What can one say when you have a novel that’s multi-layered and open to many interpretations? I thought The Name of the Rose was complex but Foucault’s Pendulum goes deeper.
On the surface it’s about a group of men who work in a vanity publishing house, which brings out books on various conspiracy theories that the world is obsessed with. After a while these men decide to create the ultimate prank – the mother of all conspiracy theories. One that starts of with the Templar Knights and gets more bizarre as the book progresses, the nadir being Hitler starting The Holocaust in order to extract information about The Templars from captured Jews.
As time passes this prank starts to affect the main characters badly and it leads to some disastrous and frightening results.
I saw this as a satire on how society becomes obsessed with the secret societies, for I have met people who constantly talk about these subjects and Eco captures the stereotypical conspiracy follower perfectly. In fact there’s a lot of gentle humour in this novel.
Yes I enjoyed it. I like a nice brainy novel that makes me feel more intelligent after reading it and Foucault’s Pendulum works on many levels. Classic!
The Bobsphere 