My biggest impression in this part of our reading has been twofold:

1) memory- what it is, how it works, what it would be like to be without it

2) how seemingly obsessed with Sibilla our man is; what is the mystery there? She must play a big part in all of this.





Ginny, I hope you didn't miss the NPR interview that I posted. I think that's the one EllieMae was referring to.(I posted two) Eco does several readings from the book and talks extensively about it. It's a "don't miss" kind of thing, imho. Some of you may not want to hear it till you've finished but I enjoyed hearing his thoughts at the outset.

Ginny said:

It might be exciting to actually DO some kind of Rorschach Test, just amongst ourselves for fun

I love this idea...and it could even be a painting or book cover or movie poster that we all would recognize, but to which we would have different memories attached, as in Yambo's recollections.

What one thing struck you -- just one? Oh boy, probably how enchanted he, Yambo, is with Sibilla.

But another thing that rather surprised me -- just before starting Flame, the last book I read was "Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime," and what surprised me was the similarity in the thought processes of the autistic boy in that book and Yambo in the very early stages of waking from his "incident."

Having been an Alzheimer's nurse for 20 years I was most drawn in by the fog and the memory process. Eco must have done his homework and done it well...and then to be this consistent (at least in the first 116 pages) with the changes in dialogue...himself, the memory self, and the others. Yambo has totally endeared himself to me...in any and all of his forms! My favorite line: from Anita, Peruvian woman who helps with the house, "Pobrecito el Senor Yambo, ay Jesusmaria., here are the clean towels, Senior Yambo." It was so real it snapped me out of my 'sympathy fog'. All I could think was, something 'normal'!-- thank God!

Ginny, thank you for your lovely compliment about my writing.

Scootz, thank you again for the link to the Eco interview.

To All, I cannot urge you enough to listen to the Eco interview, the link for which we can all thank Scootz.

p.s. hope I haven't broken any 'one post each' rule...

p.s. hope I haven't broken any 'one post each' rule...

If there is one, I've already broken it so please someone, inform me asap before I get on everyone's last nerve inadvertantly. If we can only post once a day, I will need to wait till I formulate everything I have to say before posting.( Sure hope that's not the rule- yikes!)

You're all very welcome for the thanks on that NPR interview. I'm happy I could contribute in this way.

One of the most poignant early sections was (on p. 35)
"testing things, felling the pressure of my hand on a cognac glass, tasting ... honey and ... marmalade ... squeezing a lemon ..."
Yambo has book-linked memory, which is one of the joys of reading this, but he has to learn or re-learn what he does and does not like to taste, to eat, and to drink.

Memories, especially of childhood often involve tastes and sounds and smells.
I remember the new smells when we moved out to a rural area (from an apartment in the city) when I was in first grade.
I recall all sorts of rich farm smells, including newly cut fields;
the sounds of honeybees, which I caught in jars, then let them out the next day;
the taste and smell of the strawberries we grew ourselves!
So many of my childhood memories are mixed up with the snapshots we took, I'm only sure the memories are not modified by pictures when I can remember these kinds of other sensations!

Pedln,
I also have read "Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime," and I agree that the the thought processes are similar. I don't have the book here; could you elaborate, if you would?

Thank you, GINNY, for starting us off. I regret being late in co-welcoming everyone. I was certainly up early and prepared but kept from posting by several unexpected interruptions - until now.

ALLIEMAE, fear not, there is no one-post rule. GINNY started us off on one topic first as an initial focus.

May I briefly say for those who wonder about the title: Eco borrowed it from an Italian children's book of the nineteen-thirties titled "The avventure di Ciuffettino" = The Adventures of Ciuffettino.

To wake up one day and not to know who and where one is, without memory, must be one of the most terrifying experiences imaginable. And that happened to the protagonist in our story.
Luckily he is not alone when he wakes up but a doctor is nearby and so is his wife, a psychologist by training, whom he does not remember. He has retained and can recite a number of disconnected phrases and poems in various languages and a bewildering number of dates based on an encylopedic knowledge in the fields of literature and history, but he does not remember his name; he has forgotten every last detail of his own childhood, including is own parents.

Since there is nothing wrong with him physically, he is discharged from the hospital and, encouraged by his wife, returns to the old family home in a Proustian search to reconnect with his past and reawaken his emotions.

I think I speak for GINNY when I say any thoughts and comments on the book up to pg. 116 are welcome.

Ginny, I think your idea of our own special Rorschach test is excellent. I would join with pleasure.

Losing memory is to lose oneself and, consequently, one's emotions. I can well understand that Yambo didn't feel love to his grandchildren, and made a thought experiment of jumping into his shoes; I discovered that I wouldn't love those persons I love, and not even my favorite music, books, or art. Probably not even the same foods.

I think we *are* our memories. It is worth while also for normal people to dwell in them. Even if we wouldn't discover lost experiences (but we could), it would give an understanding that could influence our present and future.

Long live memory!

Yambo has had a stroke and his missing memory, or rather his loss of memory for the personal aspects of his life, is due to that.

However, my mother suffered from Parkinson's and lost her memory as a result of the final stages of that disease. She lost her memory backwards, first forgetting who my children were, then who I was, then (I suspect) who my father was. I am not sure if she forgot him, but she was unresponsive. He visited with her at least once a day, every day, for several hours.

One time when I was visiting and pretty sure that my mother didn't remember anyone including my father, I told her some of the stories she had told me about her brothers and sister when she was a little girl. When I was young, I loved listening to these stories and made her tell them over and over.

As I mentioned the names of her sister and her brothers and retold one of the stories I watched expressions come onto her face, including a smile. She apparently still "remembered" her early childhood.

The Fog--The fog that surrounds Yambo at the beginning is his foggy memory, but there is so much fog and there are so many other literary allusions and short quotes here that I think Eco may be paying tribute to one of Dickens' greatest novels, Bleak House, which opens with pages and pages describing the fog in London.

