Foucault's Pendulum

An investigative novel for the intellectual. Traces the West's search for the Holy Grail of Universal Truth via the post-modern exploits of a trio of editors in Italy searching for plot and narrative amongst the elusive histories of the alchemical and esoteric Templars. Secret societies whose absence proves their existence (or else they wouldn't be secret)! Secret knowledge, the inscrutability of which proves its depth! Unless you are an European intellectual yourself, you will need a dictionary... er.. several dictionaries! (English, French, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew,...) Great fun.

Despite what other reviewers may say; Despite the praises that may have been sung; Despite the acclaim the author may have received; Despite all of this I loudly proclaim that this book STUNK! I truly believed if there was anything good to come out of this book, I could find it and I was sorely disappointed!

So you may ask, what was the problem? Well let me just tell you a few of the major problems...First, this book is probably the worst example of intellectual pointless rambling that I have ever happened across. Eco throws so many facts at you that you can grasp very, very few of them. And added to this is the fact that 90% of these facts are most assuredly BS! And the author has mixed in just enough facts with his fiction to be dangerous, thereby filling the world with people who may believe some of his fairy tales...dangerous. For example, Ecos dialogue on what motivated the holocaust is so foolishly concocted as to be on the verge of insane. Very dangerous to take a tragic event that is so alive in peoples memory and give the younger generation a reason to believe it was necessary! Another problem the book has it that it just never goes anywhere. Most of it is simply dialogue between a couple of guys who know many big words and have no clue how to put them together to make sense. Useless rambling I say! And the fact that every character is so unreal intellectually that it is laughable. Every person who speaks must have been a phD in every field because all of them had extensive opinions on everything. I have been to both Milan and Bologna (where the author lives and works) and believe me the people are not even close to as smart as this book makes it appear!

Anyway, sorry to ramble...I must have got that from Mr.Eco. Some of you eco fans may disagree but to the average person who is thinking of reading this book please don't...it is a waste of your time. There are too many classics out there written by authors who matter such as conrad, salinger, dumas, dickens, tolkien,...etc. Read one of their books!

Well you wanted the truth about the book and I am afraid if you are an eco fan you can't handle the truth! Pass this one by!!!

Foucault's Pendulum was an amazing and dense read, well worth the effort! I really enjoyed the depth of the story, but I think it took some effort as a reader to get into the book from the beginning. Once you cross that initial hump, the depth and intricacy of the story stands out. I have always intended to read Umberto Eco, and I'm really glad that I did. One thing about the story that stood out to me is that I felt a strange type of compulsion at the end of the book like the character to embrace the incredulity of the 'plan' almost as a reader you get taste of what it is like to be a diabolical as a witness as the story unfolds!

This is one of the best books I ever read. It is complex, uses complex metaphors, and keeps one engaged in the world Eco creates. The author is a professor of language, and student of words their origins, and usage in the language. His first book The Name of the Rose (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) is similar in complexity, and as great to read. This book will take time to read, force you to use a dictionary, and in the end is a fantastic read.

do you like games? do you like to play them? in any case, the intellectual games eco invites us to play are of a high
tenure and it is difficult not to play them.
in fact his book may be regarded as an invitation to be fool
or smart, he offers the arguments for both situations.
finally, the reader becomes the co-author of the story and it remains to him only thank mr. eco.
flavius chircu

I have read this book at least six times over the last fifteen years. Each time, I get something new from it. It is not so much a novel about the Templars or any other esoteric or hermetic group. Rather, it is a novel that uses bizarre conspiracy theories concerning the Templars and nearly every other esoteric tradition as a literary device to explore how people are more than willing to accept wholeheartedly historical narratives that are fabricated to feed upon their desires for secret knowledge and power. Eco not only points out how misguided conspiracy-minded people are, but he goes even further and demonstrates how dangerous such people can be. They do not care how information from the past is used, as long as it affirms what they wish history would be. Foucault's Pendulum not only makes fun of the people who look to authors like Dan Brown or Tim LaHaye for secret truths, but Eco shows how intellectually bankrupt and dangerous authors like these can be. Because they write tripe that purposely feeds the sick needs of conspiracy-minded people, these authors are contributing to the larger sickness of a self-absorbed and power-obsessed society. Eco's novel is a smart critique of pseudo-historians and self-serving revisionists who pose as historians.

Read this, cover to cover. This was my first Eco read and it completely hooked me into his other works. I loved it. It takes some focus to stay with his many historical references but you get used to it and it becomes very enjoyable and entertaining. It is a completely different form of fiction than anything else I've ever read and will immerse you in its complex and weird story. History/Occult/Sci Fi fan? Give this a try.

Sadly, this is a book that fails to live up to its enormous potential. I picked it up thinking I would get pleasure out this book billed as the "thinking man's Da Vinci Code." However, the extremely dense prose makes it largely unaccessible to anyone who doesn't have Eco's academic credentials. Obviously, Eco intended the conspiracy "Plan" to be confusing to most people, but my God, 400 pages of confusion is a bit much. The ending had the potential to reconcile everything, but sadly the climax left me wanting. I won't reveal anything, but he used one of the worst story-telling techniques out there. <Sigh>
In a great twist of irony, Eco's central thesis--that intellectual superiority makes one a fool--backfires as his overly dense novel makes a fool of him, and me for reading 640 pages of confusion.

I consider myself to be fairly well-read and intelligent, but this book was a definite challenge. In a world of pre-packaged bestsellers (think Mary Higgins Clark, Danielle Steel), I found Foucault's Pendulum to be extremely refreshing. Having a BA in English Lit with a concentration in Medieval & Renaissance literature, I was suprised to find that I knew so little! I also kept a dictionary close at hand, learning new words with every page. However, I would be interested to know how much of the "historical" fact presented in the book is real, and how much of it is a creation by the author. Did all these sects exist, and if so, did they hold these theories? Also, I would have preferred an ending where the Plan was actually validated... I found Eco's ending to be morally viable but it left me feeling disappointed and flat. The editors had such a good Plan! All in all, if you're up for some serious intellectual reading, and don't mind a challenge, I strongly recommend this book. It's great for a rainy weekend.

I have to say that I had to read this book twice to really appreciate the story. I have trudged through a great deal of literature in my time (it's my undergrad), and "Pendulum"--the first time, was among the most dense. However, I wanted to give it a second go (for no other reason than I wanted to) and I was not disappointed. I absolutely loved it.
I highly recommend this gem, even though it might take a couple of trips to enjoy the journey :-)

Are you satisfied when you find a book that join history, adventure, mistery and an intelligent dose of esoterism? If true Foucault's Pendulum is your book The Eco's erudition is here an atractive component, even more than The Name of the Rose where Eco was a little more dense. In Foucault's Pendulum all is fun, even the more philosophical parts (less evident here). When you have a limited time to read, you have to select very carefully your readings. Foucault's Pendulum is a really good alternative.

Eco is a brilliant storyteller, and this novel conveys very powerfully how some people are drawn into a spiral of insanity and destruction by their fascination with the possibility of achieving arcane knowledge. Well written and at some points hilariously funny, the book succeeds as a rationalist's take on occultism. But Eco should have stuck to that story. The intermittent allusions to Belbo's childhood in fascist Italy and the main character's university days are interesting in their own right but do not always fit well into the novel and at times rendered it disjointed and tedious. In the end we get a novel that tries to cover too much ground but gets to raise some wonderful points about humanity's benighted quests for ultimate meaning.

This book is one of the ten best books released in the late
1980's. For once, a writer expects his reader's to have a
brain. Eco writes intelligently without being condescending
to his audience. It is not often that a reader learns some-
thing from current fiction. I enjoyed this book because it
inspired many emotions: humor, sympathy, and fright among them.

The single shining truth in Foucault's Pendulum manifests at the precise moment Belbo fixes the sun with his trumpet and transcends space-time, discontinuous and plastic beneath the only Fixed Point in the universe. Only when our lives are read as texts, as manuscripts, are they given coherence and meaning, and we can never know that coherence or receive that revelation until it is too late: this is the unbearable, ineffable truth of which Eco writes.

Eco may be a professor of Semiotics (and he certainly writes like one) but he is first and foremost a human being. Yes, the Pendulum is a dense, almost impenetrable, convoluted and cabalistic thriller, but Eco rewards the patient reader with moments of sublime beauty and intense revelation. It is analogy; it is metaphor; it is abstruse self-deprecating ironic tautology. And it will frustrate the hell out of you at times. But stick with it through the arcane, philologistic allusions and the semantic gymnastics, and it will move you as only the best works of art can.

When I read this incredible book in 1989 I started on a journey of exploration for the truth. With my eyes and mind wide open - I read a book that was so fascinating that I read it 3 times within a year. This book started an exploration for me - I was exposed to the Knights Templar which led to an exploration of Christianity and the Masons, etc. The list goes on and on. Eco is the best - I just wish that he would write more so I could fill my mind with his beautiful words.

First, this book is for people having a certain preference for historical and philosophical oriented books .It is trully one of the best books I ever read ,for it asks very deep questions which are fundamental in our present era.
This books has three levels or axis of explanations :the first one, which is the most "superficial" and that is an apparently uninteresting story about three editors having "fun"(more like an obsession) for an obscure reason ,in making stories up about different sects (Masosns, Rosicrucians,illuminati of bavaria, ... ), connecting different hitorical facts, suspicions, rumors and it ends in absurdly apparently by the death of two of our three heroess, the third narrator also waiting for its expected death ... .
However, the people whom I read a very negative assesment of the book are really angry because they apparently expected a more "en action" story where the author i.e eco himself would explicitly tell them about the meaning of this "absurd knot".
I think that is the kind of the very simplistic and naive approach to the "novel" ,but maybe it is just like the characters' approach to "History".That is why there is a second axis less obvious If i can say so but nevertheless important and which a lot of the readers suspected ,which is the idea that revolves around the feasibility, falsifiability of conspirationnal theories, how close they could be to reality, with all their temptationnal aspect.For example it appears suddenly that a certain secret society posesses by pure chance the very same approach to "History" as our heroes fanciful plan!Now is this very "pure" coincidence a sufficient argument to disregard the Plan or the fact that by chance we have some people that would beleive in it may give a certain real value for what were just doing by fun?
This only one of the questions which it asks and there are many more... .
The third axis which in my opinion is a very unique one , truly original , a kind of a "dobbleganger" motive between the reader and the narrator Casaubon which symbolizes the mere average person posessing a rather very good amount of intelligence and who tries to understand what is going on.
This third deeper level is focusing on a rather central issue : What can Man make out of all this? Can we really as individuals separate on our own without a physical experiment between truth and relity in history? Even if we could do an experiment, what does it became the instant it it in the past behind us writtten in history, where it is now and again a "mere" hitorical event?
We are entangled here with the shortcomming of man in general in verifying what he knows, or even knowing enough on an individual level.
I reckon that the story may be difficult , especially in its second third part, but that is only for "readers" of the first level... .
Moreover Although the traduction is very helpful for the exerpts above each chapter however I doubt that it was itself a reason of the apparent silliness of the english traduction where sometimes expressions are transformed into vulgar english slang to try making this colossal work close to the average reader while the french ( De Poche editions )version which I read also is much more authentic and frankly more attaching - maybe because of the close relation between italian and french expressions, culture, ...-.
However it is only fair to acknowledge the huge effort in this book and the great philosophical dimensions it opens in a totally original way.Since the 60's existensialism, I didn't see any intellectual having this much of a rich view which bears so many interpretaions as eco's work.
This is trully a great book, a star still shining in the relatively intellectually poor sky of this last half of century.
Ponder it thouroghly!

I've read all of eco's books. He really makes research. Foucaults pendulum in his native language is just amazing. He touches every sense from the ocultism to the reality going through jacobd=s de molat and the templars, the rosicrucians, astrology , brazil and bleck magic...Of course everything vs scientific methods and reaL life. Also the picture of differtent cities is great.For me he gives thhe best description of the count of st germain.. the first 100 pages are not worth it but the whole explains it all

When I say "renaissance" I mean an all-encompassing exploration of knowledge from many fields. This is an intriguing work, and the reader catches on about 2/3 of the way through. Once again, Eco has combined real history with maybe history and certainly false history to create a stunning work.
History, science, literature, music, architecture - all are woven into his scheme. This is one of those rare works where getting there is half the fun. Suspend your imagination and enjoy

I am a sophmore/junior Art History major at a University. I admit, it was hard to get through the beginning of this book, OK the first few pages, however instantly interesting it was.

I've never before read a book that uses the word "Horror Vacuii" referring to the "fear of open spaces" in art/architecture. And the password to his computer may be the name of God?! It gives a detailed history of the fall of the Knights Templar, etc. It is strangely hilarious and brainy at the same time. Although you would have to be a genius historian to get everything.

(...) The counter-culture side plots fill me with glee. This book is interesting in so many ways. Somehow it connects mysticism with physics and christianity to conspiracy- but is sounds good. Buy this book.

La Histories de la Sexualitie etait un oeuvre tres, tres bien (comme des autres livres par Foucault). But, this book, is even better. A great read, even better than The Name of the Rose, let's just hope if they make this one a movie, they don't turn it into a real stinker with Sean Connery running after Aristotle's lost works in big dark libraries, because I do not know if I could live through that again.

Also recommended: Toilet: The Novel by Michael Szymczyk (A book for any fan of Existentialism, Post-Modernism, Kafka and American Literature).

I understand the history of this novel, and trudged through all gazillion pages hoping that at some point the Eco would pull me in; unfortunately, he didn't. Yes, you can perceive his spewing of words as a challenge to what you normally think about his world, or you may read it as just ramblings to get paid by the page. I can't come close to recommending this, even though I know many of my friends enjoyed it. Don't waste your time.

