents are harmless enough, I guess, but he quickly graduates to producing documentation to support any and all conspiracies: pro and anti-Garibaldi, pro and anti-Jesuit, and entirely anti-Semitic.

The reader gets no relief while reading. Eco presents no sane or humane contrasting point of view, so for 444 pages we have only the loathsome Simonini for company. Reading The Prague Cemetery (which, in Simonini's imagination, is the location for the meeting of rabbis which launched the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) made me feel dirty and sick to my stomach, and I can't even pretend to have understood all of it. To compound the nausea, the glutton Simonini includes recipes in his diary! Just like your favorite gentle read! Only not gentle! But you should still read it.

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