Maryal

Here's the first paragraph of Chap. 1 of Dickens' Bleak House:

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

Yambo quotes a number of literary references to fog and they are quite beautiful. Fog is obviously extremely important in this book. As Deems said, Yambo is surrounded by fog because of his foggy memory. And fog has stirred his memory. It means something important in his life. I'm looking for the fog to mean something important.

I have not yet finished the book. And I'm in a quandry about whether or not I should listen to the interview Scoots provided because it might give away the story. Eco has created mysteries in his novels. I'm wondering if this book will be a mystery. It seems as though it must be. So what will the fog really be? What will Yambo find out about himself as he discovers who he is? Will he discover something shocking or unpleasant?

I'm having several uncomfortable feelings as I read, also. Yambo and his wife, family and friends are too comfortable with things as they are. After all, Yambo has totally lost his memory. This would be terrifying, I would imagine. But, we are not seeing terrifying or frightened. We are seeing calm.

I also found myself, after a time, getting bored with the book. It doesn't seem that anyone else is from the posts so far. But, Yambo goes on and on and on and on looking at old books and illustrations, etc. trying to bring back memory. That's fine and dandy. But it makes me think that Eco was looking back at his own childhood and remembering things, listing his books and magazines, giving brief remembrances. (Eco sure has a zillion books to browse through! - 50,000!) Eco was having fun with this. But I wasn't after awhile. I kept thinking WHEN WILL SOMETHING HAPPEN??? Have I become part of my son's generation - needing action?

By the way, what exactly caused Yambo's loss of memory? I can't believe I've forgotten. At the top of this page, it says heart attack. Someone mentioned stroke. I hurriedly flipped through pages and couldn't find exactly what it was. His family and friends keep referring to what happened as "the incident." (which sounds mysterious and ominous.) Why not just call it his "stroke" or whatever it was? Why "the incident"?

I was thinking for awhile - Is this like a science fiction movie? Is this all set up and arranged? Are the people around Yambo just pretending to be family and friends or are they part of a plot? Have they given him a drug so he things he has amnesia? Are they after something from Yambo? I guess I've seen too many movies.

No, Marni, you're not alone in the "wondering when something will happen" thing. I, too,felt I must be the only one with this reaction, and I am not sure what "the incident" was...was he in an accident, did he fall...with some sort of resulting amnesia or did he have a "brain event"/TIA/stroke or ???

jane

See, if you've only read the first 116 pages, you still think the "incident" will be revealed. And also, it's too early to think that the book is boring. The only way that I know that now is from those of you who have read beyond. Too bad. I still think it's great! Love the writing, smile at the humor and there is a lot of it and wonder how soon it is going to become boring. I guess I'll have to take your word for it.

I don't think that listening to the NPR interview will give anything away. I'd appreciate some backup on that though, just in case I missed something.

The fog is a metaphor for his memory loss.

Many reviews I read said the book was "too introspective" so I'm not surprised by the comments here from two of you who found it got a bit tedious. I may feel that way, too. Too early to tell just yet.

I personally gave up on that annotated link thingy. After reading all the references for the first two chapters, I was really unsure that I was gaining anything. Like someone else said, I just decided to let them all "wash over" me and just go with the flow. I don't think you need to know all that stuff to enjoy the book, albeit that it's interesting.

Was anyone else as annoyed with Yambo as I was with his silly obsession with Sibilla? Maybe things are different in Europe but this definitely didn't endear him to me. Not to mention the um....well the uh....the outdoor bathroom thingy. What was that all about? Just something he recalled doing as a kid?

MARNI, it is my impression, if I may say, that this book is not so much about symbols and their interpretation or their meaning for the story, such as it is, but about a person trying to recover his memory and using literature to do so, all kinds of literature in a bedazzling display of knowledge.

This leads me to believe that the fog hanging over the story is not a symbol that points to to or is indicative of anything specific, but rather a representation of the protagonist's dilemma and state of mind. The poor man is in the dark, literally laboring in a fog.

Whatever mystery there is, I believe, is the unknown past he is anxious to uncover.

MARNI and JANE, the "incident" that caused the amnesia is not identified, no specifics are given by the author - perhaps because Eco considered the EFFECT (and the search for the recovery of Yambo's memory) more worthy to explore in 400 plus pages than the CAUSE. Whatever the exact ictus may have been, Eco begins the story proper with the protagonist's awakening.

In the early pages the protagonist states, "literature helps more than neurology" (in the recovery of memory), and literary references of every possible sort help more than "familiar food and smell".

SCOOTZ, we posted within a minute of each other. I agree. Fog is a metaphor here.

I hope it's ok to ask a question myself here.

On page 21, Yambo thinks..

"I wondered if I had ever been religious; it was clear, whatever the answer, that I had lost my soul."

Eco mentions this in the interview and I'm not sure how I feel about this. What do you all think?

Is one's soul synonymous with their memories?

I have pondered on this some and I don't think I agree, but I'm open and interested in other's thoughts.

Dear Folks,

I have read the first 116. I have listened to the Interview(thanks so much for that and the insight it provided) and would like to comment on the following.

In the first 18 pages Eco had 18 literary references that I recognized . On page 18 he drew a poicture which, in part, was a copy of the most famous drawing from "The Little Prince" by St. Exupery. Very Cutesy!

On page 87 he came up with an utterly moronic thought on Asthma "A rich persons disease." What is the meaning of that?

He presents the servant as practical, yet so primitive, as to be unbeleivable. Is he having fun with us? Laughing at us? Perhaps it's all in good fun. Must we excuse him for defecating in the vineyard? Perhaps he wants us to laugh with him? Perhaps he wishes to present as a little boy.

As Alice said:"Things are getting curiouser and curiouser" I will follow the thread and see if the journey was worthwhile at the end.

Judy

I'd have thought in the first 116 pages there would have been some explanation of the "incident"/coma or whatever it is that is causing this. Perhaps the mystery is what caused this...induced or accident or intentional by someone else???