The subtitle to this book should be something like this "How I Found the Wine Of The Crackpots And What Happened To Me When I Drinked It".
The book is, more or less, about what happens when you are trying to explain the world's history. It starts out like an intellectual joke, then all goes downhill. The reader learns about Templars, Rosicrucians, Freemasons and other societies of the old world. Which I thought was wery refreshing. As an european, you can get very tired of "americania" like Area 51 and The Kennedy Assassinations.
Now here's a small competition: In the book, there's an small episode, who's like a distillation of the story (how you discovers conspiracies).
Send me an e-mail and tell me about the episode. Closing date: 23 of May 2001

Eco states somewhere that in this book he tried to lose most readers in fifty pagers or so. Well I trudged through and love the book. Eco's prodigious learning is obvious as is his command of English vocabulary. Have a dictionary near by. This is not an easy read and every bit of history, language, philosophy, and theology that you know will help. It's well worth it, though. Definitely a good read. (I would start with The Name of the Rose to wet your feet concerning Eco's style.)

I was lucky enough to bring this book along through a trip to Paris, Italy, and several of the novel's settings. Visiting sepulchres and reliquary exhibits got a jolt of eerie resonance as I avidly read this book.

Purely captivating, utterly beguiling, and a perfect antidote to all the WalMart pseudo-intellectuals now raving about "The Da Vinci Code" as if such a book had never been written; Eco is always amazing.

Thesaurasized, now there is an expression you don't hear everyday, much like every second word in this book, and to be honest most of them do not exist in reality either, this manuscript an interesting piece of literature, but I would read "The Name of the Rose" a hundred times over rather than go at this one again, and this is coming from someone who has actually read books like "The Trial of the Templars" by Malcolm Barber, Eco beckons us with the Templars' hidden mysteries, a theme that this novel deals with, in the last 150 pages of a book that is easily four times that size, 550 wordy-full pages, written as if Umberto has found a whipping boy he can use to convert a 100 paged novel into a huge piece of arcane knowledge via Thesaurasization, to be later transformed by time into an archaic must-read, possibly a contender next to James Joyce's Ulysses, but then why try to copy that style, the point being originality, but Eco does, and ends up binding a pointless beast of words, the pontificating of a good artist who has a healthy and vast knowledge of historical Italian events, coupled with multiple ways he can express this in terms of writing... goes off gallivanting into the world of muddy publishing, writers transfixed by politics, women, coffee shops and alcohol, brood over possible antediluvianismistic occult judiciousness as a message contained in the holy grail, THE MEANING OF LIFE, here it is according to Eco, obviously enjoying the fable he is creating while gadding about across the page in stuff he knows you will have to look up to understand, you will break often throughout the story and be all the more fed up with it, unless you have been diagnosed with longer life expectancy than most, then by-all-means, go for it.

Over the period of a couple of months I reached the end. I did not retain half of what was eluded at, nor did I begin to care much for it, as the pages just wasted time, making sense only that this is a story about publishers chasing the meaning of life through a series of odd events. There is no logical reason for this novel to run anywhere near its length unless a few enjoy that sort of thing, as some probably did, but to be honest I have found better elsewhere in shorter versions that said an awful lot more in less time. If that is what Eco is eluding to here in this text, then it is a 'point' that took a lot time to get to get across... and all of it Thesaurasized at that.

Praise to the five star reviews. I am happy you liked it. This one is fair warning for those who won't.

This book is one of my favorite books of all time. It puts in perspective those of us who are over educated and over analytical. I loved it! however, don't read it if you are looking for something fun and fast. It isn't that. Read it if you want a wry and cynical view of education and its impacts on our thinking.

I have now listened to a substantial number of books in audio form. Some are almost unintelligible, others are great. The text of this book is an excellent example of pedanticism: the use of language for its demonstration of the author's erudition rather than the conveyance of story and information. The rendition of the work by the reader is as good as any I have heard. Without the reader, I would have junked it. It isn't that the story is bad, it is a good story. The plot is novel, meaning new, science fiction-fantasy (though the author would be horrified by this description) and interesting. The clearly excessive, even in this abridged version, of language for language's sake is daunting and distracting and then, ultimately, boring.

Focault's Pendulum is an absorbing intelligent read which has taken me many years to appreciate. If you like this book you will like Adriana Koulias' THE SIXTH KEY. Both books are deep, brain teasers that keep you thinking...both are controversial, both are esoteric, both require you to pay attention. In my opinion, Adriana Koulias does a better job, though she doesn't escape the vitriol from those with short attention spans, her work is also set to become a classic.

I made it through...whew! Didn't know the meaning to half the words he used, but that's all right, because he could have left them out and the story wouldn't have suffered. You're just as well off reading the synopsis on Wikipedia.

While reading this book I have been taking frequent breaks to work my way through a tall stack of scientific papers that have accumulated on my desk. If Eco's book was about epidemiology, I would not have noticed that I have been switching from fiction to scientific papers and vice versa. This illustrates book's main shortcoming: Eco's tome is thoroughly researched and well thought-out, but it suffers from the same affliction as does much of academic writing in that it is simply not good literature. Perhaps Eco was trying to write "Dumas Club"... If I was reviewing Eco's manuscript for a publisher, my advise would be to shorten the manuscript and try to make characters in it more human and compelling. The translator also goofed up in a couple of places and some of Eco's "scientific facts" are off the mark. Final advise to the prospective reader: read it during the darkest part of winter and be prepared to skip some of the boring laundry lists and displays or erudition.

Foucault's Pendulum was recommended to me as a science fiction novel. Unless alchemy makes a book science fiction, that genre classification is not very accurate. The novel is better described as fantasy or even historical fiction. Foucault's Pendulum chronicles several members of a publishing firm and their study of occultism and the hermetic sciences in an effort to construct "the Plan".

Eco rarely wastes words on explanation, a virtue that creates a wonderful degree of narrative density. Unfortunately, this density can make the novel a challenge to begin and the reader may feel completely lost after reading the first or second section (don't worry, it gets easier). While some allusions are essential to understanding the novel (the Comte de Saint-Germaine and Gregorian Calendar reform, for example), many allusions merely provide the astute reader with the reassurance that he or she is indeed an astute reader.

Perhaps one of Eco's greatest strengths is his ability to interconnect ideas to the point of plausibility (though the book is obviously fiction). Anyone with an interest in Medieval history or a decent sense of humor will doubtlessly enjoy the novel. If one can make it passed the exposition, Foucault's Pendulum will be well worth one's time.

I must admit, that I would not have liked Foucault's Pendulum this much if I read it 3 years ago. But now, with a knowledge of math, logic, philosophy beyond general knowledge it is really fun to read and not hard at all. If ypi think you don't have that knowledge don't bother to still get this book together with the dictionary to this book. It is certainly worth it!

I read this book a couple of years ago just as the da Vinci Code was becoming popular. I liked everything about it; the plot was well cnstructed and interesting, the prose was beautifully written and the information was detailed. Afterwards i felt I understood a little about the sovcieties and theories mentioned.Above all though after finishing it I was under noimpressionthat most of the ideas were anything more than theories. The book works above all else as a satire on people who are capable of seeing conspiracies in everything.

When, later, I read Dan Browne's book I was expecting something similar, instead I found thinly supported arguments and theories being pased off as facts and the plot of a teenage thriller.

Overall this is a great read and can be taken as no more than a work of fiction with intellectual overtones.

I discovered this book because my French teacher gave it to me as a challenge in high school, years back (I guess sleeping during class was a bad idea). So, I read it in French and the translation is slightly superior than the English version in my mind. Craaaaazy. The book IS difficult and anyone who says otherwise is either Eco himself or someone who, as one of the character would say, should take the cork out of his ass and let the wind out. Sorry.
The plot is very simple: three editors start making connections between all the secret societies ever heard of, famous conspiracy theories, mainstream and less mainstream religions, Pandora boxes of metaphysic fun... You get the idea. But don't expect the plot to evolve much in action. As a matter of fact, don't even expect a novel. Try picturing three Mulder's from the X-Files on crack for hundreds of pages. The book is a trip, a stream of words and ideas. Dare I compare it to Joyce's Finnegans Wake? Nah, but it's one of those things where you shouldn't stop at every word you can't understand (lots of those in the book, lots and lots of it).
The knowledge is interesting and certainly worth digging further, but you can also enjoy it as what it is. Much, much better than the Da Vinci code...

This is a very tough book to say the least. It took me a month to read the whole novel because it was so exhausting to sit through hours literature that seemed to be written exlusively for theologists. It is very evident that Umberto eco is a genius but he doesnt do a very good job of storytelling. Above all else this book is a novel and novels are meant to keep people entertained to a certain degree. I know i sound like one of those airheaded kids who only go see action flicks but the fact is that i am no such person. I love complicated material, it challanges the mind but when you have relentless information about historical facts without any focus on character and story devolpment the whole work starts to lose interest. I read his previous novel "In the name of the rose" and i thought it was wonderful because it was a great mix of history, theology, plot and deep characters. Foucaulst Pendulum has no interesting characters and therefore the novel seems more like a non-fiction historical work. I do have to give Eco praise for his knowledge though, very impressive but he just doesnt pass along his knowledge to the reader succesfully.

Foucault's Pendulum, by the author of The Rame of the Rose, is a wonderul read. It's filled with great descriptive passages, well-drawn characters, a non-linear storyline, and thoughts of conspiracy that would overwhelm some readers of The da Vinci Code, I suspect. The main characters are in pursuit of the long-lost secrets of the Knights Templar. Does it lead to their own un-doing? Read it and find out! Be prepared for depth, as opposed to action.

This review reveals a bit of the ending, so don't read it if you don't want the ending spoiled. (Though by the time you get to the end you're just glad to be there).
One of my (too many) hobbies is esoterica. So a book like this should have been a treat. I can follow more of the arcane references than the average reader, I reckon.
But the book is all intellect and no imagination or soul. The plot is not interesting or believable. Nor are the characters. The characters don't even care about each other. (At the end, the narrator's best friend is hung by a group of theosophists and the narrator doesn't intervene or get upset but simly engages in abstract speculation.)
Read it for the few chapters on the history of the templars, and for the overview of esoterica. But not for the plot, or the theme, or the characters, or for any other reason you normally read a book.

It is a fantastic read. For anyone who likes books on the weird side. Just read it. Words can not describe this story. It starts out a little slow but it builds to a mysterious middle and strange end. Reading this book and fully understanding it the first time around is not possible there will always be something you don't quite understand. When you do finish it you will be satisfied.

This tour de force by Umberto Eco has at it's heart a study of the need for faith or as he calls it, "the object of desire."
The desire for justification leads to an increasingly irrational reality which stems paradoxically from a fantasy. This paradox turns on the need to believe that one's belief is true and this at any cost.
As a Professor of Semiotics, one would expect Eco's writing to be full of symbolism and in this the book does not disappoint. It also acts as a very good primer on the history of the Knights Templar and can be recommended as a starting point for any one wishing to study this strange Crusader Order.
Heartily endorsed.

When I first saw this book (paperback edition) on a bookstore back in 1997, the intriguing background markings on the black cover caught my glaring eyes. When I turned the book over and read the book's teaser,the words "...feeding esoteric bits of knowledge into an incredible computer capable of inventing connections between all their entries" further waxed my imaginations. I didn't bought it at that time, yet those words or part of them kept ringing in my head the next few days. I don't usually hear or read "esoteric bits of knowledge" being fed into a "computer" almost everyday, so it intrigued me. So I let it hang out in my mind for a while.

The next time I came back to the bookstore, I checked out the book again and read the teaser at the back cover again. "Yep!" I told myself, those were the words that kept ringing in my head these past few days. And it further intrigued me. I began to open up the pages and read a couple of lines. The names "Belbo", "Casaubon" and "Abulafia" got stuck in my head this time. Not to mention, the book's title, also kept my interest and sense of curiosity on blue alert. But again, I did not buy the book yet. Not that time. Esotericism is something unfamiliar to me, so I was quite unsure what to expect from the book. Also, I think the unfamaliarity kept me intrigued.

It took about a couple of months more before I came back to the bookstore and checked the availability of the book. It was still available and it was still sitting right there in that bookshelf (apparently, this paperback copy was not exactly the same one I opened up a couple of months ago), as if waiting for me to pick it up again read some more. I gave in to the temptation and read inside further. This time, and I noticed only by then, the strange markings on the cover can also be found inside the book and along the story line. So, they weren't just strange-looking designs meant to attract the potential reader/ customer, but they are indeed well-explained in the story. Hmmm... now this is something else, I mused.

However, I didn't buy it again that time.

I was pretty short on cash then but I was pretty eager to get my hands on that paperback edition, take it on home and plow my eyes and mind on those delightful avalanche of words.

When I finally bought it 2 days later and began to read through, the expectations shifted into realizations. The book started out quietly, with Casaubon sitting all alone (and hiding)in a museum, musing on the events of the past. It's like personally touring the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris. On a broader sense, the book is like taking a tour of history in a parallel dimension. Although I wasn't quite good with the world's history, apparently, I became a student of the book. The Templars, the Rosicrusians, the Crusades, the Masons and Scottish Rite Temples, I never had quite a knowledge of them, and not quite like they were interconnected like this. And not just them, but more. Many more. Like what the book's teaser says, it's a "TOUR DE FORCE AS ENTHRALLING AS ANYTHING." I was, indeed, overwhelmed by the story's theme and other elements of mystery that I believe only Umberto Eco can ably do so. The magnitude and scope he has entwined in this thriller is so diverse and so masterfully crafted that a reader will be immersed not as a person seeking entertainment and past time, but as an avid student of history, philosophy, the arts and sciences, the humanities, journalism and publications, and yes, of course, esotericism!

Warning! - this book is for the broadminded who still wanted to further broaden his vision and understanding of the present world and its past. If your mind cannot grasp the scope and magnitude of what the hell the author is talking about, you will never fully enjoy the benefits of this book. Certainly, I can relate with the characters, especially Casaubon. I love books and am in fact almost surrounded by them. Fact is, I have a sort of mini library at home. Garamond Press (where Casaubon was an editor) was virtually a universe of books, magazines and other publication materials. I believe the feeling is quite mutual.

As a final note, let me tell you how a little scene on the book has affected me, though not entirely. It was mentioned that Casaubon took or fiddled with the idea of taking in jobs as a cultural researcher. I thought that was nice idea and held on to it. I thought of becoming one also, but not as a cultural researcher, but virtually a researcher on almost any topic covered by the Encyclopedia Britannica (I own an entire set of the 15th edition). As of now, I do professional school researches for students and teachers alike, with the aid of the books I have at home, my encyclopedia set, and with a very big aid from the world wide web. And of course, I always have my handy Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dicitonary by my side. Do the same too with whatever dicitionary of the English language that you prefer whenever you decide or prefer to journey through Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum." It will come in handy!

