By Umberto Eco Foucault's Pendulum (1st trade ed)

I first read Foucoult's Pendulum back in college when it was first published. It was recommended by my bofriend, and I spent half of Spring Break plowing through it. Hard work. One of the few books that absolutely necessitates having a dictionary at hand to really absorb it, and it better be the OED because Webster's doesn't have all the words. Seriously. And in the end, I was floored, absorbed, and used the remaining days of vacation to read it again. I had found a new "Favorite Book Ever!"

I guess I understand why so many are so full of vitriolic loathing when they discuss "Foucault's Pendulum". It isn't really a thriller, nor a consipiracy theory text, nor a philosophical treatise, nor an easy read. If you really want some brain candy (and I certainly do a lot of the time--PG Wodehouse forever!) this is not the book to pick up.

It was, however, probably the first work of fiction I had ever read that made me think about the nature of reality... what is real, what is knowledge, how do we know and who decides. I loved the historical mind games, the twisted conspiracy plots, the flights of fanciful speculation. I found the language dense, yes, but dense like the best kind of rich, dark, brownies--intense and flavorful. For me the climax of the novel had nothing to do with the plot, it was the moment when I went "ah-ha!" and actually "Got It!" An intellectual pleasure in the extreme, but a genuine joy nonetheless.

Twelve years later I own three copies of this book (my tattered original paperback, a hardcover I've read once because I felt this was a book I wanted to own in hardcover, and another paperback for lending out). I've read "Foucault" three additional times... it would be more, but, as I said, it's a tough read and you have to be in the right mood. Every time I've experienced again that first wonderful "Ah-ha!" moment, though perhaps a little less intense since I know it is coming. The boyfriend who recommended it is now my husband. And hundreds of books later, it's still my favorite book.

Fascinating but long winded. Eco really needed an editor to trim 20% of the book - it has a funny and intriguing story but goes on in such a self-indulgent manner that I broke off after 300 pages. Eco likes to indulge every one of his obsessions, and a lot of it is petty. Eco satirizes both the intellectual community of scholars and publishers as well as the mystical community searching for esoteric knowledge - e.g., the lost Knights Templar, etc. He literally tries to cram everything into the plot, but all that does is confuse the reader. Not as focused or thought out as The Name of the Rose.

I originally bought this book because I so thoroughly enjoyed The Name Of The Rose. I was expecting this book to be as good. As I began to read it, I became concerned about the connection the author was making between the Sefirot and the black arts/demon worship. However, the further I got into the book, the more bored I became until I could no longer concentrate. This book is not at all comparable to The Name Of The Rose, either in content or skill.

I'm currently reading Foucault's Pendulum in English, but being both an English mother-tongue and a proficient Italian speaker and reader (as well as a language teacher and translator) I would like to add a little observation about this book. One of the reasons for the akwardness of the prose style and ambiguity is the translation. Many times I found the characters rammbling on at lengths about something which seemed irrelevant, but, when I translated it in my head into Italian, it made sense. One example is the recounting of a dream about a trumpet. The character says that he dreamt of the trumpet which he wanted as a child but instead received a clarinet, which he never played. Another character then asks him if he didn't dream about the clarinet...to which he replies no I played it. This all seems so stupid until you realise that the Italian for 'dream' and 'play' are very similar sounding and the whole dialogue is a play on words.
A book of this nature needs an expert translator. A good translator will translate what is there. An expert would have tried to reword the conversation to find two similarly confusing words in English such as 'knew' and 'blew'. "I knew of a trumpet but I never blew it" for example. The plodding unnaturally pompous prose style is a result of this type of direct translation. Italian prose is full of sub-clauses and spliced lines: English written this way sounds stilted and disjointed. So you end up with sentences such as "I, in the morning, after waking from a dream, went, with great haste, to the bar, which is near my house, for a, as always, coffee." [that's not in the book by the way :)]
To sum up, the book could do with a retranslation.

Sorry. I have two university degrees and, after reading Foucault's Pendulum, I cannot tell you what this book is about. I read it from cover to cover, but just could not pick up the thread - that simple! I hope that "Name of the Rose" will be easier.

I usually finish every book I start, no matter how bad, but I just couldn't do it with this one. From the very beginning it was just boring nonsense that never grabbed your attention. I don't know if something was lost in translation from the original Germanversion, but this was just a horrible read

Umberto Eco's novel "Foucalt's Pendulum" at times reads like the outline of a book. It's dense, often unrewarding, and the hastily appended fictional plot is clumsy, ignored for hundreds of pages, then hastily wrapped up in the last 50. It shines as a philosophical novel. It's an excellent tome on hermeticism, conspiracy theory, and the undercurrent of thought that undergirded religious and scientific thought. There's significant exploration of human need for belief; many of Europe's great scientists and rationalists, including Sir Isaac Newton, were drawn to aspects of mysticism and alchemy. The book strives beyond the European experience, with a look at voodoo practices. One would do well to follow this book with the works of Mircea Eliade, a grievously neglected religious scholar whose reputation suffered because he focused on research and writing instead of corresponding with other professors or relegating his efforts to articles for obscure journals.

"Foucalt's Pendulum" involves a group of researchers, some affiliated with a publishing company focused on conspiracy and hermetic topics. They create a unification theory for conspiracies. They use a central character from Illuminati conspiracies, and trace tendentious connections to Islamic mystics, Templars, Freemasons and, of course, "the Jews." The researchers develop their theory with assistance from a computer program. Their work upsets certain underground groups, and conflict arises.

I read it for the sound history, and the interpretation of a wide variety of topics including conspiracy theory. The novel doesn't work. The characters are underwritten and aren't relatable. I still found it preferable to Dan Brown's work, with its vapid soliloquies, vast factual inaccuracies, and people running around while nothing really happens. If you want a superior intellectual novel along the same currents, read "Auto da Fe" by Elias Canetti or "The Club Dumas." I also suggest grabbing the complete copy of Borges "The Fictions," a compilation of his short works that also covers the impact of belief ("Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius").

I almost wish Umberto Eco had written this with a co-author, or worked with a better editor to develop the fictional portions. Umberto's other fiction shines; here he was too fascinated by historical, religious, and intellectual current tangents, which fortunately salvage this as a fascinating book. Just go in with the right expectations. It's certainly a unique novel, and its tedious opening is offset by excursions into ideas never packaged into a single volume.

The conspiratorial mind has consequences, as we've seen from the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" distributed by the tsar's secret police to defame Jews, to the Hutu radio broadcasts warning of plans by the Tutsis to destroy them. The other currents explored cover intriguing theories of hollow earth, druids and other imaginary beings, and the innate need for belief.

It goes without saying that Foucault's Pendulum is one of the most profound novels I've ever read, and is more relevant than ever in these conspiratorial times.

Eco's expertise in the realm of all things occult is astounding, and even more so as he criticizes the fields of "Neo-Templarism" and secret societies which portend to have historical merit and try to influence the world by way of obscure publishing. Then there is the saga of the game which goes out of control, simply amazing writing. Much to be learned from this.

However, in this review I have to critique the abridged audiobook edition. Expertly read by Tim Curry, the acting is excellent and a great intellectual European vibe fitting for the tone of the book. But the only thing is, it's far too short. A tale of this complexity shouldn't be abridged, it should take as many dozens of hours necessary. I suppose it's a good edit as these things go, and I commend whomever is in charge of that for shortening the story to a mere seven and a half or so hours, but apparently I am too much of an purist so not the intended audiences. And, guess the famous actors who narrate won't do unabridged...

Still, it is a powerful read and highly recommended. The most literary of the conspiracy theory novel subgenre, with an important moral to not take such things too seriously lest we go mad. Good advice these days indeed.

THE BEST of its genre, against which all other literary puzzles -- yes, even Quincunx -- pale. Very erudite, brilliant, complex, and beautiful in its wheels within wheels -- like a gorgeous skeleton watch, with its intricate complications wonders to behold. Cannot recommend more highly. IMHO, this was the absolute height of this brilliant author's writing career, and alone justifies it.