What is the reason, do you think, for the illustrations on pages 105 &106?

jane

It seems apparent that 'Yambo's' subconscious mind is throwing up images and quotations that reflect his condition. The fog, obviously, is his befogged mental state. The fog quotations are greatly overdone; I was getting thoroughly tired of them before he was finished.

I was intrigued that the first 'person' he recognized in his fog was the fictional character Arthur Gordon Pym. Why Arthur Gordon Pym? What is the significance there?

Naturally, I had to go exploring. In an article on Poe I found this commentary:

"Poe's only long work of fiction, the sea story The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838),..... 'But modern critics have uncovered suggestions of mythical, religious, and visionary meaning in the work's ending.' "

It appears evident we are going to see a lot of 'visionary meaning' in this work, perhaps including mythical and religious symbols as well. A flame itself is frequently a religious symbol of something lighting the way.

I also enjoyed all the prints of costumes of many different eras from Eco's own collection. A highly appropriate collection for an author, don't you think. A resource for his period works.

I'm not bored at all. I'm looking forward to taking a good look at all the allusions and illusions, to see if I can understand where they are leading our amnesiac friend.

Babi

The 'accident' was not a problem for me. Vascular accident is a medical euphemism for stroke. I don't think about cardiovascular accident.

I finished the book a while ago, and wasn't bored at any point.

There has to be at least one nay-sayer in each discussion, and I guess I'm it.

This is a much better book than the ones we have been reading. Some of the writing is truly incredible. the problem for me is that when writing standards go up, my critical standards go up even higher, so I am more critical of really good books that I am of the middle-of-the-road books we have been reading. Eco is a good enough writer that he deserves to be judged against the best literature.

I have two problems with this book. One is with the protagonist, whom I can't stand. he is surrounded by women whose only function in the book is to serve him, so that he can live this cocooned life where he never has to do anything but take his mental and emotional temperature over and over again. I don't know if I can stand a zillion more pages of this. If this represents the upper-class Italian intellectual, thank goodness I don't know any. It presumably represents Eco, who in his two interviews doesn't mention any people as being important in his life, only abstract ideas.

The second is the endless references. most of them I know little about. But at one point, he mentions sailing ships, something I'm interested in. His text is just a list of random terms that have something to do with sailing in no particular order. I have to assume some of his other lists are equally inane. No-one who was interested in sailing ships would write about them that stupidly, and if he isn't interested, why mention them. It makes me suspect him of intellectual dishonesty.

It's like going through a mental attic where all the deteris of a lifetime is stored. We all have those mental attics (although with less stuff in them) but we don't treat them like that. We either impose some order on them or take one thing our and examine it. When Eco does that, he's fine. But those endless lists!! Lists of objects, lists of words, lists of ideas, lists of quotes!!!!WHY?

Unlike the rest of you, I find this inane listing completely unconvincing as the way a man with his problem would think. I read "The Dog That barked in the Night", but I gave it to the Prison Library project, so I can't check. But I don't remember the boy's thinking as having exactly this quality. And could anyone be interested in these lists, or find them worth reading?

Wow! I love it, Joan! Always adore having opposing opinions- so dang boring when everyone says how great the book was. LOL

You have confused me a bit, though. You say the writing is incredible, but then go on to pretty much negate that with the rest of your post. Maybe you could explain this to me.

Have to agree on the protagonist, though. I mentioned this earlier- I don't care for him. It has made me wonder what sort of person Eco himself really is.

My husband and I sail so I will be interested to see the sailing lists. Don't think I've run into those yet. At the moment, I'm finding the book mildly amusing and interesting as regards the illustrations/pictures. I'm certainly NOT rushing to get back and pick it up.

SCOOTZ: some of the individual passages are great, and will make great material for thought and discussion. But you have to wade through a lot to get to them, and I don't yet know if in the end it will be worth it. I agree with you about not rushing to pick it up-- I read most of the first section some time ago, and had to MAKE myself go back and finish it.

That's how I felt about the book. I had to sort of force myself to continue. That is the first time I have felt that way about a book in a long time (except for Eco's Baudolino! And I did love The Name of the Rose.

However, I'm glad to say I have reached a point where things are picking up. Yay!!

He does seem to have a thing for excrement.

I love the illustrations! I had a wonderful surprise when I came to the Vogue magazine picture on page 106 (the woman's head with the blue cloche.) I had a print of this picture on the wall of my bathroom for years! The blues and lavenders went with my wallpaper. But, it was the wording on the print that I loved the best. It was a line from the short story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

"Bernice felt a vague pain that she was not at present engaged in being popular."

If that is not the best line describing a flapper of the 20's!!

Oh dear-o...oh dear-o...I must have missed the part where our hero held a gun to these women's heads to make them all do his bidding. And why should one who has completely lost all memory of his reality...his person...or, as Eco says...his soul, be self-centered and self-absorbed? Why also should those who love him or care about him want to make it easier for him? I think I must wait and read some more...'tis a puzzlement indeed! I will say this about that...the author, the hero, the story certainly bring out passionate responses in us!

Well MEMORY is all about the self and can't help but be a bit self-centered and self-absorbed (sounds like Bounty paper towels or something), no, Alliemae? Of course our hero is an "It's all about me," kind of guy -- and, as this book is a "memoir in quotations" book, we, by extension, are in-bounds and not being whistled by any refs if we link author Eco to character Yambo.

I am with those who finished the book, so obviously my take on the first quarter is cast in that light. It's fair to say, however, that the premise of this book is extremely risky and not something many authors could pull off (and not something I'm sure Eco himself pulls off, though I'll leave that for Week #4).

Consider this: you decide to write a lumbering 400-plus page book about your personal attic, filled as it is with artifacts of your past. As you are using your imagination, you need not worry yourself about the fact that Mom threw all your baseball cards out. Oh, no. You're writing your attic as if it's ALL there -- report cards, school pictures, scrapbooks, childish art, books you read, comics you read, records you listened to, newspaper clippings you clipped, etc.