This book deserves at least one star for appreciable erudition, a small amount of humor and a more generous dollop of wit. The "Department of Oxymoronic Books" and a fantasy depicting Sir Francis Bacon as the Evil Overlord of the World are genuinely very, very funny. But there isn't enough of that kind of thing to justify wading through this interminable tome.
The story concerns a publisher of crank conspiracy theory books, who invents a game involving his computer: he programs it with pieces of the books he publishes, and random cultural tidbits, to see what conspiracy the computer will generate; the next thing he knows, an apparent real conspiracy is afoot to discover what the computer has discovered.
This plot alone would make for fifty different great novels, but unfortunately Pendulum isn't even one. The plot doesn't even begin until three-fifths of the way through the novel, and by then the reader no longer cares. This should have been Grand Opera reduced to comic farce, and instead is comic farce that inexplicably becomes Grand Opera - and with an ugly, unsatisfying, and bizarre punch-line, besides.
... you don't need three Ph.D.'s to understand this book, though a bit of preliminary research into the Knights Templar and the occult would certainly help. It's just that the book really has nothing to say, except that there's nothing of importance to say. It isn't worth the long, often boring, meandering, pointless journey, just to be suckered into a Monty Python routine that ultimately isn't funny, or even satisfying. It has some interesting tidbits of intellectual titillation along the way, but certainly not enough to make the book worth sifting through. Overall, it's rather like the crashing boor who takes up your entire night promising a good conversation, but instead merely washes his head at you until you can't think straight.

Great cure for insomnia. Keep this at your bedside table and if you wake up during the night and can't get back to sleep, no more than two pages of this snoozer will get you back on the sleepy train.

Umberto Eco has always used his immense talent to create stories that are cerebral yet accessible, supernatural and magical yet grounded in reality. Foucault's Pendulum takes all you know and didn't know about history and turns it on its head. In fact, Eco turns it so many times even the characters don't know which way is up anymore. Following an Eco storyline is like an advanture, the only negative is that it has to end sometime.

am i the only one who understood this novel and felt that the history fit well into the story? it's a great, frustrating, fulfilling, monstrosity of a book and it's wonderful. however, it's not for everyone. if history, philosophy, theology, the occult, or whatever is your sort of thing, you'll love it, but if your just looking for a nice story to read before bed, don't bother. most people seem say one of two things "i didn't get it and that impressed me" or "i didn't get it and i hate things i don't get". well, most people won't get it, because most people don't care all that much about occultism in european history. however, if you are willing to take it on in the right spirit, you might learn a lot about the way the world works.....

While I do not profess to be a scholar of semiotics or theology, I do comprehend and appreciate discussions on both topics. Within reason. However Foucault's Pendulum took factual data on these topics to an almost intolerable level. I waded through the muck and mire of this novel, chopping away at the dense overgrowth of symbolistic frondescence with a mental chainsaw only to arrive at nowhere.
While many would state that Mr. Eco is an extremely well educated man, especially in the realm of semiotics, he seems to be seriously lacking in the art of character and plot development. Eco exploits the format of a novel to expel the vast stores of knowledge he has gained over the years while taking the reader on a dizzying journey of little consequence. It seems that his underlying intent, in this novel, is to impress the reader with his expertise.
Many fellow thinkers who delve into similar subject matter have praised this work with the passion of frightenlingly devout fan. They are sometimes willing to overlook the faults in a particular work just because it is of the genre that they are fervent for. Quantity begins to outweigh quality and faults are easily overlooked and/or accepted.
It is probably needless to say that by the time I was done with this novel I was resentful of Eco's attempted use of storyline for the sake of, what to me seems to be, intellectual "showing off". I could have easily done without it and would probably have had a more pleasant time reading an encylopedia to aquire the knowledge that Eco tries to force down the reader's throat.

It's no wonder this novel is inpenetrable to so many people. The average American adult, after all, never surpasses a fourth-grade reading comprehension level.
It's true that Eco alludes to so much that a single reader would probably need a handful of doctorates to catch every reference in the book, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to get through. The characters are scholars of dense subjects. Naturally their discourse will be dense. The basic plot of the story should still be comprehensible to anyone who has graduated high school, presuming they paid attention in English and World History and didn't write their papers based on Cliff's Notes. What you don't know from your own reading should be apparent from its context.
What I love about this novel is its breadth. It touches on so many various obsessions of my own that I can't help but feel like I know the author. A few: Old-fashioned BASIC programming, the publishing world, and cabalistic numerology. Anyone who can weave so many disparate topics into such a fluid work is truly a master. There are many little jokes that are so subtle they could be missed on the first reading, and they're all the funnier for it. This is one book I will reread over and over again.
You should probably avoid this book if:
1) You argued with your English teacher that authors really don't intend any symbolism, and everyone's reading too much into the texts they're teaching
2) You think the word "artesclerotic" is so arcane and outdated that anyone using it is obviously a Martian who is only spouting gobbledy-gook
3) You religiously buy and voraciously devour anything Oprah puts on her book club list
4) You prefer books with LOTS and LOTS of PICTURES!!!
To everyone else: Enjoy. This one's really a gem.

This book is a notoriously difficult read. Having the dictionary integrated into the Kindle made it less ponderous, and let me enjoy the book much much more. My dad used to tell me: "Look it up, and you'll always remember it." He wasn't talking to me in my 60's and "always" turns out to be longer than my memory these days. Second time around is a much more fun read of this one for me.

The topic is fascinating, the book is tedious. Endless description, with sometimes whole paragraphs detailing minutiae. There are some paragraphs that are nothing more than lists. There is description about the origins of the Templars, and their Plan, but this too often dissolves into a scholarly dissertation rather than a novel. A better author could have culled two hundred pages off of this book and made it much more interesting. It took about a hundred pages for him to set the hook, and then he didn't really return to it until 200 pages later. Was he getting paid by the page? It would seem so. It is an interesting story, but not worth the time and energy to invest for five hundred pages. Read the reviews instead.

...that the book, regardless of how satisfying you might find the effort to read it or the diversity of information it contains, is dragged down by the pomposity of authorial tone and the sheer cultter of intellectual tidbits and arcane facts. Eco seems to be simply puffing out what could have been a tighter and more absorbing story in order to impress us with his intellectualism. Kind of like how Ayn Rand let her stories bend under the weight of her proselytising. OK, you're a smart guy, Mr. Eco; now write a *good* book. And in the meantime, if one wants good academic/literary mysteries, consult Robertson Davies or "The Club Dumas"...

I will start by saying that this book is incredibly dense, as most reviewers have mentioned. However, if you are willing to not understand every last historical and occult reference, this book is absolutely fascinating. I fell completely into Eco's trap. I tried to follow his descriptions of the occult, puzzling out what it could all mean. I was intrigued by hints at "the Plan" and attempted to figure out just what this plan could be. Upon reaching the end of the novel, I felt like I had been duped, but brilliantly so. There is no plan, it is all fiction, yet I, just like characters such as Aglie and Bramanti, had fallen into the trap of believing. Eco truly got the last laugh.

This was my first venture into the fascinating mind of Umberto Eco, who, after reading more of his works, is fast becoming one of my favorite novelists. At first it may seem that the story is going nowhere, but it is truly remarkable how the whole thing wraps up and everything comes to be relevant. Peppered with references to gematria, the Knights Templar, kabbala, the Comte de Saint-Germain, and obscure pantheons, "Foucault's Pendulum" is bound to satisfy anyone who has ever researched occultism and mysticism and interest others in all of those things and more. A truly exciting page-turner, this "thinking-man's 'Da Vinci Code'" was one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read.

This book was recommended to me by a good friend, a young man with a masters' degree in Mod. Eur. History with a fantastic background in philosophy and economics. Half the read I could not stop laughing, the other half I had to go back again and make certain what the hell I was reading. Though I enjoyed the intertwining conspiracy theories and the characters, Eco kind of left me in a lurch at the end; no different than the feeling I had after reading "For Whom The Bell Tolls." Worth a second even read during a lazy summer vacation.

I have been reading some of the reviews below, and was wondering what book these people read? If you were looking for Dan Brown, you came to the wrong place. This is a GREAT work of fiction by a thoughtful, and very thorough author. This is a book that I have enjoyed more each time I have read it, due to it's complexity and originality.

Go on, exercise your brain, pick it up and read it. You will not be sorry.

Dan Brown should be bludgeoned about the head and neck area for writing The Da Vinci Code without acknowledging that he essentially stole and dumbed down the plot of Eco's earlier, brainier mystery. FC is a world-spanning thriller packed with all of the elements that made Brown's book alluring (secret societies, cryptic religious symbolism, grand conspiracies, etc.). The twisting, turning thread of the plot is enough reason to keep reading, but what makes the book shine are all of Eco's philosophical, historical, and mythological/religious asides, crammed with detail. The kind of book where you sense the author checking and rechecking every line to make sure it's ... just the way he wants it.

Casaubon, Belbo and Diotellevi become bore with reading occultist manuscripts, and decided to connect various documents to create the Plan, a Knights Templar conspiracy to take over the world. According to the Plan, the Templars have found the Telluric Current's source, the center of earth's energy, and they partitioned a map of its location into six pieces. When placed under Foucault's Pendulum in Paris's Conservatory at a specific time, the intersection of the pendulum's arc and a light beam would reveal the location.

When Belbo disappears and then calls Casaubon for help, the latter realizes the Diabolicals believed in the Plan and kidnapped his friend to find the map. As he searches for his friend, he learns about Belbo was obsessed with a magical moment during his childhood and wanted to relive it helping to create the Plan.

In Foucault's Pendulum, "the thinking man's DaVinci Code," the three friends remake history by manipulating texts and Eco satirizes the search for knowledge through historical documents. In his manipulating and interpreting historical texts, we can see Jorge Luis Borges's influence, particularly his short story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." In this novel, Eco sows the seeds for his later novel The Prague Cemetery, where Simonini forges "historical documents," particularly the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. To read Foucault's Pendulum is to journey into the occultist society and to understand the how unreliable historical texts may be.

Foucault's Pendulum is an Indiana Jones adventure without the snake pits, rolling stones, or Nazi treasure hunters, but with plenty of secret societies and conspiracies. I recommend this novel for the intellectual thrill and for the reflection on how we understand the past through historical documents.

I believe that this book is a statement about prophecies, conspiracy theories and the occult. Umberto Eco deliberately weaves a tangled web because that is just how those things are. Read a few occult books and you will understand just how those people think. It is about what can happen when you involve yourself with the right (wrong?) set of easily suggestable people.

The references within this book are very difficult to understand--but if you can handle "reading it for the plot and meaning," I think it is still worth the read.

Now, if you just have to understand every reference, you will need to get more versed in the occult. That may not be in your best interests.

M

I decided to try this book because this book came highly recommended, I battled my way through 300 pages, and at no time did I enjoy the book. Reading it became more like a chore than an enjoyment so I gave up.
The book is full of obscure historical references, people, events and places. And to understand the significance of these events one would have to be an expert on the last one thousand years of European history. The language was too complicated and academic, and the book was about 200 pages too long. Just when I thought an ineteresting scene was developing, the main character goes off to Brazil, and wastes a couple of dozen pages undergoing some cultural experience, whose meaning was lost to me.
I'm not saying this is a bad book, because I could see that for someone who can follow it and understand it they could get a lot out of it, but be warned potential readers THIS IS ONE TOUGH READ, if you feel up to it get the book, if you have your doubts don't waste the money.

I find it annoying and ironic that a book about a group of book editors is digitized so sloppily. Apparently, the publisher is too lazy/greedy to pay someone to read through the book to fix the numerous typographical errors. Really unprofessional; shame on you, Houghton Mifflin.
As for the story itself, I loved it.

Though any work of Eco's will be daunting to most, and downright heiroglyphic to many, those readers with patience, access to a gallows humor and a need to be challenged cannot afford to miss this treasure. Eco here considers the endless (and often mindless) paranoia afforded to those who seek a cabalistic explanation for that which is inexplicable, with a treatment that fits its denizens to a veritable 'T.' I was enthralled by Arturo Perez-Reverte's THE CLUB DUMAS, for similar reasons, but Eco's PENDULUM is an absolute benchmark--for fiction, any fiction, these lofty heights will rarely be reached again.

I bought this book because it sounded like an interesting challenge and a great story. I love historical fiction and the mixture of history, religion and computers sounded great. The problem is that Eco got lost in arcane inuendo and analogies that I'm certain he knew the great majority of his readers would have no clue how to interpret. Whole sentences in multiple languages and names made me laugh out loud at how impossible this book can be. I found myself skimming through sections of minutiae just to get back to the story.

I gave it 2 stars for the storyline and Eco's impressive writing ability. But, unfortunately, the story gets lost in Eco's attempt to show his readers either how smart he is or that he has the Encyclopedia Brittanica open in front of him while he writes.

I will admit that it took me 2 years, an Oxford Dictionary, and an internet connection to read this book. I picked it up the first time and put it down after the first chapter. The second time, I made it halfway through. It was on the third try that it captured me and I couldn't put it down (except to grab my dictionary and highlighter).

I can attest that the theme is worth the read, although the theme is almost ironic in lieu of what it takes to read the novel. After finishing the novel, I bought the intellectual must-read The Name of the Rose. In two short years, I will write a review of that book as well.

