Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose

What this episode covers

There is a predictable story arc that occurs after an author dies young: their work, their reputation gets renewed, debates rage about the legacy that this tragic figure will leave behind. Think of David Foster Wallace, for example. Love his work or hate it, his massive tomes are still written about, debated, dialogued upon as if we can gain insight into who he was and find portents in his words of his tragic fate to come. But for writers who have long and consistently productive literary output, authors who die wizened and aged, that story often unfolds in quite a different way vis à vis that authors’ reputation: they often fall off the radar altogether. Their works sit unread on shelves; they go out of print. They are passé. Who reads Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) these days or Derek Walcott (1930-2017)? VS Naipaul (1932-2018)? Carol Shields (1935-2003)? There are exceptions: writers who have a strong following in academia are often exempt from this generality as are authors whose work seems prescient (though it’s usually simply coincidental). And, significantly, it’s often not a permanent condition - inevitably someone in the future will “rediscover” the oeuvre and a whole new generation of readers will discover it. Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) is gaining new readers and new critical attention and many of her novels an entire new line of handsome editions by Penguin Random House. Writers like Umberto Eco seem to be included in the list of exceptions. Four years after his death at 84, there is still a plethora of attention paid to his work in both scholarly and popular media. A recent remake of his 1983 novel, The Name of the Rose (from which this recording is taken), was made into a six-part miniseries starring John Turturro, and was both a commercial and critical hit in Italy and abroad. Partly this is due to the sheer talent that Eco had in being both a serious scholar of semiotics but also a commercial success, a combination that is quite rare. Eco’s vaguely roguish and impish personality certainly helped, a personality that comes out in this reading recorded in Toronto nearly 40 years ago. He was one of those writers who was able to bridge popular culture and the ivy-entwined seriousness of academia without one side of his career detracting from the other. Another part of it seems that Eco simply didn’t take himself too seriously, and that’s a recipe for success and longevity in just about any field. This audio recording of Umberto Eco, recorded on stage at Harbourfront Reading Series in 1983, is used with the kind permission of La nave di Teseo and the Estate of Umberto Eco. It’s also used with the permission of Toronto International Festival of Authors which runs this year from Oct 22 to Nov 1. Check the full festival schedule out at festivalofauthors.ca.