On and on you go, cataloguing your past. Have you lost your gentle reader yet? Well, that depends. We've all been bored by people whose favorite topic is Me, Myself, and I. The only thing that's going to save you is hitting on topics about yourself that are shared by the memories of your readers... what you have in common, then. It's either that, or you'd better be one spectacular person with an extraordinary attic OR have an extraordinary way of describing the ordinary detritus of popular culture as you knew it.

That's what we start with as a premise. And the reason I think I liked the opening 100 pages of the book (and that I'm not alone) is because, well, our hero is "bookish" and thus his memories, allusions, indeed whole outlook on life is bookish. Readers like to read about reading. Many of you have probably read books about books before. Heck, this Discussion area of S-Net (Books & Lit) makes us an automatic demographic for The Mysterious Flame of Queen I-Needa-Loana.

So yeah, the beginning's fun, what with the allusions to this and that poet, to London and Paris fog, to Edgar and Allan Poe. We like that. And there's the minor but compelling suspense of whether Yambo will get his Memory back (oh, let's face it -- over HOW he will get his Memory back). So we're all along for the ride and enjoying it.

But, but, but. Twain warned us that guests, like fish, start to stink after three days. So the question becomes, how long can we take the dust-laden airs of Eco's attic? How long can we go before we say, "All right, already!" to a grand egoist's ego?

The answer to Part I for me was, "A long time." I was willing to go along for the ride and felt Eco held up his end of the bargain by sustaining my interest (particulars to follow in subsequent posts).

You've of course figured out by now that I reserved the right to change my opinion (and did), but that's another post and another train of thought (sure to be derailed by my rambling thought-process which is even less linear than Yambo's).

So, per orders of the proprietors, this here has been my general Impression of the book -- specifically of Part I and its overall premise. Please don't compare it to Monet or Manet because your impression will be that my Impressionism is inferior.

Or foggy.

Or some adjective or other that's at the tip of my tongue (where the deer and the adjectives lope).

P.S. To the medical, logical, & scientific sorts: I'm sorry to say that "the Incident" remains the Incident throughout, as far as I can tell. Despite what your daddy's taught you about assuming, you'll have to ass-u-me that Yambo had a stroke (or, that an "incident" is Romantic Italian for "stroke").

Wow! I must admit that I am very impressed by the range of emotions and how respectfullly you all disagree. That's not always so easy in cyberpsace. Kudos!

I wanted to say that I'm not feeling like I'm forced to continue, but pick up the book each morning with my coffee with what I'd call "mild interest". The pictures are more of interest to me than the text and I don't think I'd like this book as well without them. I was very disappointed by his telling of a picture which reminded him of Sibilla, and he didn't include it! Not fair!

He (Eco) does seem an "egoist" to me and I find this is a hazard of people with great intelligence, which he is.

Thanks, Joan, I see your point. If you know where the sailing terms are, let me know.

Hi Kevin...Unfortunately I didn't know that when I put an expression in << this kind of brackets it would not show up in my posting. So I'll put it in parentheses (and I don't mean my mother and father!!...that's a joke son!) What I said after all those remarks about forcing the women and him being self-absorbed, etc. was followed by (Note tongue-in-cheek expression!) I was in one of my jocular moods and thought everyone would get my irony...unless in your posting you were, in your own way, agreeing with me.

Kevin, I didn't understand what you meant when you wrote: "...we, by extension, are in-bounds and not being whistled by any refs if we link author Eco to character Yambo." and since I find your observations and opinions interesting would you mind explaining that to me? Cheers...Alliemae

How long can we go before we say, "All right, already!" to a grand egoist's ego?

Scootz, still hanging tough after 150 pages but beginning to squirm a smidge in my seat and wondering what's going on in my "other" books

Before I forget, if hearing anything about the book would be a spoiler for you, then I'd say- don't listen till you've finished. Err on the side of caution. To me, the fog thing was so obvious that I didn't think that was giving anything away, but there you are, Ginny did feel that way so one can never tell.

Today's question-

I want to know if any of these million and one references resounded with YOU personally? Did any of them? If so which one?

Although the picture of Napoleon on p. 23 brought back memories of reading Le Petit Prince , in French, for my high school French class, I didn't have a "gut" reaction to this one. That reaction took place to La Escala de la Vida on p. 93. And, interestingly enough, I can't tell you why. Something to think about....and now I feel a bit like Yambo.

BTW- I'm in this for the long haul, so even if I don't sustain interest right the way through, I *will* see the group through to the end.

and isn 't that interesting that you use the same term, "gut reaction

Yes, it is. And here's another interesting thing that I encountered yesterday as I posted. We talk about our memories as "recollections" . I was struck that all Yambos memories are from "collections" and I wondered if our term "re-collection" is derived somehow from a word meaning memory? Anyone know?

I agree than Yambo is hard to like.
JoanK, you have made several good points, as usual.

However, I want to reassure everyone that we will slowly and eventually, get to some historical narrative
as we progress along this convoluted trail.

I do agree that this is not an easy read, as Eco seems to toss in anything and everything he finds in his attic.
Is it random?
Are we missing the connectors among all these tidbits and pictures?

Morning, Ginny. I'm one of those readers who just keeps reading along and doesn't interrupt to go look words up. Sometimes, if the word doesn't become clear in context, I lightly mark it or circle it and then either do or don't look it up later depending on my degree of curiosity.

But I don't like to interrupt the flow by looking up, unless what I am reading is extremely technical, as in non-fiction, science, economics, whatever. Then sometimes I have to look things up. But the well-written books in these areas generally provide definitions the first time a technical term is used.

As for the bits in italics--including the one you especially like from the story of the fisherman--they are all quotes from other authors. Eco has read widely, his creation Yambo has also read widely, and a certain functioning part of their memories comes in the form of lines from literature they've read.