This book is amazing! I first purchased a paperback copy back in the early 1990s, while in graduate school, and, while I am normally a very fast reader, I found that I deliberately slowed my reading pace whenever I picked up this book because it was such a joyful excrcise for my brain. Despite a few minor bumps due to a less-than-perfect translation into the English language, I found the book a joy to read. It is a masterpiece that could only have been written by a master semiotician such as Eco.

The book is intricate, with complex and intricately-nested plots, subplots, cognitive maps and historical threads. If you are looking for a thriller that is a quick read, this is not the book for you, for it is something quite different. I now own two different paperback copies of this book, and I have read it and re-read it at least four times across the past 23 years; I am now considering purchasing the Kindle version as well, because this book is such a joy to open and dip into at times.

The author is a master of cognition, of history, of language, and of weaving an intricatey-woven tale that is mind-boggling in its scope and depth.

I entered this book with some misgivings. On the one hand, it was the followup to the delightful The Name of the Rose. On the other hand, people I knew who'd read it said it was difficult, hermetic, challenging, that Eco was out to prove how much smarter he was than the rest of us.

So it sat on my to-read shelf for, uh, about twenty-five years.

I finally pulled it out at the end of March. It's taken me this long to read. It is difficult -- but not unnecessarily so, and certainly not so that Eco can smirk at the reader. It concerns people trying to work out the secret of secrets behind the duelling conspiracies that some believe control everything and others think either powerless or nonexistent.

Well, certainly the Masons and the Rosicrucians exist. But are they conspiracies? Once you start down that road, there's no knowing where you'll wind up.

Perhaps in a darkened museum late at night, watching and waiting by Foucault's Pendulum.

That's where the book begins. Our narrator has come to spy on ... something. The next five hundred and fifty pages are a flashback, with flash-farther-backs embedded in it, explaining how he got there. I've already told you that: he and his friends tried to work out the Secret. And they, perhaps, contacted the wrong people.

The ending is ambiguous, as it has to be. Is our hero doomed? Or is he living in a paranoid fantasy? It is up to us to decide.

Enormously arcane in its references and source material, I thought FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM was a page-turner, difficult to put down at times, and, despite drifting toward melancholia at the end, often quite amusing. Three gifted and intelligent friends, all working at a small publishing house in Milan, are approached by an author wielding a manuscript purporting to reveal the centuries-old secret of the Knights Templar. Although they think little of it at the time, events and experiences throughout the years draw the three of them together again, at the same time their publishing house has decided to take a new direction toward the occult. Under the influence of materials from the first document, and while jeering at what they perceive as the ridiculous manuscripts they are now forced to slog through, they devise an elaborate joke: Using only factual source materials, they will create their own interpretation of the Templar secrets, one that holds the key to enormous power. Titling their effort The Plan, they find out too late that the joke's on them, as sinister forces from ancient societies begin to close in, looking for the final piece of a puzzle which they now believe the three men hold.

Other than the challenge of keeping up with Mr. Eco's bizarre and obscure occult minutiae, what I found most engrossing about the book was the author's style, which, coupled to the subject matter, seamlessly blended irony, humor and outright parody in the character's speech and actions with a tint of humanity concealed in their private thoughts. I think it is a very perceptive novel about how we (as represented by the everyman Jacopo Belbo - not the occultists) as human beings evaluate ourselves, and how our examined lives can often fail some imaginary stress test we apply to it. FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM isn't about conspiracy theories or revealed secrets about the Earth's hidden power sources - those are simply the bones on which the author hangs the flesh of his characters. It is, rather, a comment on the mysteries which we invent about ourselves and our lives to give them meaning, and achieving a sort of equilibrium when we can finally pierce those veils. And after having his fun at the expense of mysticism and the occult, Mr. Eco brings his narrative to a graceful end by revealing that the secret is there is no secret - not, at least, as the initiates and adepts would have understood it.

Reader beware though - initially I found the book incredibly difficult, almost to the point of laying it aside after the first few chapters (thankfully they are very short, most only a page or two). This book, like so many others, begins near the end of the story, when the main character is approaching the greatest danger, and is spotted with dozens of vague references to what has already happened. I've gotten to where I can barely stand this literary device any longer because that's exactly what it feels like - a device. With FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM, it was all the more difficult to stay with it due the challenging nature of the text. But once I passed those initial few pages (which I went back and re-read when I came to that point in the story in order to get a bit more clarity), the rest of the story unfolded in a reasonable and engaging manner. What especially drew me in was the beginning of chapter 8, when we are first introduced to Jacopo Belbo. I felt this was such a droll and masterful description of a character that I'd recommend it to anyone studying the craft of writing.

There are several untranslated phrases and passages in the book - most of which I could get the gist of or pick up from context, though if I had had an internet translator handy I would have used it, as well as a thorough dictionary and encyclopedia. Still, I muddled through, and as I mentioned before, most of the arcana is the scenery in which Mr. Eco set the story he really wanted to tell. Highly entertaining and recommended.

I decided to reread my copy, autographed in NYC a long time ago, on a whim. Wasn't as impressed as I had been then. The basic idea is clever and the book can be funny at times. Eco is at his best depicting the Aldo Moro - Berlinguer era Italy when it was fashionable to be a maoist-trotskyist. The highlight of the book are the depictions of Northern Italian WWII scenes with interactions between fascist, partisan and Badoglio sympathizers because Eco understands the Piedmontese peasant in his bones. This i found immensely satisfying. Belbo's stories reflect something true, something that you can hear in the villages and hills around Alessandria. There are a few great people portraits - Garamond, Belbo, Lorenza Pellegrini and assorted "Diabolicals". The depiction of umbanda was excellent.

While Eco clearly invested a tremendous amount of work into FP the work is uneven as a whole. The narrative seemed progressively more vapid and superficial as it neared the end - which in itself was anti-climactic. Like watching a balloon deflate. Everything is overintellectualized. Eco is cursed by the Semiotic Deity: no matte how hard he tries, he cannot breathe a whiff of eros into his scenes. While making fun of the pretentious self-righteous quackery typical of much of the contemporary occult scene he misses the very essence, the archetypal power of medieval alchemical texts he quotes in the book. It is easy to mock, but when mockery has no substance than it kind of falls flat. It is bizarre - the guy knows how to read between the lines, gets the ideas and can point the proverbial finger to the moon. I guess he misses the moon because the act of seeing is so simple, humble and unassuming. The snobbery, the literary posturing of it all made this reader feel dissatisfied and unfulfilled.

Most of the negative reviews here focus on one of two things: either 'Foucault's Pendulum is too hard!' (for which I can only recommend working your way up from simpler literary works, like 'See Jane Run', before tackling something like 'Foucault's Pendulum'), or 'all the confused nonsense about the occult confused or offended me!'

For someone who does not finish the novel, I can see how Eco's lavish, helter-skelter array of mysticism and pseudo-history could be confusing, or even (if you take it too seriously) offensive. But you have to understand that 'Foucault's Pendulum' is not a novel about the occult per se; it is about humankind's relationship with knowledge and ignorance, with the nature of truth and the human capability for self-deception. All the stuff about the occult is meant to be taken quite lightly, as just another part of the big cosmic joke (as, indeed, corresponds to Eco's informal and often satirical presentation of the occult lore. Not to give away the plot, but I believe Eco himself said he intended 'Foucault's Pendulum as a lampoon of conspiracy theorists and their ilk). With that out of the way, a look at the book itself.

I can call it nothing but magnificent. Even in translation, the prose is eloquent and deft, and the characters are all distinctive and deep. A less informed reader might not be aware of it, but the book is chock-full of learned jokes, some of which are hilarious. Finally, the plot, though it will not please those who have been weaned on penny-dreadful action-packed spy trillers, is compelling and slowly builds toward a mind-blowing climax. I admit that the first two hundred pages or so are slow in terms of action and plot, even for this book; however, they provide important character development and build the foundation on which the story rests, and they are no less enjoyable to read than the rest of the book.