Some bullets, in the spirit of brevity and clarity:
- If, as I have seen some reviews, this was originally written in Italian, my review may be different. This is assuming I could read Italian, and understand all nuances.
- I found the book to be a demonstration in th historically obscure, and thus, trivial. I enjoy history immensely, but found the reams of names, dates, and places too much for me to mentally digest.
- In my humble opinion, the book spent a significant amount of text and pages wandering to and fro amongst these historical references. This is intertwined with the lead character's wandering to and fro amongst hermetic and occult people, places, and occurrences which did little to move the plot forward.
- I'll be honest, boredom set in. I greatly enjoy reading and greatly enjoy history. I did not feel sated in either department. I resent the fact that one (maybe more) reviewer actually stated that if lacking a high school education, you might not enjoy (or understand) this book. Get off your high horse. PS - To plunge through the entire novel and have it be proclaimed a parody (another review), it's too much read for too little funny.
- In summary, I found the book to have a vague, wandering, and sluggish plot, with awkward characters, intellectual bludgeoning, and very little real depth (despite the reams of information). I plan to read Name of the Rose and see what Eco's premier (or so I've been lead to understand) work can do.
Further PS - Just because something is stuffed to the rim with intellectualism, historical trivia galore, and encyclopedic references, does not make it a fantastic NOVEL. Many other components contribute to create such. My recommendation to the reviewers extolling the virtues of the this novel is that they lighten up and try not to be so easily bedazzled. Unless they are egocentric megalomaniacs that like to dump on those who they feel are beneath their superior brain size (depite their deep down honest opinion of the work in question) and just "don't get it."
Graciously,
J

This is the second time I've read this book. The last time was 15 years ago, and I always knew I wanted to tackle it again. The only thing that stuck out in my first reading was solving the mysteries of the Knights of the Templars. I got so much more out of it again.
It is a tour de force of esoteric knowledge. Every conspiracy and occult group gets linked in this implausible but captivating march through 600 years of historical fact and supposition. This frenzied pursuit of the secret of the universe, who had it? The Templars, the Rosicrucians, the followers of the cabala, Francis Bacon, Alamut. It makes one dizzy to keep up with the entire business. Each chapter starts with a quote from ancient writing on the hermetic arts, and then the fun begins.
At times, thick and incomprehensible, it generally exploded through the mind with occult possibilities, and ends with a simple account of Belbo's motivation. Was it Rosebud or a trumpet? Why not mention the town in Italy where he lived, I wonder. The ending and resolution were slightly ambiguous. Fevered imagination or just running out of gas, I don't know.
For those with a bent to wild flights of imagination, and the Knights of the Templar, saddle up for a magic ride. Hey, what if it's true?

I wish I could give this book a stronger review then 2 stars but that is already being generous. Mr. Eco really drew me in with the ' Name of the Rose' and I expected more of the same with this title . Such was not the case. Being a Hebrew speaker and novice cabalist I thought I had a better chance of grasping this work then most others.... perhaps slightly but the overall read was laborious and painful. To say I did not get would be accurate. I have one more book by him to read and I'm hoping that this next one delivers a better rate of return.
Mr. Eco is a wonderful writer all in all and if I had to pick someone to be deserted on an island with he would be a good choice.

Many reviewers confessed to being baffled by the book even though they possessed college degrees. This just goes to show 1) they'll give degrees to anyone these days and 2) intellectual curiosity (as opposed to mere curiosity) is no longer considered a prerequisite to admission to a university. To enjoy this book, one need not possess a Ph.D in medieval literature; one need merely be intelligent and intellectually curious. I assume those repelled by this masterpiece of skeptical debunkery found American Idol more accessible. I had always thought that Churchill's famous comment on the successful Trinity explosion, "The idiot child has the matches now," was meant metaphorically, about mankind's lack of wisdom to handle nuclear weapons; I'm starting to believe that it was meant more literally, that the pathetically uneducated and uneducable Americans (led now by a man who says "nucular") now had the power to incinerate the planet.

An incredible book that introduces Middle Ages history, hermetic philosophers and the developement of their thoughts through time. Many of the subjects are related with Kabbalah's conception of the universe, and with Frances Yates'researches on the Hermetic-Kabbalistic movement. History subjects such as: Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, Masons, and philosophers and kabbalists such as: Abraham Abulafia, Dr. John Dee, Agrippa, Bacon, etc... Excellent novel full of Hermetic Knowledge if you really want to learn about these subjects!!! If you don't have the knowledge and patience to learn and search information to understand, don't waste your time! Read the Name of the Rose, perfect story that let your time go by.

Eco would surely make a poor poker player--the poor guy can't hide his emotions and feelings, especially as it relates to alternative interpretations of Religion. As this book plods along, the reader gets a really good sense that Eco has some unbridled disgust for anti-establishment. Well, it shows, as by the end of the book, he is literally mocking these anti-establishment folks.
I was hoping to not have to sift through Eco's pretentious word choices and sentence structure. Thankfully I did not. Instead, I was visited with "name drop blitzkreig". In other words, Eco just threw one name, group, ancient location, etc. after another. Was it to impress? I have no idea, but most of it didn't move the plot forward.
Eco at least had a good subject matter for his plot, I can give him that much. The way to get to the conclusion, however, was muddled with a lot of nonesense and unnecessary verbage.

I sometimes visit the store and look up my favorite books to see what other have to say about them. The reviews below remind me of why I love this book and have read it every three years since its publication. It's a carnival of wacky ideas that some people believe in passionately, and at the same time a deeply moving story of self-deception and sacrifice. It's also hysterically, mordantly, bitterly funny.

But you can't be a dumdum and enjoy it. The humor and history demand attention and more than rudimentary education to appreciate. So some of the reviews below are unsurprisingly negative. Those readers don't understand the book and thus dismiss it as bad.

As my son says about his music, "If it's too loud, you're too old." Regarding Foucault's Pendulum, "If it's too hard, you're too dumb."

Snarky? Yes. And a statement of fact.

This book worked like a time bomb for me. First couple of pages it was challenging to keep the focused, but the Kabbalistic titles were too alluring to give it up. I carried on, I read it, to my delight, I found the characters matching some people in my reality... I had so much laugh over this book. Once I reached the end, I realized that I did not really get it all. However,now, 3 years later, I finally do! :) the ending of the book is awesome and I actually will sit down and read it again and look at it with fresher eyes. Thank you Umberto! the book is genius. :)

This is one of the few books that dwell so deep into a topic so mysterious. The book however does tend to go back in time and forward again, only in the last few chapters do you finally find out what has been going on, to a lot of people, this does not appeal. I have had some doubts in it while I was reading the book, but a little by little it got so interesting I couldn't put it down.

It is a heavy duty book that requires a lot of thinking, but I thought it so good that the hairs on my back rose as I read certain lines. If you have the book, for the sake of book itself, please finish it.

There are some phrases in the book that are in different languages, readers may wonder what they mean, but as I read, they do not hold significant meaning of the novel if the author did not explain it.

If you have an appropriate sense of chaos and mischief, you will appreciate the characters in FP. If there were action figures I would buy them. They are brilliant and out of control- weaving from the world they are adeptly creating into their clumsy reality and back again. I laughed out loud several times in inappropriate places while reading this book. YES there will be things that you do not understand, and plot points you will miss because you weren't taking notes, but that's not really the goal. Is that how you live your life? Is it? That's pathetic. Go watch a movie, they make sense.
That being said, a suggestion for future editions: TRANSLATE those huge blocks of french, hebrew, etc. They look interesting.

Imagine an academic who becomes so absorbed in his study of medieval history that his conception of reality is contorted into a bizarre world of coincidences, historical trends, and supernatural experiences. He becomes convinced that all of this is connected and scuplted by a massive conspiracy which has manipulated history and belief for ages. This is the premise of Foucault's Pendelum, a story that works itself (and the reader) to death weaving the arcane with the ho-hum. If only this bold work had been successful.

Eco is a competent writer, as seen in The Name of the Rose and the more recent Baudolino. He dabbles in every imaginable discipline, giving the reader humor, history, drama, tragedy, and the truly bizarre to ponder. Foucault's Pendelum is written with two stories in tandem: a group of writers in Milan struggle to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of historical curiosities and coincidences, and Eco weaves into this tale a lengthy discussion of medieval history, replete with every occult organization one can imagine. For other writers - such as Salman Rushdie, whose Satanic Verses was a flawless weaving of modern lives with the life of Mohammed - this is an effective device. But Eco can't pull it off. He is too absorbed with names and places, determined to reach out and include every oddity of history into a sort of grand mosaic. Consequently, the characters are stilted and obtuse, moving through the motions of daily life like cogs in Eco's intellectual dystopia.

In places the book moves smoothly, and is enjoyable. Eco can't keep it all together, however, and towards the end the plot collapses under its own weight. I certainly won't give away the ending, but suffice it to say that it is quite unsatisfactory after enduring such a tremendous buildup. The reader's frustration comes not as he is reading it (although there are certainly some dry parts) but when he finishes the book and puts it back on the shelf. Whatever Eco was trying to accomplish, it didn't work. And that is unfortunate given the talent and erudition he normally demonstrates.

A publisher thinks authors who try to convey their own passion are fools; that it doesn't matter what you put in a book, people will draw their own conclusions from anything you throw together because humans need to see meaning where there is none. The publisher's conclusion being that you can make a good living by duping everybody.
This is both the plot of the book and the intent of the author. An interesting duality that Eco must delight in. I, too, could be delighted if there was a bit of art rather than just correctness in the delivery. With one hundred pages of Umberto Ecco's book remaining, I may yet be surprised: There may still be character development. The very next page might hold a well turned phrase, an artful description, a crackling bit of dialog. The real characters may wake from a sleep induced by a long lecture in semiotics; one in which they dreamt the first 430 pages and now can get on with their real lives. But I doubt it.
Bottom line for me is that I'm insulted. My first thought was that I had a bad translation; an international best seller wouldn't be such a chore to drag my eyes through. Even badly translated fiction, though, would have tangible characters and robust settings. "Foucault's Pendulum" has neither. What it does have is a tedious display of facts, some real, some not. Bits and pieces of titillating information about the Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, Freemasons; secrets that many readers will just love to believe.
Are there any academics out there who will condemn a colleague? It seems not. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently ran an article about two brothers who managed to have meaningless text with false mathematical equations pass peer review to get published in a physics journal. That same spirit allows some to claim that "Foucault's Pendulum" is a work of genius. There may be layers. There may be knowledge of history. There is, however, no worthwhile story; nothing new to challenge a mind that hungrily observes the life around them.
Like the lad who said the emperor is naked, I have to say this book stinks. Save your money, but more- save your time.

I started reading this book as I had greatly enjoyed Name of the Rose. While reading Foucault's pendulum I was very impressed with Eco's imagination and his unique description of mundane, prosaic things (one such being the word processor). I was also struck by his obvious intelligence, but the book itself is not worth trudging through. It talks about editors and their lives, but it seems that the editor for this book didn't do his job. I came away realizing that Eco has a vast knowledge of Templar history and mysticism and is passionate about it, but he failed to convey that passion and fascination to the reader. Also, it is kind of mixed in together very crudely with the main thread of the story. He should just have written a history text book on the templars !

I have a Master's in English, darn it. I should know what this book "means." I don't, however. While I found myself admiring Eco's incredible grasp of symbols and history, and, seemingly everything else, ultimately the book simply makes no sense to me. I might try to retrace my steps and try again. Might.

I was very dissastisfied after reading this book. With so much conjecture, tension, and intrigue, I expected a more interesting conclusion. As a matter of fact, I knew exactly how it was going to end, and prayed throughout the last third of the book that I would be wrong. Only recommened if you are a serious history nut and would enjoy readng endless speculation about the movements and trials of an unverifiable, if not imaginary, group of people who control some vague tool powerful enough to .... what, exactly?

Perhaps UE meant to elicit the frustration of his homeland's bureaucracy. A country which I am infinitely fond of, for the record.

I found this book very entertaining. I rather like the esoteric subject matter, and I quite enjoyed the humour in regards to the publishing industry the characters work in.
After seeing the others' reviews, I think the reason I alone seemed to totally enjoy the book is that I had absolutely no idea what the book was about; therefore, I had no pre-conceived expectations.
If you can do this, I highly recommend it. Umberto Eco is quite a good write, as I found after reading other works by him, after reading Foucalt's Pendulum. Before readint his work, I had not heard of him.

This book is a riot: read to discover if you are an idiot, moron, fool, or a cretin, Eco's four categories for thinkers (I think I'm a moron).

The story is about our relationship to the unknown: but this is no dry religious treatise. Eco's interested in a definitely nutty slant on the unknown: centuries old conspiracy theories regarding the knights of the Templars & their secrets which, although never proven to exist, would, if discovered, allow one to rule the world! Join Eco as he meets the various whackos who vainly seek after the Knights. You will have fun.

What's the deal with this? A man can't even write an interesting book anymore without being accused of such dreaded things as being a "pseudointellectual" (oh this word is just so hip, it almost makes me feel like a pseudopseudointellectual to be using it), or being . . . gasp . . . "tedious and dull". Give the guy a break. If you didn't like it, then just say you didn't like it. And, by all means, why the hell take things so seriously?

Eco's main character, Casaubon, is also named after Issac Casaubon, who in 1614 dated Hermetic writings as Christian-era works, thereby single-handedly bringing an end to the Renaissance Magus. Eco wants to have the same dampening effect on his reader's enthusiasm for the esoteric.
His plot is largley cribbed from Blavatsky, and much of it reads like a carelessly assembled collection of encyclopedia entries. There are huge passages of exposition, and the characters are roughly sketched. He couldn't have trivialized women more, leaving them brief cameos where they assume the role of virgin/... or child chalice. Other cliches include non-sequitur droppings from Finnegan's Wake and the Odyssey, in case you weren't impressed by his untranslated blurbs from arcane sources. By the end, he mentions Sam Spade on practically every page.
Ultimately, it looks like the book is an excuse for the author to break out with his tired WWII stories. Eco's characters reminisce against the background of civil unrest in the 60s and spiritual awakening in the 70s, and he pits his lost generation against those born after after the war, insisting that even a cowardly kid ducking Fascists is a better character than those braving the barricades a generation later in Paris.
As for the history, it's not that difficult to follow, but it's not worth the effort. Eco even tires of it by the end and wraps up his story with an insufferable bit of moralizing and nostalgia. If you want a pop tale interwoven with conspiracy and esoterica, read the Illuminatus Trilogy instead.

