The Prague Cemetery

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco is not on my list. Go ahead and check. The Name of the Rose is not on my list of 'books that never leave you'. I think. If it is, I didn't put it there. Then there's Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, which I defend only because a polymath such as Eco is entitled to brag about said polymathical... polymathicalness... polymathicy. (FYI, spell check says the middle is correct. And this confirms that spell check knows everything. More than Eco, perhaps.)

Now, I can brag about having read these books because a) they were difficult and b) I wish I were an Eco or a Joyce or a Woolf. (At what point in your life do you become a polymath? Do you have to be able to read Chaucer at age 5 or are you suddenly gifted with a voracious appetite for learning on an auspicious birthday, like 21 or 25? Do you sleep? Do you eat? Do your children like you?)

Also, I just finished The Prague Cemetery, and once again, Ayn Rand and Neuromancer must move aside. Not really for any good reason except that I just finished it and have An Opinion.

If you have ever read Eco, you know that a flash mob's worth of characters break the waves of any protagonist's life. Sometimes as guest stars and sometimes as extras. It doesn't matter; we are expected to remember them all. The same applies to the Youtube channel's worth of actual flash mobs. I know, another reason Eco writes these novels is for his bookclub of learned colleagues who read it twice and make notes (not in the book, you, that's... sacrilege).

Speaking of sacrilege, the plot of the novel is a history of European sects in the late nineteenth century. Christianity, Jesuits, Judaism, Masonry, Freemasonry, nationalism and more. The joke is that most of these folks have a handful of cash hidden in their sweaty palms, in return for cheating someone out of something. Our 'hero' is no different and has a stack of neuroses to boot. We travel with him through Italy and France as he forges documents, particularly last will and testaments.

I call him a 'hero' because he is on a 'quest', an existential mystery around a series of black-outs. To colour those missing moments in, he appropriates Freud's then-untested strategy of psychoanalysis. In other words, he talks - writes - it out (pun!). Although it only really features at the beginning and end of the novel, psychology is also portrayed as a sect, albeit a divided one.

No doubt I was oblivious to many in-jokes shared between the types of people who 'post-it'ed the pages of the novel. I picture them tagging their favourite jokes and telling them at the next dinner party (which looks like a LAN party except there isn't any technology beside the microwave). I'm glad though, because the novel is dense enough (yes, the book is literally thick, too). As it is, I only just remembered most of the people's names. Unfortunately mostly not what roles they play in the plot.

Book reviewer cynicism aside (it's stuck on with superglue, so I'm just going to nudge it aside - there!) I enjoyed the superficial layer of the plot (or in other words, the parts of the plot I understood). It is less absorbing than Name of the Rose but easier to read and less self-indulgent than Mysterious Flame (although it does also have pictures).

Superhero costume back on (yes, reading is a superpower, you) the end of the novel - of the quest - caught me by surprise. I can imagine Eco has a dinner party that he doesn't want to go to, to get to by 19.00. He is feeling malicious because he has just written 400 pages about a man who is afraid of women, so he organises a set of bizarre, gratuitous events and ends with the obvious conclusion. He smiles because ending with the obvious is a joke in itself.

While I frowned in confusion and occasional realisation during most of the novel, it ended with my mouth open in surprise. Ok, not just surprise; horror. No blood, no explicit suffering, no violence, but some serious violation of society's moral code. And my personal one.

I read somewhere that Eco is one of the only polymaths - if not the only one - alive today. (As if they teach courses in this sort of thing. I wonder what the requirements are.) But be warned that being European and/or the last remaining member of an academical sect entitles you to be offensive. Perhaps the offenses are justified because they are realistic (ummm?) or are part of an in-joke (UMMMM?). Luckily there are no pictures showing these ummm's. Or the publisher wasn't invited to the dinner party and revenge is sweet and those pictures fell into the bucket of water being used to clean the floor.

Here's an in-joke: I am going to a dinner party and so I shall plop a slapdash conclusion here. I don't have in me to be offensive but to be obvious: I read the book, I finished it and I liked most of it except the ending. And the parts where I felt stupid. Bye.