In summary: a beautifully written, slow-paced novel that will make you think in new terms of the world; recommended for a mature reader who does not blanch at an opportunity to expand his or her vocabulary.

Is Umberto Eco writing the novels he thinks Jorge Luis Borges would have written? In "The Name of the Rose," Eco took several of Borges's favorite motifs--labyrinths, libraries, and murder--and whipped them into a maelstrom of a medieval mystery tale. In "Foucault's Pendulum," Eco again traverses Borges territory by dipping into the Kabbalah, even naming the ten sections of the novel after, and attempting to link them thematically to, the Sefirot. What we have here is the Rabelaisian spirit filtered through the electronic age, a grand tour through Eco's erudition that makes selected stops at various esoteric points in the past seven hundred years of European history.

Because Eco leans so heavily on Borges, an important distinction should be made. Borges and other polymath authors like Joyce, Mann, Pynchon, and Eco's Italian Borgesian precursor Italo Calvino are intentionally enigmatic; they don't interpret for their readers and they don't treat their readers like students. Eco, on the other hand, like an eager professor, tends to explain everything in instructive, almost pedantic, detail ("Know anything about the Rosicrucians? No, of course you don't. I'm one of the very few who do. Don't worry, I'll tell you all about them."), which classes him with fellow academic novelists like John Barth and Robertson Davies. This is not to imply that one type of writer is superior to the other, but the former certainly give you more room to breathe.

The plot of "Foucault's Pendulum" involves three men--Belbo, Diotallevi, and the narrator Casaubon--who work for a Milan publishing company that specializes in books about mysticism and occult theories of history and science. Using a computer word processor Belbo calls Abulafia and much numerological speculation, they combine random names and facts from history to reconstruct the legend of the Templars, a monastic order of Crusaders who ostensibly disbanded when their grand master, Jacques de Molay, was executed in 1314 but who are reputed to have continued as a secret society, associating with various other cults and clandestine organizations, with the intent of concealing the location of (I think I have this right) the earth's "navel"--a conduit of what are called telluric currents which harness enough energy to control the earth's natural forces.

None of Eco's three protagonists really distinguishes himself as a character, except that Diotallevi is a superficial Kabbalist and Belbo's motivation in life derives from his boyhood desire to play the trumpet. They are adequately convincing, however, as scholarly researchers performing intellectual detective work to determine that the titular pendulum is a tool for locating the geonavel. It is when the the story is reduced to a physical quest that the seams start to strain, and the climactic scene, which would not be out of place in an Indiana Jones movie, seems feeble and odd after so much convoluted setup and fails to deliver a fair payoff.

The text is mostly dialogue, a continuous exchange of information between one character and one or more others, a sort of call-and-response method of narration which gives the novel a conversational tone but also seems a little contrived--is this what book editors really sound like when they talk shop? Nevertheless, because of this technique the novel has neither the pace nor the mien of a generic thriller; it is more like a staged lecture about worldwide religious conspiracies, a pantheistic convocation of all of man's attempts to learn the secrets of the universe. "Foucault's Pendulum" is exasperatingly garrulous and not quite as clever as it thinks it is, but at a time when literature should encourage curiosity rather than avoid mental challenges, the effort is very much appreciated.

I loved PENDULUM for many of the same reasons already stated plus a few reasons of my own: the richness of the language, the fact that I needed a dictionary to read it, the fact that it is loaded with HUMOR, and also contains some pathos. (There is compassion for Belbo, obviously, and for other characters as well). There's a kindness to it which I really appreciate. Perhaps the most central experience of reading this book for me was: well, I love the 'aha' moment of solving a puzzle or a detective mystery, and Pendulum is practically PEPPERED with 'aha!' moments - and you know of course, that each 'aha' will soon be reversed, deflated, re-routed, or perhaps later re-connected, and it just goes on like that, with you turning the pages with a red-hot thumb! (At least for me it was like that). Some of the aha moments are not about the crazy story they discover/create, but are more in the line of wise and compassionate insights, and I'm a big fan of those in books. I've never been interested in the Templars, but like many, I didn't try too hard to keep all the details of all of that straight, just the main lineaments. Rather, what I especially liked is that Eco shows us just how slippery 'truth' really is - even though basically we know what it is - when we're not blinded by our own desire. Eco pulls the covers off so many purported solutions to the secret of the universe that it literally makes your head spin! He brings us home, though, in the end, to what we know, (or perhaps it's more accurate to say what we 'don't know') and it's just so beautiful! He handles it well, imo. The book moves, however, at the pace of a novel - and I like the novelistic elements, the details of Pilade's, of Casaubon's life with Amparo, of his movement from student to ex-pat to publisher's researcher, his relatioships and friendships, his fears, his periods of waiting or of passing time, his anxious sneaking around the museum, etc. This book is just loaded with literary greatness, 'wisdom,' laughs and chuckles, insights, surprises, good story-telling, 'pulling out of the cork,' and so much more. He takes his time and writes this book well, he gives us complexity but makes it simple - as simple as possible considering the vast span he covers - so of couse it's a long book. I look forward to reading it again in a few years. Knowing how it all turns out will not diminish the pleasure of reading it again.

The story starts simply enough; a veteran of the Foreign Legion appears in the office of three young Milanese editors with a crazy tale of having discovered a coded message almost a thousand years old, involving the Knights Templar and Stonehenge, which when decoded will unleash a mystic source of power that is greater even than nuclear energy. Oh yeah? say the editors; well, we'll go one better, we'll make a Plan of our own. And they proceed to do so, by feeding bits and pieces of fact and fancy into a computer named Abu (for Abulafia, the medieval Jewish cabalist): the secrets of the Great Pyramid, the Knights Templar's initiation rites; Rosicrucian lore, and a few hefty sprinkles of Brazilian candomblé. Hey, it's great fun and they're only playing a game, after all... until they discover that the game is playing them and they've unleashed a terrifying force they can neither harness nor understand. Umberto Eco is not a so-called "popular" writer and this book is not for anyone looking for an easy read. It has more twists and turns than a Chinese puzzle; it's dense, packed full of historical facts and references, and zips across time and geography until the reader has to slow down and reorient himself. Eco takes over 600 pages to get where he's going, but for those who stay with it, it's a wild, crazy joyride leading up to a slam-bang conclusion. It's fun, it's fascinating, and it's a learning process all in one. What else can you ask of a great book?

This book is not a light read, especially the first hundred pages, which are very demanding. However, if you have a love for fine mysterious, sinister plots and the likes, the effort is well worth it. If you're a history buff, you will well enjoy all of the history embedded in this novel.

In contrast to the writing, the narrative of the book is actually rather simple: three editors in a Milan publishing house specializing in crazy works on the mystical begin to make farfetched connections between the various way-out theories put forward in the manuscripts submitted for publication. Surprisingly very soon, all the dots start to connect, and they realize that they might be on to something, something so significant that their own lives are in danger due to the importance of their discovery.

Foucault's Pendulum is not a light summer read, but its well worth the time and effort.

