Foucault's Pendulum
by Umberto Eco
read: circa 2003
Guardian 1000 Novels
I'm a smart guy. I've been smart as long as I can remember. It doesn't seem like something I can even take credit for; it's just something innate. And with intelligence comes a healthy arrogance; there are quite a few people smarter than me, but there aren't very many people I will admit are smarter than me.
Umberto Eco is way smarter than me. The amount of knowledge and research that must have gone in to the writing of Foucault's Pendulum is staggering, and the way he weaves it all together is nothing short of genius.
Foucault's Pendulum, like The Crying of Lot 49, is about conspiracies and their effect on people's sanity. But while our guide through Pynchon's tale is an every(wo)man outsider, trying to figure out what's going on, the narrator of Eco's novel is an insider, part of a group creating a fake conspiracy. Casaubon and two of his friends have encyclopedic knowledge of the legends and histories on which many conspiracies are based, and they weave an elaborate "Plan," a conspiracy to end all conspiracies. It's compelling and exhaustively detailed, and ultimately the characters (and maybe even the reader!) start to wonder if maybe the Plan is more than just an intellectual exercise.
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