I enjoy these quotes and recognize a number of them. But I don't think it's essential for the enjoyment of the reader to recognize each quote. Eco weaves them in--if you get a little thrill of pleasure because the quote leads you to a personal favorite, all the better--if you don't, no harm done. (Take what you like and leave the rest.)

One of the first quotes I responded to was "The fog comes on little cat feet," the first line of a Sandburg poem that I once memorized. My personal associations took me back to childhood in Chicago.

And also the reference to the little match girl on p. 5: "The sky is made of ash. Fog up the river, fog down the river, fog biting the hands of the little match girl." This sounds like the opening sentence of Hans Christian Anderson's story (haven't looked it up).

And "April is the cruelest month" (p.7), the opening line of Eliot's "The Waste Land." This last quote shows how Eco works the quotes in--upon coming to, he is informed that it is April 26. It doesn't matter if you place the quote or not.

Maryal

I enjoy the literary allusions in the book. He is telling a story. It's not just a string of quotes. I am happy to catch the familiar ones and didn't think enough about the ones I don't know to realize that the whole book is quote, as Traude(?) said. Although I will be left wondering, until I get to the end, if the purpose of the book was the plot or the quotes.

My initial impression of the book is that it's a lot easier to read and understand than other Eco's. In fact, he seems to be talking down to the reader in places. I have to go back to Roses to see if he overexplains things in that book. OR maybe this habit of his did not bother me so much back then.

I liked the line from one of my favorite little (very short)) poems, "the fog comes in on little cat feet" because it reminded me of the lovely rest of the poem and of sharing the joy of little poems with my son when we were living in campus housing at Berkeley, and AC Transit started putting lines of poetry and little poems on their busses. The first morning of the poetry campaign we found William Carlos Williams "El Hombre," then probably my son's favorite.

I'm leading a discussion on Jaroslav Hasek's The Good Soldier Schvejk and brushing up on my very very limited Czech history, so the one allusion, or reference, that really jumped out at me was Eco's mention of Defenestration of Prague on p. 5. I like the word 'defenestration' in spite of its gruesome origins. Words should be this specific, this useful for one situation, I sometimes think.

Ginny says, "Our Book Clubs on SeniorNet are somewhat unique in that we don’t just say “I liked it, I hated it, I’m gone, “ but we try to continue and find something in the coming weeks TO discuss, that’s unique to us.

This is not true for the clubs I have seen. I reject any on-line book club like this, and any face-to-face like this. My on-line book club does not do this, although we do like to ask members if they liked the book. I have participated in book clubs at Yahoo and a couple of other places on the Web in which we've devoted a month to discussing a book in a format similar to SeniorNet's. In fact, this is much like book discussions in school. It's not unique to SeniorNet. It's simply one of many styles. I have to say, although I don't quite understand the purpose of book clubs that simply post whether they like the book or not, then move on, that everyone has their own style. Own of the members of my club is also the leader of an on-line book club like that. They've been around for years. They like it. I have encountered more F2F book clubs as Ginny describes, enough that I gave up on that venue, at least.

Kleo

Maryal-- It seems you liked many of the quotes I liked. Now I quote something not from the book that I liked:

"I enjoy these quotes and recognize a number of them. But I don't think it's essential for the enjoyment of the reader to recognize each quote. Eco weaves them in--if you get a little thrill of pleasure because the quote leads you to a personal favorite, all the better--if you don't, no harm done. (Take what you like and leave the rest.)" Maryal

Kleo

The Eco-style amnesia does bother me. I once landed on my head after flying off a bike at 55 mph and suffered quite a bit of amnesia. The one thing I discovered about traumatic amnesia (and heck, I'm no expert, maybe there are different kinds) is that it's very difficult to latch onto and devote one's life to what one doesn't remember BECAUSE you don't know that you don't remember!!!!!!! There's no fog, there's nothing! It's just not there. Fog is something. And it doesn't even come close to describing nothing. Maybe if I had lost all of my memory I would have been in a fog. But it seems like the more you lost the harder it would be to hang onto what it was you lost because the less you would have to hang onto.

It was literally impossible for me to hold onto not remembering. One can latch onto part of something and worry the rest, like the blind men feeling out the elephant. But a blind man can't feel out an elephant he can't touch. Maybe this is the reason behind Eco's literary device of the books not being lost. It just seems so contrived. While Kevin is right that a number of folks in here have expressed an interest in reading various book about books, other than Bradbury it just doesn't interest me. So, maybe I don't buy it, that someone would only remember the one thing most likely to trigger the most interesting (to them) other memories. Or maybe I just don't like it. On the other hand, I am enjoying the book so far.

Kleo

Ginny--

I didn't say anywhere in my post that I don't like the way we discuss books in here. Didn't I rather say something like, I dismiss the clubs that discuss books in a way that doesn't interest me?

AH, edit and reread. I see. No, I reject the first sort of book club: that is, the ones that just say, Like it/Don't like it. The point is there are plenty of book clubs on line, Ginny, that discuss books for a month. This, in fact, seems the more common format to me. This may not be actually so as I do just dismiss those types.

Still, there are a number of other places, such as Oprah's clubs and Yahoo and MSN, where folks sit around for a month discussing a book.

Kleo

My godness, I am absolutely overwhelmed with all that has been posted!
I have a lot of re-reading ahead and want to add new notes to those I have, so I can't comment in detail on each and every point that has been made today alone. But this is GINNY's week any way haha. Just briefly therefore:

KEVIN, I liked your analytical post. I personally don't think it is absolutely necessary for us to know just what the "incident" was. We can't possibly guess at something the author didn't choose to identify. It may not be satisfactory, but there IS no more.

Yes, St. Augustine is one of Eco's (many) favorites; he elaborates on him elsewhere at great length, e.g. in "Language and Lunacy", which I have here mentioned before.