Three men in Milan, working in a small publishing house that produces works on the occult, the esoteric, and the downright bizarre, decide to recast world history in terms of a Plan. Why they do this is part of Eco's most unusual novel. FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM is not an action novel, though there are some gripping action passages; you do not find sex to any degree, nor is there much development of characters' psychology in the usual sense of that phrase. This is an enormous compendium, a vast vat of olive oil in which you may dip the bread of your curiosity. It is a semiotics text masquerading as a novel. Swirls of madness, esoterica, the weird, and the twisted logic of paranoid history fill the pages with a tongue-in-cheek talent that very few authors could manage. On page 386, the narrator-one of the three planners---says, "I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing." Eco's parody of occult writing borders on this itself. The three cross this boundary and realize their picture is true even though it was meant to be a parody. Did their efforts create the reality or was that reality extant all the time ? We witness the concoction of an insane explanation of European Man's activities over the last thousand years or more, an attempt to deny common sense and objectivity in favor of mysteries, plots, counter-plots, and secret cabals. The secret document which sends them off in these paroxysms of paranoid plotting could be one handed down from the mysterious Knights Templar of Crusader times. Or else, it could be a 14th century merchant's delivery list---hay, cloth, roses.
There is a well-known American artist, Joseph Cornell, who created works of art from small, unusual items placed in tiny pigeon-holes inside a large frame. Eco's work reminds me of that. Where else could you find, side by side, in an amazing soup of crazy ideas, such different things ? Rosicrucians. Hitler. the Holy Grail. Trumpet dreams and cabbage soup. Occultism run amok. The Druidic College of Gaul. Masonry. Numerology. The hollow earth theory. Shiism and the Assassins. Bacon, Shakespeare, and Cervantes and all their ghost writers. The Tsarist secret police. Ayers Rock (Uluru). Old maps. Kabbala of cars (the motor, axles, etc. as the Tree of Sefirot !) Macumba. Manifestoes. Sepulchres. Alchemy. Heresy. Immortality. Rare books. Luminous wheels in the sea. Enigmas. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Mages. Secret brotherhoods. Jesuits. Menhirs. Minnie Mouse. The golem. Greek migrations into Yucatan. Tauroboliastes. Telluric currents. Self-financed authors. Osmognosis. Queen Elizabeth I. The Gregorian calendar reform. And I'm just scratching the surface here. "History is a Master because it teaches us that it doesn't exist." I think this is a kind of pseudo-Zen dictum, but FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM will certainly give your brain a run for its money. Is history what we think it is? Why ? Maybe the book isn't for everyone. You need a bit of patience to wade through all the crazy theories, and rabid reasonings, trying to connect all the signs and symbols to the real world outside the book. As the characters muse early on, there are four kinds of people in this world---cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics. Let us add the fifth-those who can read FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM. I must be one of them.

I purchased this book because it was compared to Dan Brown's most famous and overrated title. I did like parts of the Da Vinci Code but I craved more depth and attention paid to the details, the DETAILS! So I picked up this book. I had heeded another reviewer's recommendation that the first 100 pages were tougher to get through than the ones that followed. After getting through 300 pages I realized I didn't agree with his assessment; the first 100 didn't seem much different than the ones that followed - until around at least page 400 or so, when the theoretical plot really began to take off.

I finished this book, but I have to be honest; the incredibly short chapter lengths really helped me with this. The book is extremely dense and the work-to-payoff ratio is rather low. Even in the end, when the events start to take place, the amount of action transpiring is minimal and the sense of conclusion the book offers is minimal, delving instead into pontifications about the meaning of truth. I liked the attention to details, I really did, and I appreciated the sense that for a lot of these 623 pages, it really felt like at least 400 of them were full of possibly well-researched facts (I lack confirmation as my history isn't quite as good as it should be, particularly in the Templar realm, but I assume basically everything in here minus the connections check out). I am writing this review to drive home to other prospective buyers how strong the emphasis is in this novel upon "ideological thriller". That means the novel revolves around people connecting ideas together. If you are a history or Templar buff, and you want more depth than Dan Brown offers, this book is perfect, *as long as you accept the sacrifice of a plot with things occurring, and more prominently, dialog*. Very important! If not, you might want to stray away from this.

My more literarily-inclined friends tell me this is a work of philosophy encased in a novel's syntax, much like Rand; I find myself strongly in agreement with the first part but in complete disagreement with the Rand analogy, since Rand's books tend to have a more plot and dialog transpiring on more or less every page.

In many ways this novel lures the protagonist and reader into a tangled web of signs and clues, seemingly leading to some ultimate Truth. The web gradually appears before us as we progress through the chapters and its meaning deepens as we plod along. The detail provided often invites us to research further, to confirm our hunches and construct our own theories. Layers and layers of information are piled on top of one another so the weight of the task at hand becomes almost unbearable. At times I found myself rereading passages repeatedly looking for a clue in the sentence structure or chapter numbers. Towards the conclusion, my curiosity was at a peak.
Then the final chapters unfurled feeling like a B movie rather than a blockbuster. Eco somehow deflated all that curiosity in a matter of a few pages. Immediately I understood this was just a story. The novel I just worked through, devoted time and effort in understanding, ended rather melodramatically, "not with a bang but a whimper." It is ironic that so much detail was collected and expounded for such a pulp ending. I was dismayed ... at first.
After some reflection, however, it occurred to me that reading this novel is an exercise not unlike life. We are often searching for clues and signs on our way to some ultimate conclusion, and often we are disappointed by the results of our endeavors to find the Truth. The truth is that the pursuit defines who we are, not the goal. The meaning we derive in life comes from living, not death. We are curious about death; we are afraid of it, but we do not know it. Maybe in the end it will feel like a B movie. The only way to discuss or describe the ultimate Truth is via drama, not facts. I think this novel is worth pondering not simply for its story, but also for its storytelling. It offers a humbling experience and challenges much of what we take for granted.

Umberto Eco is internationally renowned as an author, a philosopher, a literary critic and a historian. He is also a professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna and lives in Milan. "The Name of the Rose", his debut novel, was first published in Italy in 1980 and became a bestseller throughout the world. It was also adapted for the big screen in 1986, a version that starred Sean Connery and Christian Slater. "Foucault's Pendulum" was first published in 1988.

The story is told by Casaubon, as he looks back over the previous fifteen years of his life. A graduate of the University of Milan, he's something of a specialist on the Knights Templar - having researched their trial for his thesis. It was in the late sixties, while still a student, that Casaubon first met Jacopo Belbo at Pilade's Bar. Belbo was an editor with Garamond Press deals largely with reference books and university textbooks. (There is another side to Garamond - Manutius, a vanity press where the authors pay for the priviledge of seeing their books in print). However, Belbo also has to deal with the occasional submission on the Templars - which is unfortunate, as he believes that if "someone brings up the Templars he's almost always a lunatic". As a relative 'expert', it's almost inevitable that Casaubon starts spending a little more time with Belbo at the publishing house...

At Garamond, Belbo works most closely with Diotavelli - a cabalist who insists he's an albino Jew. However, of the two, Belbo is by far the more developed character. Although quite witty at times, he's a rather pessimistic character, with a very low opinion of himself. He sees himself as a coward, seems doomed to be unlucky in love and is frustrated at being an editor instead of an author. He's also the proud owner of a recently acquired computer, which he christens Abulafia - into which, in time, Belbo pours his innermost thoughts.

From the book's outset, it's clear the three are in trouble : Diotavelli is in hospital, apparently gravely ill, while "They" are pursuing Belbo. Convinced that "the Plan" is real, Jacopo is in Paris and seems to believe the Templars are after him. Unfortunately, when his phone call to Casaubon is interrupted, it would appear it would appear the Templars (like the Mounties) always get their man. The Plan had been little more than a game for the three friends, something they had developed after having read too many of the conspiracy-inspired manuscripts landing on their desks at work. Although they didn't realise it at the time, it was a manuscript submitted by Colonel Ardenti that was to become the launchpad for their Plan. The manuscript is, naturally, written about the Templars and the Grail and incorporates - he claims - some recently rediscovered information.

While "Foucault's Pendulum" isn't exactly a short read, it is an absorbing, interesting and enjoyable one. There's plenty happening - Templar history, the Rosy Cross and Rosicrucians, a stint in Brazil, numerology (thirty-six and one hundred and twenty seem to be quite popular), 'the' Sophia and a man called Aglie - someone who seems to enjoy masquerading as the (apparently immortal) Comte de Saint-Germain. There's even a touch of sexy pinball, courtesy of Lorenza Pellegrini. An outstanding book, and absolutely recommended.