I just finished reading it for the third time and still love it. I understand why people don't - if you're not that interested in occult conspiracy theories, I imagine it's staggeringly tedious. If you are, though, it's great fun.
My only problem is Lorenza. At no point was I given any reason why Belbo would have given her so much power over him. There was never a moment that she gave even the slightest indication of caring for him, so it was hard for me to see whatever he saw.

i once asked a freind about masons and what they were, he quickly quoted the theories in this book and handed it to me saying it would pass the time but was complex. well after reading it for an hour or so i was going to put it down and move on, but i gave it anouther chapter, and thank god! it picked up fast so that i could not put it down. the story is ingenious, but the real story is that of the people not the consiracies. you trully feal like you have known the three of them since birth. a great read, even if you just like the occult stuff

Many years ago I read a summary review of this book and had to have it. Many years ago I brought the book. For many years I tried to read the book. Many more years later I finally finished the book. Author Umberto Eco is undoubtedly a very talented writer but I found his writing a little too complex for me. There were many, many pages and sections that I had to re-read in order to understand what was going on. The book's 641 pages felt like 6,000.

"Foucault's Pendulum" is about a search for the center of an ancient, still living conspiracy of men who seek not merely power over the earth but over psychic, `telluric' powers of the earth itself, and who, in the end, draw their pursuers into a circle where discovery of the truth is lethal. I surmised that from the book reviews prior to starting the novel. I had great difficultly grasping this concept and gradually lost interest in the plot. Perhaps Eco's approach was a little too ethereal for me (and his wandering style didn't help either). "Foucault's Pendulum" was not a pleasure to read but I won't trash the novel because the book seems to have a large following. For me, it was just a bewildering experience.

If you are comfortable reading Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Whitman, Faulkner, Hemingway, etc... you will not have any trouble reading this book. Eco doesn't fare any worse than all the above.
Those who claim that the book is too obscure for them, perhaps shouldn't bother to write a review. The fact that you don't understand something, doesn't mean that it is bad. Do you understand God, life, love, poetry, history and humanity? If you answer was no, does that mean that they're bad? This book includes a little bit of it all. It is by far one of the best works of contemporary literature. If there would ever be a definition of post-modernism, this book would be it.

Not much to add to previous reviews, except to mention that the Turkish edition has more than a 100 footnotes and a dictionary in the back, which help clarify the author's liberal use of Latin and the more obscure references to history, religion, alchemy, etc.

Maybe that is what the English edition needs, as well. It would indeed be near-impossible for the average reader to get through the book without those pages.

I'm 100 pages from the end, and the fascination factor just keeps increasing!
I was warned by several friends that it was impossible to read. Here's the secret -- only the first chapter is a hell-read. The rest is just gobs of fun. Hack your way through chapter one and you're set.

Before picking up this tome I was under the impression that I was reasonably well-informed on the subject-matter. Having read fairly widely about conspiracies in general I thought my working knowledge of the Illuminati, Priory of Sion , Albigensian Heresy and the like would give me an advantage in penetrating the dense, often confusing and poorly translated prose. Sadly not. I doff my cap to the other reviewers whose descriptions of a racy romp through paranoia certainly do not tally with my miserable plod through this stodgy dirge of a book. I have never found obscurantism particularly entertaining, and having made it to the end only experienced relief that the ordeal was over. Eco's gentle ridicule of the farther reaches of 20th century belief systems may cause some to reassess their irrationality, but I fear it may inspire more to read Baigent and Leigh's nonsense to find out what on earth this semiologist chap was banging on about. If anybody can direct me to somebody who pretends to understand half of one percent of the obscure allusions I will be glad to pay homage. Eco is almost certainly a towering intellect, but by defying comprehension over several hundred pages I fear he may well become the next Stephen Hawking- his work prominently displayed on the bookshelf and universally lauded but nobody ever gets past page 23. Sad, really.

I have nothing but praise for Foucault's Pendulum. I received a copy as a gift last Christmas and once I started to read it, I could not stop until I finished. The sheer fun Eco has with the story is truly amazing. He is a hard act to follow.

The plot of this book is quite compelling, and looking back it really is a book that leaves you with the impression of being intellectually substantial.

The problem is that it is cripled by the authors preference for including all sorts of irrelevant details, and to be honest, at times it reads like he is just rambling on.

But if that doesn't bother you, then go ahead an read it. Otherwise, read some authors who understand the beauty and power of simplicity (e.g. Hemmingway, Kawabata, Blixen), because Eco, if he does, is not displaying it in this book.

I won't pretend this book wasn't a hard slog. It was. It's long, dense and uses words I didn't know existed (and frequently, words that aren't English). But all this is necessary to create the thick, rich tapestry Eco weaves for us. With consummate style, we are taken on a journey of knowledge, culture, religion and philosophy that I, for one, experienced right alongside the book's characters. This book might not change your life, but it certainly changed the way I look at it. It's all what you make of it.

This book was one of the best that I have ever read. I agree that the book stands apart not in its literature but more in the plot, the vast amount of work put into it (probably the most Eco ever did), and the lesson it teaches. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book throughout, and it showed us all that you do not have to use long and over-planned sentences to succeed in creating a masterpiece novel and probably one of the best endings ever written.

This is a great book, and by the end of the novel if your like me you will feel as if you have just been through a crusade of occult history. I must admit, it was hard going in places - the level of detail is nothing short of astounding. But it all comes together in the end, and I love the way the Eco leads you through all of this to end with a "joke" of sorts. Anyway, if your fed up reading traditional guff novels, give this a try - you may even learn something along the way.

Umberto Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum' is a book that inspires strong emotions. Readers either love it or loathe it. Count me in the latter category. Nothing against the author. I'm sure he achieved his objectives with flying colors. And the subject matter is, at times, pretty darn interesting. But Eco's style -- fraught with arcane references and interminable diatribes -- is not my cup of tea. To boot, the explanation of the causes of the holocaust, albeit fictionalized, is disturbing, to put it mildly. Here's a snippet of what I'm talking about: 'Hitler was searching the Jews for the clue that would allow him to determine, with the Pendulum, the exact point under the earth's concave vault where the telluric currents converged.' (See pp. 422-3, et al.)
I regret that I plowed through the whole book, but I have an irrational habit of always finishing the books that I begin reading. To the more rational reader, I suggest the following: read the first six pages. If it tickles your shorts, keep reading. There's plenty more where that came from. If not, cut bait and find something else to read. Granted, there are many people for whom 'Foucault's Pendulum' is a brilliant piece of literature. But for others, the book will only disappoint for many, many hours.

As a novelist Eco writes the kind of superficially 'intellectual' books that somehow manage to convince a great number of people that they are reading something with a certain cachet. Foucault's Pendulum is a confidence trick of stupendous proportions. For a start this guy can't write for toffee. The prose is turgid and unwieldy, lending Foucault's Pendulum all the page-turning qualities of the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary (which, by the way, is the book you'll constantly need at hand if you're to wade through this mire). To compound matters the text is littered with arcane locutions and absurd neologisms (made-up words), making large sections of the book utterly incomprehensible. The plot (such as there is one) is that a secret occult society is bent on (wouldn't you know it!) world domination. That's right, 700 odd pages to reveal the most hackneyed plot imaginable- the staple of a million B-movies and pulp horror novels. To top it all the Plan isn't ever remotely credible (how could it be?), robbing this book of any narrative suspense that might be on offer. Eco employs the old chestnut of the 'unreliable narrator' (in this case Cassaubon), but when you don't care what a narrator says, his unreliable status becomes frankly irrelevant. To those who claim this book demands intellectual staying-power I have this to say: there really isn't anything in Foucault's Pendulum a precocious adolescent couldn't understand. It's tough to read because the most simple plot is buried in a mountain of wilfully obscure guff. Clearly Eco's intention is to dazzle us with his scholarship, but once you cut through the all the drivel there is simply nothing of substance here. There are occasionally funny moments and some diverting ideas, but they in no way justify the monumental effort involved in reading this nonesense. In the end the Plan is revealed to be bogus (you'll arrive at this conclusion on page 2) and the shenanigans of the Diabolicals (the credulous fools taken in by it) simply their attempt to impose a subjective meaning on the last 1,000 years of European history. If the point of Foucault's Pendulum is to illustrate how in the absence of absolute values (God and so on) we bring our own designs and meaning to life then I suggest you read Albert Camus's succinct existentialist novel 'The Outsider.' In summarises in a 100 pages of beautifully simplistic prose the point Eco may or may not have been getting at in this attempt at a novel. This book will be a major disappointment to anyone who cherishes genuinely challenging fiction. It gets one star purely for it's soporific qualities.

This is a marvelously playful conspiracy novel that ties together a multitude of disparate antagonists and occult systems, including the Knights Templar and Kabbalistic ideas. Not quite a classic novel for its genre - IMHO it needed some more comedic elements.

I read the book! One of the greatest books I have ever read. A book that I started and finished the same day. I live and work in Brussels, the capital of Europe. But unfortunately, I spend a couple of hours a day in a traffic jam. With these audio tapes, the traffic jam is never long enough. I really adore the way this book is been narrated. These tapes brought me the exciting times of reading the book. If you are a templars adict like me, order these tapes!!!

I've gotten through about 1/3 of the book and I'm highly amused. The first 50 pages are muddled and rather pointless so far. However, I've laughed my way through them. One thing Eco has is a very sophisticated sense of humor. If you enjoy a mental challenge and writing that's loaded with wit, I'd suggest picking up this book. I never knew there were four kinds of people before: morons, fools, lunatics and cretins. And I may just be a fool. :)

For me, all other books are measured against this book. I was glad to hear from other reviewers that at times one feels lost, and that this is part of the journey of the book. I have never read another book that I thought was as well written, as interesting and as edifying. Even "Name of the Rose" seems like light reading after this. I have bought several copies and hand them out to friends I think would enjoy the experience as well. It is not a book for a casual reader, you must pay attention. This book also holds up well on tape and is great for a long drive. My husband and I listened to it years after I had read it and he too thought it was marvelous.

Foucault's Pendulum is a long and ponderous expensive book about a publisher of long and ponderous expensive books. My ex-husband and I read it aloud to each other when it first came out, thinking it might be a painless way to soak up some background information on secret societies. But Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a popular non-fiction book on the same theme, was much more readable.

As for the byzantine plot and characterization.... Fifteen years later, all I can remember is the opening scene, where we learn that a writer has disappeared, leaving behind his personal computer, and our protagonist is trying to guess the password.

This book appears to be an elaborate conceptual joke aimed at people who have w-a-y too much time on their hands and want to transcend the need for entertainment.

Mixing a good old fashioned suspense tale with Medieval Mysticism, secret organizations, and the Holy Grail, Eco has, once again, created a modern masterpiece that will leave the critics debating for years to come. This is an excellent book, but not one for the faint-of-heart. Eco plays with the tale's timeline, and readers may need to have a dictionary and an encyclopedia handy.

Absolutely unbearable. I think I gave it about 80 pages of very small type. Another one of these "weird" books that is trying to be clever. It is possible that there is a palatable story in here somewhere, but I really didn't care enough to find out.

Conspiracies shouldn't be boring.

Unfortunately, in the case of this overlong mess, they most definitely are.

Or, in other words, he has thrown everything but the kitchen sink in (and it is possible to have missed the references to those, as they may have been in ancient Babylonian somewhere in the text, perhaps.) One big wodge of lies, conspiracy and stuff.

This is a dreadfully pretentious book with utterly flat and lifeless characters and puerile plot devices and coincidences. It's trumped up with a lot of ridiculous philosophy but, in the end, it completely collapses on its own pretentiousness. Anyone who says this is a "great book" is a fool and doesn't realize Eco has played a joke on him or her. It's just a shame you have to drag through this tedious 120-chapter tome to find out the mystery is that there is no mystery and the trick is that you've been tricked into reading hundreds of pages filled with thousands of ridiculous red herrings. To top it off, the English translation is weak and frequently downright awkward.

Heartbreaking... I really looked forward to reading this book. Eco is just my kind of writer, and Foucault's Pendulum seemed to be just my kind of book. Chapter after chapter of meticulously researched information that I would've died to put my hands on just a few years ago. The amount of the data collected by Eco is mind-boggling -- not any more, though! The story is set in the early computer era, when the Internet with its unlimited research potential was still the thing of the future. These days, all you need to do is google "Templars", and all this painstakingly collected info -- and then some -- will be at your disposal within seconds. Unfortunately, in the past few years I've been seriously interested in the subject (thus my interest in Eco's book) and I have to admit, having read it now in 2004, I found very litlle, negligibly little in Foucault's Pendulum that I didn't already know from numerous esoteric sites and books... What a crying shame!! I expected a revelation -- or at least an intellectual puzzle -- and found a massive infodump of recycled conspiracy theories that these days are discussed on every occult message board.

As for the story... there simply wasn't enough story for me in it to compensate for the trouble of getting to the last page. It's clever and literary, but I personally found it rather shallow psychologically. But that's my personal taste in literature -- IMHO, a good book should be first and foremost about the characters' inner growth. Watching a level-headed atheist turn into an esoteric nutter may be funny, but to me, it wasn't enough to justify reading this book... what a shame!!! And what a disappointment...

After reading a mass of raves about Humberto Eco's "Foucalt's Pendulum," I bought the book, and now am more convinced than ever that many tomes are purchased because leaving them on one's coffee table for visitors to see indicates the host is a with-it intellectual.
I found the book nearly illegible, and a hard read, which I forged through, only to find no real pay off. Perhaps it''s the translation, but in spite of the sporadic kitschy references and smart... humor, I found the result unfunny, uninteresting, and a total waste of time.
David Kramer

A pedantic mudbath of fiction, fact and distorted truths so densely packed that spearating each of these would take months of research.
But that is the least of the problems with this book, the story doesn't really begin until page 142. For the first 141 pages you will be assaulted by lecture after lecture after lecture of Umbault recanting history and describing ancient religous rites.
After that, stodgy dialog, predictable plodding and no sex.
The awful teaching he gives us is drearily accomplished for example when one character asks the other 'well tell us about the Templars' and then you get 5 or 6 pages of Templar history. Very little is revealed in the way of conflict, information is thrown at you like a piss pot from a window, exposition ad urineum.
To be fair, 3 or 4 more rewrites and I think this might be a good 260 page read, right now it works well as a door stop for my study bringing in a nice cool breeze from the Adriatic.