GINNY, I agree with you; I too am uncomfortable with some expressions in the translation. Will specify in a future post.

Are the lists and allusions random ? someone asked.

Allow me to say, candidly, that I find their profusion irritatingly self-congratulatory. That's what I meant yesterday with the word "bedazzling" allusions; bedazzling as in designed, even calculated to impress. Forgive me if that sounds harsh.

I would have liked to send for the Italian text but didn't want to shell out forty-three dollars plus tax, shipping and handling to Schoenhof's Foreign Books in Cambridge. Besides, comparing the original text with the translation may have made me madder than I am already.

Our live book group read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" because one of the members had a personal connection to an autistic friend's son. It was an excellent first-person prsentation by an author who is an expert in the field, but since Eco chose not to enlighten us on the precise nature of Yambo's "incident", I can't say whether tanything about a comparison with autism.

GINNY, don't you think the "Italianate" English is the translator's doing?

A question regarding the interview with Diane Rehm, which I have not downloaded yet :

does Eco speak in English or through an interpreter? Thank you for letting me know.

Oops!

For the sake of accuracy I hasten to correct a phrase in the fourth paragraph from the bottom of #50, which should properly read: ... had a personal connection to a friend's autistic son ..."

KLEO, # 47.

Paola asked the doctor whether Yambo might suffer from psychogenic amnesia, which the doctor did not rule out. But what Yambo is suffering from, at the outset, is defined as retrograde amnesia.

Kleo--I like the word "defenestration" too as well as other very specific words. The problem is that one doesn't get to use them very often, eh? You kind of have to wait and wait and wait for an opportunity to come along. Heh. What were you aware of when you had amnesia? That's the sort of experience not many of us have had. I think the "fog" here is more a coming to out of unconsciousness and perhaps the effects of drugs that have been used. We're not gonna find out though. Here's my theory: Eco wanted a protagonist who had lost only part of his memory, the part that had to do with his own identity, his childhood, his marriage, his children and so forth. So he put him in this situation because he wanted to tell a story of rebuilding identity--can it be done?

I like the quotes, but then I tend to respond sometimes to situations in my life with some quote running through my mind. My friends and family are glad that usually I don't say them out loud. In other words, Yambo seems "normal" to me. For someone who has read many books that is.

We could spend lots of time defining "normal," couldn't we? I don't think there are any good definitions given the infinite variations of ways to be human.

Traude--Eco speaks English very well with a sort of medium to heavy accent. I have heard him speak. I have no idea how closely he worked with the translator if at all.

Excellent discussion!

Joan in #27 says that she didn't like Yambo, and she is not the only one. I had to ask myself: do we have to like the protagonist in order to like a book? It is possible that Eco used Yambo like a mannequin to dress it into his ideas about memory. I found the ideas so interesting that I didn't ask myself about my feelings toward Yambo. Perhaps it is not he who is the protagonist (or just not the only one?) but Memory?

Is Yambo Eco himself? Now, I must quote Flaubert who said, "Madame Bovary c'est moi".

I don't think Yambo is Eco, in disguise, at all!
Nor was Eco the main character in Baudolino,
nor was he the mystery solver, Brother William, played by Sean Connery in the Name of the Rose, the movie.
(Although some men might like to be Sean Connery, I bet Eco wouldn't fall into that trap.)

I think when we talk about liking Yambo or not, we are talking about liking a man
who is waited on by women, as JoanK pointed out.
We may admire the way Yambo pulls multiple literary references to the surface of his wavering, weak memory, but we probably would not admire a man when he acts like a helpless little boy.

I'm reserving opinion on Yambo. We don't really know as yet who he was, and he seems to be reasonably considerate now, considering this huge gap in his life. It does seem to me that the caring those around him take would indicate that he was a very likable man.

I am going to skip ahead by just a tiny bit to set one question at rest. On pg. 117 we find inquiries as to whether he is getting his blood pressure checked frequently and taking his medication "After what happened to me, I should not mess around." I would say this definitely confirms a cerebral stroke.

I had never imagined before the confusion of the multitude of possibilities in a previous relationship, when one can't remember. Everyone of the scenarios Yambo considers vis-a-vis Sibilla is possible, offering innumerable opportunities for acute embarassment. Shucks, I would have headed for the hills,...or the attic...asap!

Eco has altered my understanding of the term jovial. I always thought of it as referring to a laughing, good-natured person. Then Paola says: "You were always a jovial man, you liked good-looking women, good wine, and good music, ..."

Dawns the light! Jove, the old rogue, and his women, wine and song. Paola is apparently far more patient and forgiving than Juno.

Babi

I'm enjoying all the posts on this book. Great discussion.

I guess I think about a book and its characters in ways other than what others do. When I read, I get involved IN a book of fiction. I feel as if I'm right there with/beside/part of the story, and so I form impressions/feelings about the "people" I meet...as I do about the people I really work with, deal with, am friends with. I'm not standing on the outside detached from the characters. Ok, ok, so I'm the "odd duck" here...but I do feel emotionally about the characters in books I read...and, at this point, Yambo is one dimensional and not someone I'd want to cultivate a friendship with...at least yet.

I do think I see all the characters through his eyes. I only know of Paola what Yambo "tells" me and so she is a very cardboard-type character to me. A name only who comes in and out, but I don't feel I "know" her yet.

Ginny asked some ways back about skimming...GUILTY here. After about Chapter 6, it started.

My first memory was at age 2 yrs., 7 months...and it's just a short "flashback" to riding home with my mother in the ambulance (this was 62 years ago, remember) and being told I could peek into the "basket/basinette thing" and see the new arrival at our house...yikes! a baby sister!! hahaha...my being the center of the universe had suddenly changed!

Alliemae -- Back, back, back in Post #35, you wrote:

Kevin, I didn't understand what you meant when you wrote: "...we, by extension, are in-bounds and not being whistled by any refs if we link author Eco to character Yambo."

