The Island of the Day Before and Baudolino by Umberto Eco REVIEW
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- Two very different ways for Eco to decant the concerns and preoccupations that animated his entire fiction.
How do they translate in English & other languages? (Baudolino in particular must be a translator's nightmare)! And what did you think of them?
Let me know in the comments!
Also - I totally look like L from Death Note in the thumbnail picture! ... Yay?
The El-P line I mention in the video comes from Twin Hype Back:
• Run The Jewels - Twin ...
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I pretend that Eco is still living in his book stuffed house, planning and writing another book....we just have a long wait.
Finished Baudolino recently. Really so many things to think of, so many things to consider. As someone who is studying history and has read some of the sources written by some of the characters it was delightful but towards the end made me really think. In it's story telling and the end where it is said that sometimes the smaller details of history must be altered to better illustrate the bigger story, this is what Bishop Otto of Freising was doing in his Gesta Frederici, he lies and lies, but he is telling a story of how Frederick is ushering in a new age of history, and perhaps to the people of the time or the people after him, this became true.
This is the first Umberto Eco book I have read, I now want to read them all.
Baudolino sounds like it is in the same tradition as Boccaccio, Rabelais and more recently John Barth, especially The Sot-weed Factor
Oh exciting! Baudolino is my absolute favourite Eco, I've only read it in English but its beautiful there, William Weaver is a brilliant translator. Baudolino is possibly my favourite because I had just finished a big research project on the exact time period of the novel at university so had all of the historical context laid out for me in advance, which enabled me to just relax and really savour everything. I love the leap into fantasy, the Prester John kingdom is so wonderful, and the ending is, for me, Eco's most poignant. I like some bits of Island of the Day Before, the part about trying to sort everything in the world into the Aristotelian system cabinet has always stuck with me, but the ending hasn't really stuck with me in the same way as Baudolino's has. I won't spoil either in case anyone wants to read them, and I highly recommend people do.
I'll be honest with you - when I was filming the review, I had to re-read the last two chapters of Island because I couldn't for the life of me remember the ending (!).
Finally, someone did a review for Baudolino!! I loved the novel so much that I read twice already! I didn't mind that fantasy shift and the descriptions are simply gorgeous! I see it as a mixture of both The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum! Now I'm waiting for somebody to make a review on Peacock's Nightmare Abbey 🖤
Love Baudolino! My paperback spine is broken in multiple places, there are loose pages and folds, so i had to buy an ebook to be able to read it again 🤭. The Island is my least liked Eco book, but i've still read it several times.
Btw, I read all Eco's books in the Dutch translation. These translators must be quite good, because they've won a translation award.
Great video as always! About Eco overstaying his stay a bit...i never felt that, on the contrary! Especially with Foucaults pendulum, the end is one of my favourite passages in all of literature. The post-mortem retelling of Belbo playing trumpet just hits so hard for me. :)
Don't get me wrong, I totally agree!
I guess what I'm trying to say is that any other writer would have finished these books on a different note. (Say, another writer would have closed Foucault's Pendulum with the great meeting and Belbo's demise). But the fact that he flaunts narrative conventions (and loves cumbersome frame narratives, long asides and "told" passages etc) is one of my favorite things about Eco :)
All of Eco's novels are in my family's bookcase but I had only read The Name of the Rose many years ago. I picked up Baudolino right after listening to your review and loved it. I read it in spanish, which is closer to italian than english and got to apreciate the difference in expressions people from different regions had.
I am also a Lovecraft fan so your comparison to the Dream Quest really intrigued me the most, wonder how would I have reacted to the second half without knowing what's comming, but if it wasn't for that I probably wouldn't have read it in many years anyway, and I am glad I did, I can tell it is going to be an unforgettable read.
Ecco! another great writer you turned me on to. Still need to get to Foucaults Pendulum. Cant wait to read more of him. Just read Night boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry. Reading The sound of waves by Mishima now. Both beautiful books. Thanks bookchemist!
:D
I have Baudolino on my shelf and now I'm really hyped to read it!
Wow this is great, you should review Stoner by John Williams
I have the same opinion about both of them, the Island is, for me, one of the lesser Eco's (maybe I should re-read it). I loved Foucault's Pendulum, The Name of the Rose but also La Misteriosa Fiamma Della Regina Loana and Cimitero di Praga (I don't wanna guess the english titles...). Great work, as usual!
La Misteriosa Fiamma è l'ultimo che mi manca tra i romanzi (poi passo ai saggi) :)
I'm delighted that you have decided to review these two novels. Curiously, I was either side-tracked or bogged down somewhere in the middle of each of them at different times and for different reasons, but not because I disliked either; and perhaps your video will help give me the motivation to return to them after I get through the present items on my reading agenda. I have have both in the English translations by William Weaver, ( who has been a name familiar to me since well before I ever read any of the many novels translated by him; since he was also the translator of many opera librettos by composers such as Verdi and Puccini, and used to be a frequent intermission guest on the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts back in the 1960's). As a reader of English from the U.S., I do remember the episode where Baudolino is reunited with his parents, and I think I can say that the humor and contrast in tone of their response to his reappearance, as opposed to B's interactions with the courtiers in the earlier portions of the novel, definitely came through for me.
My "side-tracking" must have come before encountering the contrasting "fantastic" section of the novel, and I am looking forward toward visiting the kingdom of Prester John,
I know your specialty is contemporary American, but you’ve done quite a bit of Eco and Italo Calvino- have you read any Alberto Moravia? Will we ever find out what you think of him or his books?
I have Gli indifferenti on my shelf - it was a Christmas present :)! I plan to read quite a lot of Italian literature this year actually ;)
I love Baudolino. There are a lot of jokes you'll only understand if you are familiar with the french and middle high german arthurian romance novels of the 13th century.
These sounds fascinating! I'm definitely adding both to my list, but I'm particularly excited about Baudolino. Perhaps this is a bit of an "out there" question given that I'm a bit of a hardcore nerd about medieval lit, but do you think that the second half of Baudolino may have been influenced/inspired by The Travels of Sir John Mandeville?
I can't speak to the specifics of John Mandeville, but that fantastical second part is definitely inspired by Medieval bestiaries and accounts of faraway lands! (You can make sure that EVERYTHING that appears in an Umberto Eco novel was taken from some other book - which sounds bad, but it's truly part of his genius!)
if you like that blend of historical fiction and fantasy maybe you should check out The Beetle (El Escarabajo) or Bomarzo by Manuel Mujica Lainez
Thank you for the recommendation!
Love both of the novels. Personally I prefer The Island of the Day Before of the two.
Dear bookchemist, could you make a video about your favorite italian novels?
A great idea :)!
@@TheBookchemist grazie, sto imperando italiano adesso, allora sarebbe un ottimo aiuto.
Please review The Prague Cemetery
I have - for Deutsche Welle Books :)! ua-cam.com/video/yMZcLVxgPaQ/v-deo.html&t
How do you spell that word in Yiddish!
Spitzfindigkeit!