Foucault's pendulum

Literary fiction · Dark comedy · Satire

First published: 1989
Print length: 533 pagesBallantine Books, 1990

Description

Casaubon, a scholar of the Knights Templar, falls in with Belbo and Diotallevi, editors at a Milan publishing house flooded with manuscripts about occult secrets. Amused by the conspiracy theorists they encounter, the three use a computer and their formidable learning to construct the Plan, an imaginary explanation linking the Templars, Kabbalah, alchemy, secret societies, and centuries of European history. Their private game becomes harder to contain when people inclined to believe such systems begin treating it as fact. Organized in ten sections corresponding to the Sephirot and reconstructed through Casaubon’s search of Belbo’s files, the novel turns intellectual play into a labyrinthine examination of interpretation, credulity, and the human appetite for hidden order.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Dense · Essayistic · Ornate

Pace

Slow

Tone

Cerebral · Dark · Philosophical · Satirical

Structure

Framed · Nonlinear

Focus

Ideas · Mystery · Voice

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 5 / 5
Ideas: 5 / 5
Structure: 5 / 5
Background knowledge: 5 / 5

Themes

Knowledge and truthObsessionPowerTechnology and society

About Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco was an Italian semiotician, medievalist, philosopher, critic, and novelist whose work moves between scholarly explanation and elaborate historical fiction. He was especially interested in signs, documents, and the systems people use to turn scattered evidence into meaning. His novels often make those processes part of the plot, combining dense stores of learning with mysteries, disputed texts, and narrators whose accounts require scrutiny. In The Name of the Rose, a murder investigation proceeds through theological argument, political conflict, and the physical maze of a monastic library, all recalled by an aging witness. Foucault’s Pendulum uses a fragmented archive of computer files to reconstruct an invented conspiracy that its creators can no longer control. Baudolino gives a less reliable storyteller the power to blur political history, fabulous geography, and self-serving invention. Eco’s nonfiction employs similar breadth more directly. History of Beauty arranges art, literature, philosophy, and comparative images into an intellectual history of changing aesthetic standards.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Ballantine Books
Language: English
ISBN: 9780345369529

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