As this topic was resurfaced in recent posts, I guess the fact that so many posts have happened in between matters little. All I'm saying is that Yambo, while he may not be verbatim Umberto Eco, almost assuredly shares commonalities with the author. Yes, of course, he is fictional and his character is thus leavened with Eco's imagination, but given the similarities both in time and in country, how can Eco help but use his own childhood as a source for Yambo's?

Right. He can't.

Thus many of Yambo's favorite books are Eco's favorite books, many of Yambo's favorite comics and children's authors are Eco's favorite comics and children's authors, many of Yambo's methods of fertilizing a garden are Eco's methods of fertilizing a garden, and, well, you get the idea. Twain wrote about imaginary boys who grew up on the Mississippi River because HE grew up on the Mississippi River. Mark my words, there's plenty of Twain in Tom and Huck.

Someone wondered about Eco's role in the translation. Here is an interview not of the author, but of the translator, Geoffrey Brock. It's from the "modern word" web site, which also has a link to the Queen Do-You-Needa Loana? annotation project at wikipedia (originally linked in the warm-up thread, which is now frozen and thus no longer warmed up).

What a treasure trove of fun so far, this book. But thank goodness for italics, so we can separate the quotes (as Maryal pointed out) from the rest of the story. This story about memory jogs many memories for me. Those pictures that Jane mentioned, on pages 105 and 106 -- puts one in mind of those sleek glossy oversized -- 11 by 14? -- fashion magazines -- you don't see them like that any more. Was Vogue like that? And the words from the "Melzi" -- the encyclopedia. I remember one of our rowdier English teachers coming into the library to get the OED so he could prove to the principal that "shit" was a legitimate noun and verb. And my friend in Puerto Rico who got in big trouble at the beach because one of the children with her called another woman a "puta." As Kevin says, readers like reading about books and reading -- probably in part because of the memories we have, and what we bring to these books.

As some of you have already said, we really don't know Yambo well enough yet to have an opinion about liking or disliking. He has lost his identity, yes, but I think he's lucky. He has come out of this incident (which like Maryal and Babi and some of the rest of you, I think was some kind of stroke) with the ability to think, to comprehend, to read, to like or dislike, to carry on with his life, with his work. Of course, he must depend on those around him to give him background. How does he know whom to trust? Does he believe everything everyone tells him?

While reading Eco I am frequently thinking about a woman I've known casually for several years who recently had surgery for a malignant brain tumor. I have not seen her since her surgery, but mutual friends and acquaintences have said she's not the same. And I wonder, what does she remember?

Amnesia is some very complex stuff. I looked up retrograde and psychogenic amnesia, knowing there were at least a few other kinds. One can, for example, get amnesia for events after the trauma, in addition to events immediately preceding the trauma (fairly common), and, may God help you, events for some time before the trauma.



Deems asks a question that gets to the heart of the matter for me, when thinking about amnesia:

"What were you aware of when you had amnesia?" Deems

This is the problem, for me: Yambo is just too darn aware of himself and the fact that he has amnesia! He's obsessed with having amnesia. With amnesia that severe how could he hold onto it?



What was I aware of? I was aware of nothing. It does give me a headache thinking about it, though, right now--and irritates me something awful. But, there's just nothing, nothing there. In fact, although I was aware of losing much memory immediately before my accident, and some right after it, I did not become aware of losing lots of memory for a long time before the accident until something came up that showed that this is what had happened. AND I don't always now remember that I had amnesia! It's not a major milestone in my life. If it were, it wouldn't be amnesia!



So, what was I aware of? Nothing. There is no starting point, like a woman to form questions around, a trigger which causes memories to spill out. Amnesia is NOTHING. I tried for ages to make memories. There's NOTHING to create memories from, though. Nothing anyone told me rang any bells, or triggered anything at all--they might have well have been speaking martian sign language with their noses to try to reach me. It was ALL nothing. Everything was nothing. And everything is still nothing to this day. No connections, no threads, not even a vacuum in which one can think of emptiness. It's nothing.



I think that amnesiacs in literature are far too obsessed with amnesia for the author to have ever experienced amnesia. It's irritating. I think it is psychogenic. I'm still enjoying the book, though.



Kleo

I agree with Pedln: "As some of you have already said, we really don't know Yambo well enough yet to have an opinion about liking or disliking. "



I think this is one of the abstractions built into reading a book of this nature. Generally the author presents an entire human being. Even if you don't learn all at once, that is how you decide whether it is a well-built literary character or not: it's dimensionality. By nature, without his memory, Yambo is missing a major dimension.



I like Eco's trickery. It's not always what it appears to be. I find him delightful to read.



Kleo

I'm noticing several repeated images in the literary references and in Yambo's memories and I think they are important.

1. Fog

2. Flames

3. Death

Fog and Flames seem like polar opposites to me. I think they are in this book and with purpose. Fog - wet, cold, hiding. Flames - dry, hot, illuminating. Are these polar opposites of Yambo himself? There are a slew of variations of play on these two words. Maybe we could keep track of different meanings of fog and flames and come up with something.

Death - Death or near-death experiences are mentioned again and again. Yambo had "the incident" which might have brought him near death. Death by torture was pretty graphic. An old man who dies like a child? something like that. etc.

I had a thought. Is Yambo dying now as he is going through his amnesia experience and searching through his past trying to find himself? Is this like a version of one's life passing before one's eyes in the split second that one dies? Is this death?

I'm betting that we find that those memories that cause Yambo "mysterious flames" are related to important events in his life because not all of his memories cause the "mysterious flames." Just certain ones.

I am happy to report that I am in the grips of this book. It has me. I'm loving it.

I had started to catch up on the postings earlier this evening, trying not to be depressed about the poison ivy all over my entire self and my 40th high school reunion coming up this Saturday. My husband walked in and handed me a huge bouquet of flowers. I thought "what for??" Turns out it's our anniversary today. I totally forgot! Isn't it the man who is supposed to forget? (Sorry Kevin.) And he took me out to dinner! It was very nice despite the poison ivy.