I avoid referring to things as absolutely good or bad, but this is the very best book I have ever, ever read. 'Foucault's Pendulum' offers what a true book should: Questions, ideas, no answers. It is a challenge for the reader for what it is, rather than for what some call 'pseudo-elitism.' It is sad experienced readers can fail to appreciate this rare, one-of-a-kind book...

This is an intellectual 'davinci code' type book, historical religious fiction, very pretentious, not as readable.

Some suggest Eco intentionally made his books boring at the start, to discourage thosee not intellectually ardent enough to plow forward. Ok maybe, but what about the middle and end of this one?

Read The Name of the Rose before even thinking about this.

Foucault is less accessible and less interesting than Name of the Rose- a classic, but 10 times the complication if that doesnt seal the deal for you.

I LOVED "The Name of the Rose," and have even met Umberto Eco personally (charming and VERY witty), so I was prepared to love this book. All the more ironic, then, that it's the biggest waste of reading-time I've ever come across. I DID make it all the way to the end (wanna see my scar?), and to be fair, the ending was not what I'd expected. Still, I'm wondering whether Eco's book contract specified that he was to be paid either by the page or by the word, because you can easily chop well over half of this book out, and the plot won't suffer!

If you're still really intrigued by the book's premise and want to try it, you can save yourself about a year of your life by doing this: Read the first chapter or two. Then flip randomly to some chapter in the middle, and read that. Then read the last couple of chapters. The End. You want a REALLY well written thriller? Read Michael O'Brien's "Father Elijah," which you may wish didn't end so soon as it does--the exact opposite of FP, which couldn't end soon enough.

I kept finding myself in the library looking up everything from the Knights of the Templar, to stories about the Holy Grail, cults and anything else having to do with Umbertos crazy novel. Probably one of the most interesting books I have read- and the most fun too! Superb!

This book was a total waste of time. It reads like something that would have been written by James Fennemore Cooper. That is to say it takes a bulldozer to plow through it. Like another reviewer, the best part was finishing it. I thought it would get better as I went along, but I was wrong. It was difficult to absorb anything from it. The only reason I completed it was to say I finished it. Even at page 500 or 642 I thought of giving up. Possibly the worst book I've ever read. I will never read anything by Eco again, even though I enjoyed The Name of the Rose.

This was a story that I gained much from on a personal level, but it did get a little hard to plunge through the more complex and dense parts. I recommend this book to anyone, though, because my life became simpler after reading this. If I can read anything I want to into the world, all I can say in the end is "It's so beautiful."

Eco magnificent as usual. This is the most ambitious conspiracy theory novel that western literature will ever produce. The presence of confusing loose ends makes this book great because it requires the reader to take from it what he or she inquisitively puts into it.

how can a book pack in so many lessons on philosophy, theology, cult theory, etc. and still be a great suspense book? like other reviewers have said, this is the real Da Vinci Code, which is, at best, a paper wrapping for Foucault's Pendulum. Enjoy it and learn from it (though it is a challenging book).

I was asked if Umberto Eco was as much a pompous windbag in Foucault's Pendulum as he was in his other novels and responded:

I would say his novels are aimed squarely at the purveyors of pretension. When I was reading Foucault's Pendulum I got the same "pompous windbag" impression and concluded that I could have photocopied vast sections of the the Necronomican of Abdul Al-Hazred and the Yog-Sothoth just as easily and pasted together my own book by following the Dungeons and Dragons Rule Book. But don't listen to me -- I have never been that impressed with Eco, especially as a novelist -- Hamlet said it best: "Words, Words, Words" or was it "very like a whale"? I suspect Eco was just trying to sound as erudite as Joyce (or at least Professor Irwin Corey). However, Foucault's Pendulum might well be his greatest work since no novel he has written since has been as well received.

I did peek at the sales figures for this novel but they have been suspiciously hidden away in a monastery in the Apennines and the only hint I got was the mention of the bump Eco's sales received with the popularity of The Da Vinci Code. Interestingly, someone asked why Eco didn't sue Brown for plagiarism; a better question might be why the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail didn't sue Eco ... And the answer of course is, follow the money.

But rest assured, despite having attempted to read this pile and given up in disgust, I will give it a generous rating -- 2 stars. Suffice it to say, however, that Foucault's Pendulum had more in common with The Da Vinci Code than just the arcane historical mystery.

I'll be traveling back to New Jersey next week and will be able to visit the large dent in the wall of my office where the parabolic arc of this novel met with the obstinacy of lath and plaster.

But let's be a little fair about this and realize the Foucault's Pendulum, when compared to the other airport gift-shop thrillers, is certainly adequate to cover the time taken for a trans-oceanic flight, whether it keeps you awake or not. Although if they are showing Raiders of the Lost Ark ...

I tried to read this book several times once it came out in paperpack. I could never seem to get past 25 or so pages.

After reading a wide selection of reviews in here I find it encouraging that there are still people around who will admit that, even after struggling though an excruciating book of this size and style, they still have enough humanity to admit that it wasn't worth it for them and might not be for many others either.

I REALLY enjoyed this book! It was challenging to read, but at the same time it opened up a whole fantstic, thrilling world of history, mystery and ideas. It changed my way of thinking about many things. I am reading it a second time just now. I actually believe that Eco intentionally made the first two chapters extra difficult to discourage half-hearted readers.

I read this book while in PARIS, where most of the plot takes place. It gives the book an eerie perspective, but one that should be experienced. If you want to fully appreciate it read it there, even for the second time. or third. eco is so complex there is no chance of ever getting all his stuff anyway.

To all the reviews that say Eco's novel runs out of gas, etc., I say, that is where the real power of the novel hits you: the ending IS the point. After moving through all the multi-layered, referential, hermeneutic labyrinths searching for meaning, it turns out that the real truth is found in the taste of a peach and the lovliness of the hillside. The fact that They are on their way to kill the peach-eater as he sits calmly taking in beauty outside his window makes it all the more powerful.

I highly reccommend this to anyone who enjoyed the Illuminatus trilogy by Robert Shea/Robert Anton Wilson. This book is to the Illuminatus Trilogy like The Hobbit is to The Trilogy of the Rings. Esoteric history and good character development make this a good read ....

I have seen this book on the shelves of many academic types. Now I understand why. IT'S NOT WORTH LENDING OUT. Academics everywhere are stuck with a book that they will never get rid of (academics are hoarders) and never give away (god forbid someone else be forced to slog through it).

Foucault's Pendulum appears to be compiled of exceedingly arcane and torturously mundane scraps that Eco couldn't get to fly even as footnotes in his nonfiction texts. And those are the *good* parts. When Eco does make attempts at plot construction, his characters move jerkily through unoriginal conspiracy themes. There are interesting moments of male character development, but they are bogged down in passages of stream-of-consciousness "journal entries" or boring self-reflective monologues. Eco's female characters are remarkably shallow, static things-- ostensibly they are academics, spiritualists, and/or mothers, but their dialogue reveals them as stilted mouthpieces for Eco's flawed ideas of the feminine experience. When humorous or interesting moments do emerge, the reader is often too busy scowling to notice. A few quotable statements reward the diligent reader, and there *are* passages of this book worth five stars, but by the same token there are passages of the phone book which, read at random, can produce heartbreaking poetry.

If someone recommends this book to you, do yourself a favor. Smile politely, and say, through your teeth, "Yes, I've been MEANING to read it!" and leave it at that.

This is simply the single worst book I have ever read, and the cause of the greatest amount of time I have ever wasted. And I have read quite a few books and wasted a fair amount of time. To be fair, I must admit that there is a finite possibility that it is "over my head," but I emerged believing rather that "there is no there there" (Gertrude Stein), and it might just be a very cruel joke on the Eco's part - "Let's write some superficially sophisticated-sounding, pretentious nonsense and see how many pseudo-intellectuals think it's insightful and profound and meaningful, and then sit back and smirk at them!"
In case it will lend any weight to this opinion, I am tolerably well educated, quite capable of persevering through long and "hard" books, enjoyed and appreciated The Island of the Day Before, and absolutely loved (LOVED!) (Did I mention "LOVED"?) The Name of the Rose (even the non-page-turner parts about esoteric philosophical differences between various monastic orders).
Many others have covered the detailed reasons why reading this book is such an almost unbelievably dreadful experience (and yes, I see that many others have raved about it), so I won't even bother to try to add rational, perceptive, intellectual details.
I'll just add one more personal note that may or may not be emotionally persuasive: This is the ONLY book I have EVER just thrown in the trash can in my whole life. Every other book I have ever read or partially read, no matter how bad in some ways, seemed to have some shred of what the Supreme Court (and that peerless literary critic, Tom Lehrer) once called "redeeming social importance," and I found room in my home or office to keep it, or gave it away to a charity, or someone I cared about or felt kindly towards. Not this one. Giving this one away, or even selling it, would be an act of perverse cruelty inconsistent not only with the Golden Rule but even with minimal common decency.
Yuck. That didn't even feel good. But please, PLEASE do something else with your precious time and energy (like read his other books - this is not personal to Eco!).

One aspect of this book not entirely covered here is the ambiguity between what is real and what illusion (or, fiction). One of the excellent aspects of this book is the way it raises and presses that question

Umberto Ecco presents a mystery thriller which his publishing house describes as "endlessly diverting".

Well, it is - and even more.

Agreeing with the statement of one of the protagonist on page 433:

>Stop, enough is enough, I'm sick<

Mr. Ecco does his best in dragging along all kind of stories about Templars, Rosicrusians, Jesuits, Cathars, Renaissance philosophers, the Grail, the Nazis and all kind of Diabolicals.

The story itself would be an interesting plot: Three editors invent a story to disguise the well kept secret of a mystery society. And tough luck: there are people out there who not only believe the plot but are moreover convinced that they have been part of it for ages and are ready to murder for it.

Unfortunately Mr. Ecco gets caught in the swirl of his own ideas and delusions and makes it for the reader very difficult to follow.

I don't like the slimy hero or his publishing house friends.
The lunacy that goes on in this book seems like the late Egyptian empire descent into insane magic. That the book inspired a later American best seller doesn't make it right for me.
I had a very hard time reading this book
as it is slow and full of a half way history of satanic beastality and secret societies in Europe.
Since the main character also does a book on metal
and the science and technology involved,
he isn't an ignorant fellow.
That he throws all logic and credibility out, just makes me
wonder at the irrationality involved?

This has to be the best book i have ever read . If you have the patience to get past the first 100 pages we will be imerged in one of the best stories ever written . I just couldn't put it down . I stongly recommend it

My friends use to refer to that book as "The Ordeal", its that difficult. However, Umberto's ingenious writing and mastery of History and the Occult make it an enchanting tale indeed, a must for every history-,occult- or thriller- fan.

I struggled through around 100 pages of this book, then put it aside. Some of the reviews which said it was worthwhile sticking with made me give it another try and so I waded laboriously through to the end.

Am I sorry I spent so much time reading this book of over 600 pages? Not quite, but almost. The last forty or so pages provided much food for thought and an interesting insight into the human pysche. His exploration of how one group must demonise another in order to assuage their own guilt and insecurity can be applied to every historical age but is especially relevant in the current global climate. He explains the mindset of those who belong to secret societies and some religious groups who see everything around them as symbolic and believe in some great truth which is always just out of their grasp and which can never be attained because in attaining it it suddenly becomes mundane. The quest for this 'truth' is what provides meaning to life for so many.

This aside, the book would have been a riveting read if huge swathes of text relating to meaningless mystical/occult beings, beliefs and references were simply omitted. They read like double Dutch to anyone who has not studied this subject. My advice is to skip these passages entirely.

An intriguing concept, interesting story, but very hard work and barely worth it.

Eco has proven that he can write a thriller with great intellectual power (The Name of The Rose), but here he writes an academic sleeper. His protagonists are eccentric, but this eccentricity pales by the 5th chapter. His sprawling book is an excuse to show off Crusader and Rosicrucian lore galore, much more deeply and complexly than Dan Brown was capable of researching and selling. Eco's education shows - "professor of semiotics, a philosopher, historian, critic, and aesthetician." Sontag's education showed also, but she wrote text that grabbed you.

Eco succumbs to his license as an academic and writes a very academic book - along the lines of self-indulgent writers like Pirsig and Barthelme. The difficulty is truly with his characters. Perhaps Eco needed these men to be indecisive, but I compare them unfavorably to William Gibson's protagonists - who are richly thinking on the inside and monosyllabic in speech. Eco's persons are confused inside, and erudite in speech to the point of impotence.

This is a must read book - a total masterpiece which draws you into the mystery of the Knights Templars with such force that you cannot put down the book untill you finished reading it!!! Join Casaubon and his friends in their great Plan which is filled with history, myths, legends, mystery and well-hidden secrets! Please, do so!!!

I thought I was dumb when I read over three fourths of this gobbledygook and didn't understand more than a line. However, one odd day I chanced across a collection of essays of Salman Rushdie in a bookshop and was flipping through the pages when I came across by chance Rushdie's review of the book.
In short Rushdie said that he read the whole book and didn't understand a single sentence of the book. What a relief - the author of the booker of bookers said not a sentence...So here I am pride salvaged - and writing this review.
Piece of advice for anyone considering picking this up - unless you have a Ph.D in theology AND a masters degree in occult faiths, you may not appreciate this book.
Sandeep

Many say it's difficult, perhaps I had a better time havaing read Pynchon's " The Crying of Lot 49" ( a short book ) and " Holy Blood, Holy Grail ". The end shone with an amber light reminding of the defeat of Crassus in Plutarch or the dismall end of "Brave New World. A little " Ape And Essence" too, glory to belial in the lowest, which in turn reminds of "Lord of the Flies"...

A friend gave me this book, along with the comment that it gets better after the first 50 pages.
I've now made it through 112 pages. From the beginning I have been impressed with the translator. He or she has an incredible grasp of the English language, and I hope the grasp of Italian is just as incredible. He/she has an amazing skill for taking a word or idea in Italian and translating it into an obscure English word that will be understood by few English speakers. Thus a book that is slow paced and unintriguing is given yet another obstacle.
It is possible that the book does have an incredible ending. I'll never know. No matter what the ending, the pain of getting to it cannot be worth the time and agony of getting there.