First, dont be deceived by the plot summaries listed above...though masterful in its own way, this book does not have a fast paced, detective style plot. Eco does tell the tale of three editors of who weave a compelling yet fictitious Plan culled from the writings of crackpot would-be authors, (a fake Plan that becomes menacingly real when the crackpots take it seriously). However, if you are a reader who judges a book by how well the author tells a compelling story, and how well the author keeps you gripped by the interaction of his characters, you are likely to judge this book a failure.
This book is not a failure. True, entire chapters meander along, seemingly contributing nothing to the premise of the story, but Eco's true story is not found in the plot, or the interaction/evolution of his characters, but rather the fascinating evolution of the Plan his characters are creating.
The story of human thought, human philosophy, and humanity's desire to control the very rotation of the World itself is masterfully told through Eco's amazing ability to meld actual historical facts, philosophical axioms and scientific discoveries with fictional connections, interrelations and motivations. Eco's numerous oblique references to historical figures and events, to works of literature and art (secular, religious and occult) may annoy some readers as overly showy (Eco's writing can give even a philosphy Ph.D an inferiority complex), but I think that is partly Eco's aim...to inspire his readers to higher standards of learning, preception and appreciation.
I think many readers feel the last hundred pages of the book are the best, when Eco's plot focuses more on his characters as they reap what they have sown. I agree, but more because the plot is now empowered by the full weight of their/Eco's intellectual journey/descent (just as some feel that Shawshank Redemption was way too long a movie, but the ending's emotional impact is due largely to the fact that the movie had time to properly build it up)
Read it all, its worth it. I gave it 4 stars only because all this having been said, I believe Eco could have done a better job with the story...its as if the magnitude of his creation was too much even for him to control to the full extent of his skill as a writer.

The plot and the story were engaging, but I would have been happier if the book was 300 pages instead of 600. Aside from periodic hints to the effect of "...if only I had known that our 'plot' would become real..." the first 400 pages were almost entirely character development, historical meanderings about religion and secret societies and setting the stage for what would happen later.

Maybe I'm just getting old and impatient, but I found myself bored and resorted to skimming over the lengthly descriptions.

If you really love descriptive writing, or are really interested in secret societies, then you'll have the patience to endure. But ultimately I found the book slow and underwhelming.

Note however, that the book is highly symbolic and I didn't have the interest or patience to even try to think about the deeper metaphysical meaning in the story.

Also, the author - either to impress us with his intelligence, or to lend an air of gravitas to the writing, included obtuse references to obscure literary texts througout the story - thousands of them, many not in English. I felt that it came across as a type of intellectual, literary name-dropping that alienated me as a reader.

For me, I wouldn't read it again and won't read any more of his books, but if you like intellectual, slow-paced, descriptive stories wound around a fairly simple plot (the plot could easily be summarized in a couple of paragraphs) then you'll like this book.

None should pick up this book thinking it will be accessible, unless one happens to be the sort who can, say, cruise through the Friday "New York Times" crossword in under half an hour. Eco consistently violates, in this work, what I normally consider to be the canons of good prose: He chooses long and difficult words over short and clear ones, includes copious foreign phrases (and sometimes whole paragraphs) in no less than three languages besides English, and peppers the text with obscure allusions and long expository monologues. Towards the end of the book he stops even bothering to put quotes around his narrator's paranoid historiographic treatises, and we must occasionally plow through pages at a time of straight theorizing.
However, there is a broader and more fundamental stylistic principle that justifies these excesses, in this case, which is that style should suit subject. And the subject of "Foucault's Pendulum"--enlightment through the pursuit of obscure and arcane knowledge--could not be better served than by a style which is itself a bit obscure and arcane. What's more, the protagonist's professorial penchant for polysyllaby serves an important dramatic purpose: If Causabon did not seem to us so intelligent, we probably would not follow him so willingly down the path of madness. But he does, and we do, and the effect Eco achieves at the end of it all is nothing short of exalting.
Think of the book itself, then, as a hermetic text, and as one with real secrets to unveil: Invest some effort, read with attention, and resign yourself to a bit of research here and there, and you will be well rewarded.

Eco is having the last laugh.
In "Foucault's Pendulum" Umberto Eco is writing a huge joke with the whole world as the punchline. He takes everything you know about history (and quite a few things you don't) and wraps them all up in such a way that they make sense. Or better yet, in a brilliant act of post modernism, he has his characters do it. Causabon, the narrator of the tale, spends his time explaining to the reader that none of this is real. And yet, when you put the book down, all the connections which have been explained become glaringly obvious in real life. It's like when you buy a new car and suddenly all you see on the road is that model. Eco creates the pathways for your own brain to make the connections. I realize this tells you nothing about the plot of the book, but that's half the fun of reading it. You have to decide for yourself where he's being serious and where he's playing a joke. And even after you decide...you're probably wrong.
Like Tim Powers, Eco is very skillful at weaving historical fact into a fantastic tale. Ultimately, you don't know if he's pulling your leg or if he's just written down a long forgotten history and is downplaying it as fiction to make sure he doesn't get into trouble with the powers that be.

I've just finished Foucault's Pendulum, after reading on and off for about six months. Certainly I agree with the cross-section of opinions already listed. However, for me the biggest draw-card for this book was it's humour. So often I was more than just chuckling inside at the subtle and not-so-subtle humour that Eco uses to lampoon his various secret societies. But of course, as Eco drew me into the story, it turns out that the joke was on me!
Having finished the book, I went back and spent several hours skimming it from cover to cover, and picked up on a whole lot of stuff I didn't fully appreciate on first reading. Also, by that stage I had out my two volume dictionary! Yes, I got sucked into it too.
Several people I know had read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. From what they told me about it, Foucault's Pendulum could be interpreted as a direct parody of the three authors of that book. I am now reading it to test my theory.
As others have said, this is a tough read. However, I loved the first chapter, and it is Eco's descriptive yet highly intellectual style that kept me going through this minefield of pedantic knowledge.
Finally, when I finished the book I really felt as though I'd finished a great journey. It was tough to get to the end, but worth the effort. I actually saw the book in a new light, and, until I'd finished it I would have had a lot of trouble telling people what it was actually "about".

I might end up giving away some details about the plot here, so if you haven't read the book, be warned.
I'm afraid I have to weigh in with the naysayers on this one. This is all very subjective, of course, but here goes: The book was too enmeshed in its own love of scholarly gobbledygook. I wonder who amongst its readers really tried to fend their way through ALL those ENDLESS details about the templars, and the sculpting of the Plan. I can see trying to follow the details of the Plan if Eco was really trying to discover something, but since he's not, it really all becomes meaningless. And that, of course, is his point. Unfortunately, that little philosophical wrap-up at the end of the book did not, for me, justify the 600+ pages I waded through to get to it. The worldview expressed is depressing and even a little - forgive me - lazy. Basically, Eco's throwing up his hands and saying life is basically meaningless; to counteract this sense of meaninglessness, people invent meaning - like the Plan - to see them through. It's the tired old existentialist argument used (with greater brevity) by people like Hemingway, and it's thinly disguised with Eco's obvious love of history and obscure bits of information.
I would give the book 2 1/2 stars if I could. Obviously a tremendous amount of effort went into it, and there were definitely times when it engaged me. I can see why some people found it an enjoyable read (drawn into a labyrinthine plot, a sense of mystery and history, etc.), but overall I was disappointed.

This novel essentially comprises two separate stories:

1. A mystery/thriller subplot ensnares three well-educated friends, Casaubon, Belbo, and Diotallevi, who decide to play an intellectual game by making up an elabourate history behind the Knights Templar. Late in the book, Belbo, in a fit of anger stemming from a broken romance, mentions this historical tale to Agliè, who is part of a mysterious cult that actually has historic ties to the Knights Templar. Trouble ensues thereafter when the cult members come to believe that the trio knows more about the cult's history than they themselves do. This part of the plot takes up about 200 pages out of the 623 pages in the novel. If you want to read only this portion, you can start at roughly page 438 in this edition, but I recommend you do not.

