Baudolino: Umberto Eco
Just finished reading Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. It was good enough that I kept reading through to the end, but rather disappointing compared to The Name Of The Rose or Foucault’s Pendulum. Baudolino is a poor simple peasant who is picked up by a king and uses his wits to survive. The book is a story of his exploits during the middle ages, as he uses lies and storytelling to alter the course of history. Eventually, Baudolino forms alliances with other liars, and they run off on a quest that increasingly resembles a Breugel painting. “Rose” and “Pendulum” both deal with themes of faith, devotion, love, and mystery, which is perhaps part of their appeal. Baudolino, on the other hand, is a rather crass and materialistic fellow who wears his religion only because of expedience and social obedience. The book attempts at time to give Baudolino some depth, but he comes across as rather shallow and unsympathetic. The book gets smugly preachy at times, seeming to delight in ever-greater examples of how history itself may be a lie, religious extremism is dangerous, and so on — but without a very sympathetic or believable charater, the preaching gets boring.