Oh ... you want entertainment? Second door to the left.
(They should really put an "Adult Advisory" on this book.
CONTAINS: no Hollywood, no simple plot, no shallow characters, some foreign languages, lots of historical details. Plus it's way too long.
Guess this book was never ment for the US-public. Shame though.
People could actually LEARN something here...)

This is my first Eco novel, and it is certainley not going to be my last. This book had everything I was looking for in a novel the Templars, Conspiracies, The Occult, and Brazil. Please take the time to read this outstanding literary work for yourself.

Well, I can certainly understand why people would go on and on about this book. Because if you don't...well, you're just not smart enough to get it.

Reading it cover to cover, I would like to know who's in charge of refunding both time and money wasted on this book.

Mystery? Only in the form of spending hours trying to puzzle out the gratuitous, unwarranted liberal use of Latin and French(okay, Eco...we get it...you're smart, what no Italian?).

Twists? Hardly...They figured out a big secret that...well...wasn't. Someone thought they really had the Templars insert "whatever 'holy grail' officiandos are seeking" here, so the chase is on, except its not... because that is right at the end.

Drama? Yawn... only if you find pouring over manuscripts for pages and pages "dramatic" and listening to "intellectuals" giving their take on how wonderous it all is, and how it "all ties together"...zzzzzz...sorry, dozed off there for a second.

Romance? Well, okay you have a bibliophile in love with a woman who leads him around by his...well, you get it. And he's upset because the love is unrequited...and he finally...does nothing. Except, get mildly passive aggresive at the end; which just makes him all the more annoying.

You can learn a second language (or third/fourth) and be much better off, than wasting time on this piece of overblown, pompus and just flat out annoying piece of literature.

I now have a new indicator for intelligentia posers...just ask the question, "Did you like Foucault's Pendulum"?

Umberto Eco has obviously never met a word he didn't like. If an idea could be expressed in 20 words, he used 200. Unfortunately, I wasted the time to read it through twice and was no more impressed the second time. I'm not stupid, I understood the plot, I didn't need a dictionary or thesaurus, and I was absolutely bored out of my mind. He probably wrote this book in the same manner in which Jacopo Belbo wrote his Plan, by entering it into the word processor without ever looking back. If you enjoy having a thousand ridiculous conspiracy theories thrown against a wall in a hopeless mishmash, then this book is for you.

I've been reading this book since it came out, and every time I read, it gives me something new to think about. It's like making love with your soul-mate; gets better each time, and never can get enough :-)

The author appears to be showing off all his knowledge of the Middle Ages; not all of it is so interesting to the average reader as I had to skip many pages to get back to the plot. His first book, The Name of the Rose was far superior to this one

Oh, Eco, player of the Horn of Plenty... You human cornucopia, Homunculus Nebula, composer of the sounds of Amalthea! You concocter of this litarary Cratellus, this Black Cantarel of a book. Couldn't you have used a few fewer words to get the message through? This is a Horn of Much Too Much Plenty.

This book has it all! Mystery, thriller, suspense, world history, masons, world conspiracy, voodoo, magic, computers trying to reproduce the true name of God, jewish mysticism , druids of the forests, underground tunels that connect strategic points of the planet, publishers and writers, knights of the temple, action all around the world through the past 2 milenia. YOU NAME IT. Centuries of conspiracy and battle for the domination of the world , unspeakable secrets passed upon generation to generation from a few chosen ones, build up until the last climactic pages of the book.
ADVICE:
The book is really worth for its money and it will keep you awake for a few days. You will refuse to close the book until you reach the end. In the beginning you will not understand a thing, what is going on, who are these people, what are they trying to do. Never mind, just carry on. Eco meant the book to be this way! Enjoy the book and if you dont understand some historical remarks never mind, just continue, dont stumble upon the little details and the dates, get the big picture. You will have plenty of time to think about it after you have finished but the main thing is to go entirely through the book and finish it. It will leave you with your mouth open. Dont let yourself think :I cant understand this, I am an idiot therefore I will not continue. No, just finish the book , at the end you will be rewarded as is the case with all of Ecos books. After all there is no such thing as "I dont understand the book", there is only "I didnt let myself free enough to understand it".
Eco writes his books this way, they are only meant for the strong of spirit, people with perseverance that are willing to strugle in order to reach the ultimate truth that only the very few have mastered. His novels are deliberately cryptic but only to the point that they discourage the faint of hurt. For the few strong men that are willing to engage into the battle, all the mysteries and the hypes reveil themselfs at the end,like the petals of a rose in the spring. This is the REWARD, something central on Eco's novels.
IN ORDER TO PROVE MY POINT ECO HIMSELF ADMITTED that he included the first hundred pages of pure history in the "Name of the Rose" just to discourage the readers that would not have the strenght to continue with the book. That was the PRICE! that the readers have to pay in order to reach the monastery up in the mountains that the story takes place. His editor suggested that he should completely remove this big part of the book but Eco denied!
Going back to the PENDULUM, You should never forget that this book is a really mystery book. Not only for the heros of the book but also for you , the reader. There were times that I felt that I was involved in this world conspiracy and I may be in danger like the hero of the book. That is the trully amazing element of Eco. It gets the reader involved. And at the end you will have a completely different point of view about the world.
Eco has said that the ultimate mystery book is the one that the READER is himself the killer!
I definetely recommend the book, it will not dissapoint you.

Relinquish the notion that this is either a) intellectually invigorating or b) intellectually intimidating. Its great swaths of seemingly interminable lists may try a reader's patience; they will not exercise his mind.

It helps a bit if you've studied French, but if you haven't you won't miss much. Similarly, toward the beginning we are confronted with the source code in the BASIC computer language for a small, crude, inelegant permutation algorithm. If you know BASIC, you'll immediately recognize how the algorithm works; if you don't know BASIC, it doesn't matter; the algorithm has nothing to do with the story. A more, shall we say, seasoned writer would have omitted it.

Let's cut to the chase. What is this bloated tome saying? It's saying that people have a tendency to see connections among unconnected things. It doesn't tell us why that is or shed any particular light on that tendency in any way. If the subject interests you, I suggest you read Carl Sagan's "The Dragons of Eden". "The Dragons of Eden" does tell us why that is, and it tells us how we can guard against it. ("The Dragons of Eden" is also much better written, more engaging, and more intellectually stimulating than "Foucalt's Pendulum".)

Why is "Foucalt's Pendulum" saying this? Possibly because its author, a structuralist, wants to satirize the philological contention that connotation and etymology matter. If so, he is presenting us with a grotesque caricature of a straw man.

What is the moral? In general, don't tempt fate. In particular, don't associate with grisly, squalid, thoroughly repulsive satanic cults. But you knew that already --I hope.

Eco displays an incredible feat of research and wit in this intellectual thriller that synthesizes three millenia of occult learning into a single breathless thriller. The thinking man's Da Vinci code.

This is simply a bad book. The way the author teeters between humor and mystery is just too frustrating; the mystery gets too bogged down in silly details and, as a result, kills any satirical element to the story. It's as if someone was making Raiders of the Lost Ark with the Three Stooges in place of Indiana Jones. The only chapter I really enjoyed was the description on how the main characters swindle Self Financing Authors.

I would give it 1 star, but for some reason I finished it, so I have to give it another star.

This is very slow. If you like books that have 'endlessly diverting' chapters, then this could be the book for you. However Tom Clancy could be said to do this, yet I love Tom Clancy books (except his last which was just OK).

After the first few chapters I figured out basically what would happen at the end. Then there was 300 pages. Then the last few chapters proved it out. No surprises. Skipping the 300 pages would not have altered how satisfied I was at reading the book.

Yes there is Templars, etc, and you would think that if you liked The Davinci Code, you would like this. But The Davinci Code has enough detail to keep it intellectually interesting, but fast paced enough to keep it going. This book has way too much detail, and no drive to it at all. For instance, the first sentence of chapter 64 is 'While Gevurah is the Sefirah of awe and evil, Tiferet is the Sefirah of beauty and harmony.' And no, just because you read the previous 606 pages, this does not get easier to read.

I got told that, don't worry, just keep reading to the end, and you will feel good about finishing it. Well I did finish it. Do I feel good? If feeling good is finishing a book that others will not, then yes, but there are MANY other books that I would have preferred to read (or re-read).

A definite disappointment.

Umberto Eco has obviously never met a word he didn't like. If an idea could be expressed in 20 words, he used 200. Unfortunately, I wasted the time to read it through twice and was no more impressed the second time. I'm not stupid, I understood the plot, I didn't need a dictionary or thesaurus, and I was absolutely bored out of my mind. He probably wrote this book in the same manner in which Jacopo Belbo wrote his Plan, by entering it into the word processor without ever looking back. If you enjoy having a thousand ridiculous conspiracy theories thrown against a wall in a hopeless mishmash, then this book is for you.

I've been reading this book since it came out, and every time I read, it gives me something new to think about. It's like making love with your soul-mate; gets better each time, and never can get enough :-)

The author appears to be showing off all his knowledge of the Middle Ages; not all of it is so interesting to the average reader as I had to skip many pages to get back to the plot. His first book, The Name of the Rose was far superior to this one

Oh, Eco, player of the Horn of Plenty... You human cornucopia, Homunculus Nebula, composer of the sounds of Amalthea! You concocter of this litarary Cratellus, this Black Cantarel of a book. Couldn't you have used a few fewer words to get the message through? This is a Horn of Much Too Much Plenty.

This book has it all! Mystery, thriller, suspense, world history, masons, world conspiracy, voodoo, magic, computers trying to reproduce the true name of God, jewish mysticism , druids of the forests, underground tunels that connect strategic points of the planet, publishers and writers, knights of the temple, action all around the world through the past 2 milenia. YOU NAME IT. Centuries of conspiracy and battle for the domination of the world , unspeakable secrets passed upon generation to generation from a few chosen ones, build up until the last climactic pages of the book.
ADVICE:
The book is really worth for its money and it will keep you awake for a few days. You will refuse to close the book until you reach the end. In the beginning you will not understand a thing, what is going on, who are these people, what are they trying to do. Never mind, just carry on. Eco meant the book to be this way! Enjoy the book and if you dont understand some historical remarks never mind, just continue, dont stumble upon the little details and the dates, get the big picture. You will have plenty of time to think about it after you have finished but the main thing is to go entirely through the book and finish it. It will leave you with your mouth open. Dont let yourself think :I cant understand this, I am an idiot therefore I will not continue. No, just finish the book , at the end you will be rewarded as is the case with all of Ecos books. After all there is no such thing as "I dont understand the book", there is only "I didnt let myself free enough to understand it".
Eco writes his books this way, they are only meant for the strong of spirit, people with perseverance that are willing to strugle in order to reach the ultimate truth that only the very few have mastered. His novels are deliberately cryptic but only to the point that they discourage the faint of hurt. For the few strong men that are willing to engage into the battle, all the mysteries and the hypes reveil themselfs at the end,like the petals of a rose in the spring. This is the REWARD, something central on Eco's novels.
IN ORDER TO PROVE MY POINT ECO HIMSELF ADMITTED that he included the first hundred pages of pure history in the "Name of the Rose" just to discourage the readers that would not have the strenght to continue with the book. That was the PRICE! that the readers have to pay in order to reach the monastery up in the mountains that the story takes place. His editor suggested that he should completely remove this big part of the book but Eco denied!
Going back to the PENDULUM, You should never forget that this book is a really mystery book. Not only for the heros of the book but also for you , the reader. There were times that I felt that I was involved in this world conspiracy and I may be in danger like the hero of the book. That is the trully amazing element of Eco. It gets the reader involved. And at the end you will have a completely different point of view about the world.
Eco has said that the ultimate mystery book is the one that the READER is himself the killer!
I definetely recommend the book, it will not dissapoint you.

Relinquish the notion that this is either a) intellectually invigorating or b) intellectually intimidating. Its great swaths of seemingly interminable lists may try a reader's patience; they will not exercise his mind.

It helps a bit if you've studied French, but if you haven't you won't miss much. Similarly, toward the beginning we are confronted with the source code in the BASIC computer language for a small, crude, inelegant permutation algorithm. If you know BASIC, you'll immediately recognize how the algorithm works; if you don't know BASIC, it doesn't matter; the algorithm has nothing to do with the story. A more, shall we say, seasoned writer would have omitted it.

Let's cut to the chase. What is this bloated tome saying? It's saying that people have a tendency to see connections among unconnected things. It doesn't tell us why that is or shed any particular light on that tendency in any way. If the subject interests you, I suggest you read Carl Sagan's "The Dragons of Eden". "The Dragons of Eden" does tell us why that is, and it tells us how we can guard against it. ("The Dragons of Eden" is also much better written, more engaging, and more intellectually stimulating than "Foucalt's Pendulum".)

Why is "Foucalt's Pendulum" saying this? Possibly because its author, a structuralist, wants to satirize the philological contention that connotation and etymology matter. If so, he is presenting us with a grotesque caricature of a straw man.

What is the moral? In general, don't tempt fate. In particular, don't associate with grisly, squalid, thoroughly repulsive satanic cults. But you knew that already --I hope.

Eco displays an incredible feat of research and wit in this intellectual thriller that synthesizes three millenia of occult learning into a single breathless thriller. The thinking man's Da Vinci code.

This is simply a bad book. The way the author teeters between humor and mystery is just too frustrating; the mystery gets too bogged down in silly details and, as a result, kills any satirical element to the story. It's as if someone was making Raiders of the Lost Ark with the Three Stooges in place of Indiana Jones. The only chapter I really enjoyed was the description on how the main characters swindle Self Financing Authors.

This book, with all of the travels it takes you on, especially the intillectual explorations ranks up there for me at least to be one of the greatest books ever written. Second, of course to The Magic Mountain

I read this book several years ago. This was an awful book; not on a conceptual basis, but on a "let me try and explain it to you in 25 words or less". Where was the editor? Certainly you could not stand in front of a classroom and try and explain it the way the author does or, as the translator. My advice is just skip it. There are many other books out there that delve into the same type of secret society schtick.

A lot of people seem to dislike this book because it is so dense, so full of references. That happens to be the reason I love it. What's so wrong about having to stop and look something up? That only enhances the reading experience.