2. The rest of the book contains a meandering walk through European history by the author. He essentially plays a highly-detailed game of 6-degrees-of-separation (without Kevin Bacon), using deep research to create The Plan, an historical fiction that ties together the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, Mickey Mouse, Hitler, the French revolution, and the secret that the Knights were trying to hide: accessing the powerful eletrical telluric currents inside the Earth. The author spares not an iota while coming up with a grand plan involving all the major European historical figures over the course of several centuries.

I found the second plot to be too contrived and exhausting to read. It would be a great read if I were studying the historical topics that the author discusses, but as it is, I found the first 400 or so pages of the book to be tedious. Furthermore, a large portion of the book details Casaubon's two years spent in Brazil, all of which contribute little to the story.

I am not ashamed to admit that I enjoyed reading the fast-paced thriller The DaVinci Code. However, in Foucault's Pendulum, the plot dealing with Casaubon's trio and the cult is not as brisk and develops only at the end. Two things I did not like in this regard is that The Plan turned out to be improbably too accurate, thereby causing the cult to take action. Further, the cult turned out to have actual supernatural powers, which rather detracts from the story since The Plan's history, while contrived, at least had a semblance of down-to-earth facts.

All in all, the book is enjoyable only if you commit to fully immersing yourself in the history that the author weaves for the reader. Otherwise, the book is rather disappointing.

Done. And unsatisfied. Three ambiguous stars that could as easily fall towards one as they could to five. Perhaps it might have been better to have read this when it first came out, the sensational topics of conspiracies and Knights Templar having been all done to death in the past 20 years. Perhaps I should have waited until I was assured of a week of uninterrupted days at a beach house at the Outer Banks of North Carolina so as to be able to lose myself in the endless dialogue. Perhaps another Eco book will cure me of my inability to say I appreciate the author. Perhaps. Or perhaps the author really is pulling one over on everybody like the unreliable narrator of this novel.

This book has often been called the thinking man's Da Vinci Code. The difference is that while Dan Brown is too credulous with the conspiracy theories put forward in his ridiculous book, Eco pokes fun at these theories and the people who believe in them. Eco's second novel is a bit less accesible than his previous blockbuster "The Name of the Rose". There are a lot of digressions that are not really necessary (the most irritating one deals with computer programming, and should really be excised from future editions of the book), yet the book is thoroughly fascinating. The novel's plot deals with three editors working for a vanity press in Milan hatching up a conspiracy theory involving the Knights Templars, who in their imagination, are still living today underground and are ready to take over the world with a mysterious source of energy. Associated with the Knight Templars in this plan, a lot of secret societies also make an appearance, like the freemasons, the rosicrucians, even Brazilian afro-religions (?). Anyway, the problem for the editors starts when some people start believing the reality of their plot, which puts them into deadly danger. The ending is a bit underwhelming, but the book is a nonetheless fascinating view at the world of esoterism and its credulous practitioners.

Whoah. This book tried to re-arrange my brain. It is full of all the paranoid magical conspiracy theories of the last millennium of Western history. Everything occult, alchemical, Hermetic ... the Templars, Masons, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, it's all in here, woven together into a vast world-spanning uber-plot by a trio of characters who are just goofing around making fun of it all. What's fascinating is that the connections they come up with make sense - if you're a magical thinker. Umberto Eco has really re-created a state of mind with this novel, the special kind of madness that consumes those who search for "The Great Secret". I've done a not-insignificant bit of reading on these subjects and was delighted to see lots of names & concepts I recognized. The research that went into putting all of this together must have been staggering.
The book rambles. It wanders. Dr. Eco likes to show off his erudition. There are detours into the characters' memory. There are snippets of text files written by one of the narrator's colleagues inserted at various points in the narrative. The plot is told out of chronological order; most of the book is a long flashback, with other flashbacks contained inside it.
It felt like the final three chapters over-explained; is the author trying to make sure the readers interpret the book correctly? I might have preferred it to be more vague, but then again I can see the reason for the author to blatantly dismiss the entire Plan as a meaningless fiction ... OR IS IT? Even this flagrant denial of meaning has meaning in the context of The Plan. Neither the characters nor the reader can ever win this game.
It was a really wonderful, thought-provoking book, weaving its spell (quite literally!) in a leisurely & masterful way. However this is a book that requires a lot from its readers, so it definitely won't appeal to everyone. Recommended for people who liked _The Da Vinci Code_ but thought it was too light & fluffy. Here's something heavier for you to sink your teeth into.

Superstition brings bad luck. - Raymond Smullyan, _5000 B.C._

The conspiracy theory of society . . . comes from abandoning God and then asking: "Who is in his place?" -Karl Popper, _Conjectures and Refutations_.

_Foucault's Pendulum_ by Italian semiotician Umberto Eco is a fascinating novel which combines elements of mystery and suspense with occult knowledge and traditionalist philosophy. I first read this book in high school in the nineties and it has remained one of my favorite books ever since. The story involves several main characters, all intellectuals, who work for a publishing house, Garamond Press. The main character and narrator begins as a student in Italy working on a Ph.D. thesis on the Knights Templar, the medieval society of crusading knights who became very powerful and wealthy bankers and eventually were accused of heresy along with engaging in ghastly rituals and the worship of a human head called the Baphomet. The other two principle protagonists are employed by Garamond Press, and one is a foundling who believes himself to be of Jewish parentage and is extremely fascinated by the Kabbalah, the interpretation of the Torah, and numerology. Eco gently mocks the leftish intellectual scene in Italy during the late sixties and seventies as well as the Marxist and post-modernist philosophies which were popular at the time among intellectuals. One day a mysterious gentleman shows up at Garamond Press and offers his book to be published. This man relates a wild tale involving a secret manuscript he has discovered and which he believes to preserve a hidden tradition from the Knights Templars carried up to the modern day. He argues that a secret society is behind this event, providing many occult links to stonehenge, the Holy Grail, the Druids, ancient heresies, the medieval church, and modern day secret societies. However, the next day this individual shows up dead. This begins a drawn out sequence of events which occur over several years eventually leading to the concoction of a secret Plan by the three principle characters as part of their publishing company's newfound interest in "Diabolicals", self-publishing authors who write on occult and conspiracy topics.

Eco's novel combines elements from African and Brazilian syncretistic religion, Christianity and gnosticism, occultism, Rosicrucianism, secret societies, esoteric political beliefs, legends about the immortal Comte de Saint-Germaine, Satanism, Blavatskian theosophy, freemasonry, the writings of Count Joseph de Maistre and Cretineau-Joly, esoteric conspiracy theories regarding the Jews and Nazism, theories of telluric currents and subterranean realms, the science of Foucault's pendulum, as well as much more. Eco is clearly influenced also by two principle sources, including the book _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_ by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln written in the late 1980's which alleged that Jesus and Mary Magdelene were married and gave birth to a secret bloodline. In addition, Eco is clearly influenced by the traditionalist school of philosophical thought founded by Rene Guenon and politicized by Julius Evola. Finally, Eco's book reveals a unique esoteric political philosophy operating behind the scenes through an organization known as Tres, referred to as synarchy. This system is revealed in the hidden Masters of the World who rule the world through a system of underground tunnels, residing in the center of the world in the subterranean kingdom of Aggartha. This philosophy shows the influence on Eco of the writer Saint Yves d'Alvedrye and also Ferdinand Ossendowski. Synarchy is the secret system by which the Masters of the World seek to control all worldly governments.

As an intellectual adventure story, Eco's novel is very fascinating. It's meaning is revealed on many levels, indicating the fact that Eco's specialization lies in the field of semiotics, the science of the sign. Indeed, all conspiracies and occult doctrines converge in "the Plan" which reveals itself through this novel. Much in this book is true, although it requires special interpretation. That interpretation can only be known by those who are well grounded in philosophy and esoteric tradition.