This has to be the worst book I have ever read. One of the other reviewers talked about the necessity of having a dictionary at hand - that is an understatement. The book is written at an intellectual and vocabulary level well beyond that of most college graduates - including those holding advanced degrees. The amount of arcane information is incredible and the reader (at least this reader) spends an inordinate amount of time attempting to comprehend what is written. As far as comprehending the "plethora of insights contained in the book", I found the text so laborious that whatever insights were intended were completely lost on me. I had read reviews for this book prior to buying it that praised the revelations, insights, humor, creativity, etc. of the author and his writing style. After plowing through the book - no small task, it is very difficult reading - I have to say whatever the publisher meant by "packed with meaning" is completely lost on me. The story is not all that riveting, although the suspense does build throughout if one is dilligent enough to filter out the academic garbage. The ending is not surprising and is somewhat disapponting. Overall, upon completing the book, I found myself thinking that Mr. Eco is very impressed with himself and his academic mind and outdid himself in this attempt to show the world his vast command of language, semiotics and arcane data. I can only imagine that a student of semiotics or perhaps a select and quite small audience of highly educated literary scholars would find this book at all rewarding or enjoyable.

As far as the rest of the intelligent, educated, thoughtful and/or introspective readers in this world go, my advice is not to waste your time - this book is not worth the effort.

There is too much packed into this book for my taste. I worked to keep track of the thread of this mystery through esoteric detail of physics, religion, history and legend but in the end, I found that it took too long for me to discover what pertinence all this information was going to have to the tale. In fact, too many facts. Sad, because I love all of this type of background to a good mystery, but there was something self-indulgent about the amount of time spent dwelling on every little thing. Of course, as we all know, my opinion is unimportant considering the terrific success the book celebrated. Still, its successor in form, The DaVinci Code while packed with minutia, was much more user-friendly.

Once upon a time, Umberto Eco slammed a 500+ page manuscript on his editor's desk. "What's this?" the editor asked. "My latest masterpiece!" Eco declared. "You're sure it's not the Paris phonebook?" the editor queried. "Silence!" Eco roared. "In this work I've distilled every conceiveable theory dealing with the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, Freemasonry, the Illuminati, and the Kennedy Assassination into one volume that you can sell for $19.95 hardbound and one year later, $5.95 paperback. This is a work of unprecedented accomplishment. Kneel before Zod! Er--Eco!" The editor blinked at him. "Really? Which Kennedy, John or Robert?" "Well, maybe I was lying about the Kennedy bit," Eco replied, "But it's got everything else, even the Holy Grail." The editor flipped through the manuscript. "Hmm, a bit wordy, you start out with someone programming in BASIC, (geez, it's 1988 Eco and we won't even get this overseas until 1990--nobody programs in basic anymore), and that doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the rest of the book, you get the plot moving and then there's a 300 page digression, and the ending reads like a punchline to a joke that isn't really all that funny. And besides, we've already got Dan Brown working on Holy Grail conspiracy stuff. Granted, he's a hack compared to your writing ability, and he won't be finished stringing his conspiracies together for at least another decade, but we predict big things for Danny. Maybe even a movie." "Fool!" Eco fumed. "I am the great Umberto Eco! I wrote "The Name of the Rose"! I'm a professor of semiotics!" and he began to expound upon meta-arguments concerning language that immediately made the editor's eyes glaze over. "Sounds like a smart guy," the editor thought as he began to blow spit bubbles. "Maybe he's right. Hmm...I think I'd like a piece of pie." Eco continued to rant for twenty more minutes about the sign and the signified. He ended with a triumphal flourish about the arbitrariness of systems of classification that would have made Michel Foucault proud. "You still here?" the editor asked. "Just waiting for my check," Eco answered. "Oh right. Talk to Carol in payroll." The editor tossed Eco a recipt and dropped the manuscript in a box on his desk labelled "Pseudo-Intellectual Post-Modernism/Satire/Other". "Money in the bank," he thought. Eco turned and ambled smugly out of the office. He smiled as he tucked the receipt into his shirt pocket. "Rube."

Unlike many reviewers of "Foucault's Pendulum", I loved Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code". This book, however, is MUCH different. Eco loves to show off his vocabulary, and his obvious intelligence and research. In doing so, he makes the book convoluted and slow. People who like to read a book, analyze it, enjoying the grammatical structure and imagery, and the obscure references and rare vocabulary, will love this book. However, I read fiction for the STORY and for ENTERTAINMENT. Dan Brown's research may not be spot-on, but he tells one hell of a story. A real page turner. And if I want to know what the real facts are, I'll research them.
To read an Eco book is a chore. I have enough chores in my life, I don't need another. The tangents he takes off on are irrelevant to the story, and detract so much from the flow of the book, I wanted to throw the damn thing across the room. The people who like this book are (no offense, and not in all cases) the same people who think all films are bad unless they are choc-full of symbolism, and must have sub-titles. I know many people like this.
Now, keep in mind, I'm not exactly a brainless idiot that can't appreciate fine literature. I'm highly educated, and read TONS of books. Eco's book would be perfect for someone who wanted to read a chapter a week, and has time to investigate and study all the references held within that chapter. I don't have that time. And if I wanted to study textbooks, I'd read textbooks.
However, on the positive side, Eco is obviously intelligent, does tons of research, and there is so much interesting information in this book, it'll make you want to research some of this stuff yourself.
If, like me, you've read Dan Brown's books, and loved them, and want to read this book, I advise against it. The first paragraph alone will make you wonder what the hell he's talking about. It doesn't get any better. You have to wade through so many words, so many elusive references that aren't explained, and so many tangents that go on for so long, you forget where you are in the story.
Of course, I respect the other opinions here, as well. I'm a "movie-lover" (Spielberg, Jackson), Eco's fans are likely "film-goers" (Fellini, Kurosawa). Therein lies the difference, perhaps.
I shouldn't be overly harsh, I suppose. Foucault's Pendulum has some great content, and cool ideas. It is not without merit. I just don't think it will fit the bill if you're looking for a "page-turner" or a quick enjoyable read...

I made it through about 450 pages of this thing until I realized that having only one life to live, and having a limited amount of reading time available in that alloted life span, I didn't want to waste anymore of it on this book which, as far as I can tell, never goes anywhere. It consists of incessant litanies of apparent connections between historical events, people, secret societies, etc. which, after hundreds of pages, left me (a) not caring, and (b) finally deciding that this pathological list-making was going nowhere and taking forever to get there. This book is an immense waste of time.

You`ve read the other reviews and have come to this one last saying to yourself, "Should I or shouldn`t I?" Let me give you a simple analogy of what`s in this book.
Normal Author: Beth went to the refrigerator and took out a can of soda which she then opened.
Umberto Eco: Bethania of the Compostia De `Inoragana started to believe her quest was part of the Dementia Sistine Chapel where puritanical sojourns had taken on cyclopean missadermatcals from Alexander Demontis from the fourth century Abontnochriest. Moving with forecast vigilance like that of Christoff Moganoze the chalise in it`s equipage haloperidal of tullage was grasped by it`s cyndrilical base and with a motile operandis of implementation the elixer spewed forth like that of the Fountain Comedatrillite in the Penmontonxualor De Coca`lis.
If your idea of fun is reading 500 plus pages of this?...you`ll love this book.
Another example?: Two of the characters are speaking to a detective when he says, "Not only alcoholic, but arteriosclerotic".
Maybe on planet Bizarro people speak like this. That`s one of the many problems with this "story" besides the fact that there is no plot or character developement. Even if you understood and had a diverse knowledge of all the goobledegook thrown at you it has nothing to do with anything else. You`ve been warned.

As a writer and editor for 40 years who has read hundreds of novels, I wanted to find some merit in FP, but cannot. This is the first book in memory that I could not finish. I got about a third of the way through and decided that it was simply going nowhere. By page 270, a reader reasonably expects some sort of plot to develop, a set of characters to be defined, a tale being told. But what Eco gives us is merely an impression that he is very smart, knows a lot of history, philosophy and theology, and can spin a phrase or paragraph that tantalizes but does little more.

Somewhere around page 150 after Colonel Ardenti outlines an interesting premise about the existence of the Knights Templar, I gained interest. But then the protagonist takes a silly side trip to Brazil and were are immersed in 100 pages of mumbo-jumbo that derail whatever thin plot was being developed.

No need to repeat what many other 1-star reviewers have mentioned -- the arcane references, obscure foreign language references, etc. -- all of which leave even the most intelligent reader mystified. I consider myself to have an excellent vocabulary but when I find myself shaking my head page after page trying to decode Eco's abstruse language, I can only close the book in frustration and turn to a Hemingway, Steinbeck or dozens of other great novelists who told their stories so much better. And this from someone who has waded through War and Peace, Ulysses, Proust and other tomes that were extremely challenging yet readable. I find Eco virtually unreadable.

I purchased this book based on the large number of positive reviews. Several reviewers even compared it to The Da Vinci Code, which I loved. This book made me feel like I was in a graduate Greek philosophy class again, reading Aristotle or Plato. The book has no real plot. It is simply a grouping of chapters that give the author a chance to show off how intelligent and cultured he is. The only reason you may want to buy this book is if a sleeping aid is not working for you.

Ugh this book. I have a Ph.D in alchemy and theurgy and I still didn't get what he was talking about! I like reading about secret societies and I'm always up for a good thriller but when you have >600 pages with only one hundred of plot, its hard to get through. I enjoyed his other books, especially the 3 astronauts and the aesthetics of chaosmos but I didn't finish this one.

Maybe its better in the original german. Please, please don't waste your time with this book. Just go read The Vinci Code instead!

Like others, I read this book based on the how much I enjoyed Eco's "The Name of the Rose". Page after page I slogged through, holding out hope that Eco was somehow going to redeem this little piece of quicksand. Only to realize that sometimes, even a great writer, will just let you sink.

If you enjoy slogging through pedantic trivia, this is the book for you. Every time I thought I was (finally!!) geting into the story, we would go off on another 75 pages or so of uninteresting drivel. I quit after 400 pages because life is just too short to waste on a book like this.

This is one of extremely few books (less than 10 in my life, and I am an avid reader) I have EVER stopped reading and did not finish. I purchased because it was a bestseller and appeared to have an interesting topic. I read over 1/3 of this book. There was very little conversation, which I could have lived with, but the author was extremely focused on applying sexual attributes to pretty much every single item he mentioned. I found that not only annoying but disgusted that the editor didn't have him change at least 90% of the totally unnecessary sexual references. They added NOTHING to the story. As a puzzler it was merely ok. Perhaps the unnecessary sexual references raised it to bestseller level, but I wouldn't give it shelf space.

The characters are flat, the setting changes can be confusing and it's an overall waste of time. I love conspiracy theory and secret societies and this is just a disappointment after all the hype and glowing reviews.

This boring, over-long waste of paper is either Eco having a big joke, or he was drunk. I was unable to finish it. I only reached page 55, but by then there should have been the beginnings of an interesting plot, and the development of some interesting characters. This mish-mash has neither, and nothing in those first few dozen pages indicates that it ever will. This is the written equivalent of modern art--ugly, pretentious, meaningless, over-hyped, fawned-over by shallow sophisticates.

Umberto Eco is a major cause of headaches. Well, he was for me, at least.
About seven years ago, I bought myself a paperback copy of Foucault's Pendulum at the university book store. It looked like an engaging plotline, the reviews were excellent, and it had a really neat cover.
I realize now that most of the reviewers were probably intelligentsia-wannabes who didn't want to admit to the other reviewers they didn't have a clue what Umberto Eco was going on about. I remember seeing pictures of movie stars holding copies of Foucault's Pendulum in order to look brainy.
Expecting some sort of smart cyber tale with a mystical flavour, I started reading. It was the densest prose I'd ever encountered, even worse than the Webster's unabridged dictionary's definition for "existentialism."
Foucault's Pendulum is definitely not a cyber story. A word processor is the only computer, and there aren't any net-running scenes. Nevertheless, the mystical stuff is certainly there. Umberto Eco waxes philosophical for pages upon pages about word processors (and everything else) in a mystical fashion, all the while going off on Rosicrucian and Greater Key of Solomon tangents in languages like Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and medieval French.
I slaved over Foucault's Pendulum for about a year, always making sure I had a copy of Webster's unabridged dictionary on hand. Unfortunately, it didn't help very much. You see, many of the words in the book are not in the dictionary.
I think that in order to truly comprehend the intricacies of Foucault's Pendulum, a reader needs to be a polyglot with several PhDs in history, philosophy, occult studies, and sciences under her/his belt. Oh yes, and the reader should also have more than a passing familiarity with Sam Spade detective novels.
This makes me wonder what sort of man Umberto Eco really is.
The book proved to be too much for me in my undergrad days. I only got about a third of the way into the novel before giving up in consternation.
Some time later, my husband made the cocky assertion he could read any English novel and fully comprehend it. I called his bluff and handed him my dusty copy of Foucault's Pendulum. I don't think he even made it as far as I did before he unceremoniously jammed the book back into its place on the shelf.
Then, about a year or two ago, I watched The Name of the Rose, and the richness of the plot made me want to try reading the book again.
So, I dragged the dusty book out of my bookshelf. I opened to where the bookmark was, and couldn't remember what the hellwas going on. I groaned aloud when I realized I would have to start all over from scratch.
Once again, I began struggling my way through heavily obfuscated prose. The three-volume dictionary did not leave my side. I was determined to finish the book, and finish it I did in a scant month.
Sure, I was irritable and walked around with a perpetual wrinkle ensconced between my eyebrows, but I finished it, darn it! And, with plenty of research on the side, I even understood (most of) it.
Never before have I worked so hard to read a book.
Now I have just begun to read Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln's The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. While reading the forward, I experienced a bit of déja vu. The subject matter is almost identical to the plotline of Foucault's Pendulum, albeit much easier to comprehend.
A few pages later, I read how Umberto Eco was inspired to write his migraine of a novel from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
Why couldn't I have read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail first? It would have saved me a few brain cells.
I guess it's because of the cover. The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail has a rather vanilla cover, and I'm drawn by shiny things. Foucault's Pendulum has the coolest foil embossing.....