Three editors go on a mental trek to rediscover and revise the history of the world based on the writtings of people who could be considered credible and others that could have zero credibility at all. As they do, they unravel a massive web of conspiracies orchestrated from the depths of history to the present day by innumerous secret societies and underground groups poised to control the world and take over. These "societies" often clashing amongst themselves and often figments of imagination of others (but how can we really know) take the three protagonists around the world as they search for more and more data to put together their story. And the more data that piles in the more the truth becomes a blur.
As the story spins, they, and we too, do not know which of their "facts" are real and which aren't. For some the devices are not available to test their authenticity, and for others, the suspicion lingers that strategically placed false information has been laid in their path to throw them off track.
But the worst element for the three investigators is the very real possibility that some of the "facts" could be mere inventions of their own brains! Thus, they constantly need to investigate themselves too to keep their story in check. But how easy, or rather, how feasible is that?
"Foucault's pendulum" is a book that spans over 650 pages, and a story that many people have found exhausting or even pointless. But if you had to attempt yourself to write a story with the outcome and the "moral" of this one then it would be very probable that you'd need a build-up as long and as "exhausting" as Ubmerto Eco here does.
Allthough i could agree with some that this incredible novel is at times "exhausting", i totally understand the need for its structure and length.
Eco deals with more than just a story here. The way we perceive reality and how we are sometimes led to perceive it is a topic that bears no borders. Which, probably explains why 100s of books have been written on the subject.
Is there a conspiracy by secret societies to control the world? Hmm, who are you to answer, and, if there is, why do you imagine that these "societies" would let you know? You are enlightened? Says who? And what if it's all in your brain? If it is indeed "all in your brain" how would you be able to know?
How much "knowledge" and how many "facts" rest in your cerebrum about which you cannot trace the track by which they got there? How much of the "history" you know and have been taught can you actually prove for yourself?
And even if you set out to prove it for yourself, could you?
How easy is it really to separate truth from lie? I say it's not that easy. And if it's not that easy, then, wouldnt those who hold power and know this too, try to use this little fact to their advantage?
Wouldn't they try to use that as a device to manipulate, brainwash, mislead and misguide, whole peoples for their dark goals? Common sense would dictate that yes, but then, if common sense is really "common" why is it so uncommon to begin with?
Hmm..
To cut a long story short, this is a tremendous book. Yes it demands your dedication, but for good reason. Yes, it might not be for everyone (and judging from other reviews i read) it obviously isn't but, so what? Good things are by definition not for everyone, especially in days like these where intraterrestrial intelligence is becoming more rare than the white eagle.
This incredible rollercoaster of a book takes you deep back with a time machine, thrusts you back...forward, plays with your mind, plays with its own mind, and climaxes in its last 100 pages to the question troubling us all:
what is real?
While you might attempt to think about it, excuse me while i go get paranoid.
Umberto Eco is without a doubt one of the sharpest thinkers of our time. But on second thought, who's to say??

What if a couple of guys that had endless recources on occultic history started putting it all together? What if they began to put this together, to have a foundation for an epic, world-wide practical joke? And then in publishing all these ideas into collected works, they slowly start to maybe BELIEVE these lucid ties that they're weaving together? And THEN what if the very secret societies they are writing conspiracy theories about begin to believe that they actually ARE part of this plane these men concocted, and start to act upon it, resulting in a global occult conspiricay in which every bit of spirituality or religious roots are somehow tied in or based out of. It's all part of the plan...

This is the scenario for Eco's book. True is said that at times Eco bombards you with information and it seems he's only doing so to show you how much he knows, but even at those instances, the book is NEVER boring.

The first few pages were so wordy that I was a little intimidated, but after that, the language (at least in English translation) became a lot easier; it was just the content of the massive amounts of dialogue in this book that was complicated.

I totally ate this book up. I don't even know what it is about this book that made me hold my attention to it for so long, but I was able to. Most of the book is like, three characters exchanging dialogue about secret societies, mostly the rozicrucians and the Knights Templar, as well as a dozen others. The outcome is a flood of information that I totally gobbled up quickly.

Belbo, one of the main characters, is a very interesting character. This novel has a lot to do with him dealing with life as an editor of books; wanting to write but knowing he never will, and feeling that this monstrously huge conspiracy him and his friends are hatching up is sickeningly the only thing he will ever create. It's because this Plan is more real than fiction; so it starts to become.

I warn you, this book is not for the faint of heart; it seems to take some stabs and religion, ones that completely eradicate Christianity and include as part of this Plan that is all aimed at achieving something bigger...what that is exactly, you will have to read to find out.

Is this book a statement about aspiring authors? A satire of religion? A history lesson on the links between the Knights Templar and every other bit of occult info on the planet? A highly technical and complicated version of Indiana Jones? Maybe it's all of these, and maybe it's none of these.

I once heard someone compare Eco's writing to Tolkein's writing, in that there's so much thought and history and basis behind everything that is the book, that the book really could take any turn, or there could be ten books written out of the information compiled. Such is true with this book. It's a gateway to another world, an undercurrent to the world we do not see...

Foucault's Pendulum first attracted my attention ten years ago when a professor I respected said he read Eco's novel and had no idea what was it was about. It took me over a decade to take up his implicit challenge, but I finally understand what he meant.
Not that the plot is hard to follow. In fact, FP starts off fast-paced: suspense combined with an intriguing dose of numerology. The Templars quickly enter the story, and the history Eco provides here is engaging and approachable.
Then comes the middle half of the book. Eco warns that the logic to be laid out in FP will be faulty, allowing the less ambitious reader to mentally skim much of the obscure history that follows. Although part of the fun is trying to figure out what is history and what is historical fiction, wading through paragraph-long lists of occult orders is less than stimulating.
When not caught up in pseudo-history lessons, Eco's style is inviting and his sense of humor is engaging. Broken into 120 chapters, FP is one of those novels where you can either convince yourself you have time to read just one more chapter, then one more, or instead struggle to get through to the end of a short chapter before falling asleep from boredom.
The last 100 pages of the book pick up again, and the plot moves along to a satisfying ending. After putting the book down, I am impressed that Eco has provoked me to consider such topics as religion, the meaning of life, the "knowledge is power" attitude of some colleagues, determinism/free will, etc.
I am glad I finally read Foucault's Pendulum. Still, I won't be buying The Name Of The Rose just yet. I need a little break from Eco right now.

I just finished this book last night. First let me qualify my taste a bit. I found Eco as a suggestion by way of Ian Pears "Instance of the Fingerpost" which I liked alot. I tried to read DaVinci but it was just too cardboard cutout so I quit 3/4's of the way through (very rare for me to abandon a book.)

Okay on to the Pendulum. I was fascinated at the beginning by the bizarre approach of this book. I break it into three layers. The top layer is the plot involving the characters and the actions that they take in obsession with ancient hidden rites and sects etc. The second layer is the crazy labyrinth of relationships that they establish between numerous historical refferences. The third layer is the sub-story composed by one character on his computer as an effort to be a "writer."

Simply put, I loved layers 1 & 3, but there was just way too much of layer 2.

Eco's characters (unlike Pear's) are surprisingly likeable and interesting. The interplay between Causobon, Belbo, Diotallevi, Lia, Aglie, etc. is very compelling. The problem is that most of the book focuses on an endless trail of imagined historical/religious connections. At first it seems really cool. Like DaVinci Code on acid or something, but after awhile it gets very ponderous, and I found myself getting impatient for the book to get back to the actual plot. The sub-story that Belbo wrote on his computer was a bit confusing at times, but not too bad.

All in all, I like Eco's originality. But I don't think he needs to throw quite so much at us. I would love to see what he would do in a more straight-forward approach. He has the gift of great characters, excellent dialogue and great settings/activities. He just diverts the action far too often for the sake of LONG and almost indecipherable historical wild goose chases.

Ironically, Eco suffers from the same problem that Belbo did. Throwing a million pieces of information into a computer doesn't make a great novel.

However. This is definitely an interesting read. If you have alot of time and are very patient, give it a shot.

Being an avid reader, a friend of mine recommended this book after I told him I had recently read The Illuminatus Trilogy. He called it the "ultimate conspiracy theory" novel. Having never read Eco's work, but having enjoyed the movie version of Name of the Rose, I decided to give it a go.
Althought I think of myself as somewhat of an intellectual, Mr. Eco puts me to shame. The story, other than the beginning and the end, took constant thought to follow. The quotes from other sources were largely in foreign languages, which I didn't take the time to look up. I was able to follow what was happening, but this is definitely not what you might consider light reading. The plot was complex with all the interweaving of history, religion, and philosophy, and the characters were just as complex, although a bit flat.
The humor was subtle, in many places, but enjoyable nonetheless, particularly the references to vanity press and its customers.
In comparing this to The Illuminatus Trilogy, the writing was much more straight forward, but the concepts and connections were deeper.
Ultimately, I liked the ending of the book, although rather dark (or maybe because of it), and Eco's point rang through loud and clear. I learned many things throughout my read, but I wouldn't recommend this to the average reader. If the store.com let me put in half-stars, this would get 3-1/2.

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

This book is The Da Vinci Code on steroids. Nevermind that The Da Vinci Code was written in 2003 and this first in 1988, I'm gonna postulate that Eco's documented jealousy of other writers stealing his genius comes from Dan Brown's novel. He puts himself in league with whomever supposedly ghost wrote for Shakespeare. Trust me, Umberto, you're no Shakespeare!

As it is, Umberto Eco, a Professor of Semiotics [Huh? It is the study of cultural sign processes (semiosis), analogy, metaphor, signification and communication, signs and symbols] - cannot help himself--he must associate this with that, this with that until it borders on mental illness. The Dan Brown book features a "symbologist" professor--very similar. Aha! I've found yet another connection! That is the kind of twisted logic this book is all about.

But Professor Eco is also a "literary critic", and as such, should know what constitutes good novels. Each part needs to contribute something to whole or it shouldn't be included. Two-thirds of this 641-page book could and should have been edited out so that it actually was a compelling mystery. But Eco can't do that. I think some consider this a classic because they are afraid to admit they didn't follow much of what the novel drivels on about.

So why did I chose this book? I understand the impulse of the mind to make connections-between all kinds of things. Often, it's difficult for me to find others who are similarly interested--or care-- about the connections that I constantly see between this behavior and that, this theory and current events. I thought Umberto Eco sounded like a kindred spirit. But the book is an extended metaphor for Six Degrees of Separation (or Kevin Bacon. however you chose to play it).

I had heard many theories about Knights Templar / Masons, / the Illuminati, Rosicrucians and other organizations ruling the world. I had just recently gained a rudimentary understanding of Kaballah and cabalists,which is a major theme --the idea that the knowledge of the Universe can be gained by rewriting the Torah into all it's permutations by reorganizing the words (?letters). It's the old 100 monkeys writing the classic novels of the world theory. And I think that's how he decided to write this one! I thought with a little French and Latin, I'd be OK.

The beginning images of the huge Foucault's Pendulum, which swings based on some intangible point out in space, with no width and depth, and traces the lines of evidence of a rotating Earth were compelling, so I continued.

There are portions of the novel that contribute to the plot, but massive portions are erudition about obscure topics which no one would care about after the first 25 side tangents. Here is a typical paragraph from the 641 dense pages of the book:

I knew nothing at all about Trithemeius, but in Paris I found an edition of his Steganographia, hoc est ars per occultam scripturam animi sui voluntatem absentibus aperiendi cert, published in Frankfurt in 1606. The art of using secret writing in order to bare your soul to a distant persons. A fascinating man, this Trithemius. A Benedictive abbot of Spannheim, late fifteenth -early sixteenth centuries, a scholar who knew Hebrew and Chaldrea, Oriental languages like Tartar. He corresponded with theologians, cabalists, alchemists, most certainly with the great Corenelius Agreppa of Nettesheim and perhaps with Paracelsus..."

Other than to reinforce the theme that "Everything is related" it serves very little purpose. But there are unending sections like this, usually untranslated Latin or French or Italian. To say finishing this book was a slog is a gross understatement.

What I did find a little interesting was the man behind the book. He does seem to have a mistrust of his own writing skills as well as a resentment of others who do write. All main characters are essentially the same one. Never in real life would you find three people who loved the pursuit of endless minutia for it's own sake the way the three main characters do. You could interchange any one of them for the other. It is not by accident that one of the publishing companies is called Manutian (minutia). [Eco also apparently hates publishers and considers them stupid.]

He inserted unfinished sections of things he had written before, as the writings of another character. It is sprinkled as well with personal memories that had some impact on him. But the as to the discipline of including only what contributes to the storyline of a novel, he is incapable.

I will say that I probably picked up some new vocabulary, and perhaps some new information about Nazis or cabalists or almost everything else. But probably not since I was never sure if he was exaggerating the information and connections like some grand Tin Hat Theory.

I remember reading someone else's review of this book saying she finally made it through with a dictionary in hand. But no one would ever finish this book if they looked up each obscure reference he makes.

But, who's the fool here? I finished the damn thing!

I was digging through the store's online version of a bookstore's "bargain bin" looking for something new to read. I came across Foucault's Pendulum and it sounded interesting enough. It starts out, the first 10 or 20 pages, quite convoluted and confusing. I remarked to my husband that perhaps this book was a bit "too cerebral" for me. But, I perservered and I am so glad I did!
Yes, those that say the book starts slow- it truly does. But then, it opens up to this magnificent and complex universe of religious history, conspiracy theories, murder, mystery and suspense and keeps you wanting to read more.
The vocabulary is intense and pretty advanced and there were, in fact, several words that I was unfamiliar with entirely- particularly those that were in LATIN (what was that about?) But, after sitting down with this book for a while, you feel that you have just worked out your brain. It's invigorating! I found myself having resurected a long-lost vocabulary that I almost forgot I even had!
To sum it up- great book. Very intriguing, complicated, and, sorry for the cliche, "page turning" story. But, as an added bonus, it is extrordinarily thought-provoking and brain exercising! Highly recommend it to those of you that don't want your brain to turn into oatmeal in the lazy summer months.

"Foucalt's Pendulum" is a unique piece of literature. Though Eco may be a Professor of Semiotics in Milan this book is essentially a piece of good fun whereby Eco pokes fun at the myriad of esoteric sects and beliefs based around the Templar Knights, Masons, Rosicrucians and assorted other groups, some real and some made up.
For the majority of the book, however, he keeps us in a world where we actually believe the possibility of the strange and esoteric mysteries he spins. In doing so Eco walks the tightrope between farce and satire with some skill. Even as the book undermines credibility in the esoteric it also builds a fascination around it.
The central exercise of this book, then, is to poke fun at those who believe in the illogical, the unlikely and the absurd. Many of the characters in this book are so conspiracy-focussed that they would paraphrase the old saying: "If it looks like a dog, walks like and dog and smells like a dog, it certainly can't be a dog". The results of this are fascinating and take the plot in some very surpirsing directions.
This is a unique book, clever, well written, intellectually resonant and with an impish sense of fun. The effect of this is that it is totally unputdownable. I read this recently on holiday and became fascinated by it, even reading it when I woke up, before breakfast(!). Top marks also go to the translator who must have had to deal with some very unusual and difficult translation from the original Italian; Eco's sense of fun and cleverness shine through without a hint of awkwardness.
Best book I've read for ages. You really should read it.

This is a brilliant book but in my honest opinion, this book is not for everyone. The average reader may be confronted with a book that is difficult to read without fully understanding all the ingenious references to various philosophical thoughts/concepts that the author has included. However, for those who have an interest in esotericism, mysticism and other related concepts, this book is definitely worth reading.

SPOILER ALERT – don't read anything about if you don't want to be spoiled.

Unfortunately, there is no happy ending the book.