Marni

The very first two things I remember happened when I was 2 years old. They say you can't remember things that happened until you reached 3, but I was 2. My eye crossed and I had to have an operation. It was very traumatic. At the hospital, they made me stay in a baby crib with the sides up. I hated that because I had graduated to an "older" bed at home. I remember I told the nurse I had to go to the bathroom and I couldn't get the side of the bed down. She told me I'd have to wait. I wet the bed and the nurse was mad and I was humiliated.

I also remember that after the operation I was in the eye doctor's office. I was sitting on his lap. He told me about the glasses I would have to wear and he showed them to me. He said that when I was older, I'd be able to wear "invisible glasses." Of course, I didn't envision contact lenses. I imagined regular eye glasses that were invisible. I couldn't imagine how I would ever find them once I took them off to go to bed.

Marni

marni, as official representative of MANkind (here, at least), I assure you there's no apology needed. It is our job to forget, and we do it quite well.

Ole Yambo has nothing on the rest of us when it comes to amnesia, especially around birthday, anniversary, and Valen times.

Marni--I extend to you my sincere oooooh noooooo's on the poison ivy. I had a bad case last summer (had to take steroids) and had a scar all down the inside of the right arm through the summer and through all winter. It's barely visible now. But I was totally miserable. I could have forgotten my birthday or Christmas. YUCK.

Kleo--thank you for answering my amnesia question. It sounds like something one doesn't want to have (despite all the soaps and their use of amnesia as a plot device). I have a friend who years ago had shock treatments for depression and he lost a little more than a year of his life in terms of memories. If his wife or one of the kids referred to anything that happened that year, he had no response even when filled in point by point as to just what his role in it was. You left out only one detail--how long a period was it? I realize that you wouldn't know this yourself, but you must have been told.

Ginny--Your earliest memory is the earliest thing you can remember and it gets dated exactly as you dated yours--it was before we moved from Philadelphia, so I wasn't yet 5. Or the way Marnie dated hers--the eye surgury and having to be in a crib like bed and the humiliation. Or it might be something like Jane's memory of her baby sister. What a traumatic event that is--being removed from the center of the universe!

Then, once you have established your "earliest" memory, the ice house in your case, you try to push back and see if you remember anything before that. Whatever you get will be just a fragment, not a story. Early memories are always flashes such as those that have already been given.

Are we still ourselves when our memories are erased? I don't think so. We are still human and worthy of being treated with dignity, but we are not who we were.

My earliest memory--dust motes in sunshine. I told my mother about this once and she said when I was a baby, she used to take me to the third floor of an old house in Maine when it was sunny in the winter. It was recommended to mothers in those days that they give baby a sunbath. Apparently the room had windows on three sides. She spread a quilt out on the floor and put me, usually in just a diaper because it was so warm in the room, on it. The dust motes in the sunbeams memory is probably a composite memory since she did this many times. It got burned into my memory somehow.

The next memory I have isn't until I was 3 or 4 which is when I think actual contiguous memory clicks in.

My daughter has a vivid memory of sitting in her bedroom (we figured out that she was three because of the house we lived in at the time) when she was three and thinking to herself, "I don't remember anything. From now on I am going to remember."

Oddness runs in the family. Heh.

Kevin--What's your earliest memory?

"Kevin -- what's your earliest memory?"
"Wait, it's on the tip of my tongue."

That is how it all began...

DEEMS, thank you for answering my question. Of course Eco spoke English !!! Right after asking the question, I remembered (a little late) that he had been a Fellow in Residence at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studied at Columbia U. in 1996, I believe.

As for Yambo, I feel certain that the author drew on his own experiences when he created him.
As for liking and not liking, I've often eough said that IMHO it is possible to have a productive discussion even of a book one does not like - though there's no doubt that liking helps . This will be an occasion to test my own theory.

Re "the defenestration of Prague": there were two such incidents, in the 15th century and again in 1618, when imperial emissaries were bodily thrown out of the window. It was a signal event at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War that devastated vast parts of Europe from 1618 to 1648.

Babi , your understanding of "jovial" is perfectly fine, but is the author's ? I'd really like to check the ItaliaN word.
On page 19, the sentence "I stroked the children and could smell their odor, without being able to define it except to say that it was tender." sounds clumsy to me. "caressed" would have been better and, surely, there is a more felicitous word than "odor". Can odor be defined as "tender" by any stretch of the imagination?


I have a question or two about the translator's grammar as well, i.e. on pg. 3 "I felt as if I had awoke ..." had awoke ??? Shouldn't that be awakened ?
Sorry if that sounds like nitpicking, but as a translator and interprete I simply cannot help noticing such things.

GINNY, among the many allusions, mention of the Italian novelist Alberto Moravia, 1907-1990, struck a special chord with me.

According to the Sources of Citations and Illustrations beginning on pg. 451, the drawing on pg. 23 is by the author. Could that be the one Yambo drew at the request of Dr. Gratarolo (pg. 22)?

Traude: Re: "I felt as if I had awoke ..." had awoke ??? Shouldn't that be awakened ?" My husband and I were just talking about this tonight. I think "awakened" is one of the difficult words for Americans - it sure is for me, anyway. I never feel comfortable that I am saying the right thing - awoke, had awoke, had awakened.... And "awakened" sometimes seems to sound affected. Maybe it depends on where one is from.

Marni

Ginny and/or Deems...first of all, when one of us was a-goin, the other was a-comin back! (Having a hard time differentiating between posts as my eyes are now in a 'fog'!!)

I was born in Rockland, Maine, raised for the first nine years in Northampton, Mass and in 1947, when I was nine, we moved to Philadelphia!!

We also had an old Jewish couple who lived just down the street from us. They were old as in almost malnourished, craggy, bony and stooped over and all the kids in the neighborhood used to think they were witches. On the way to church with my parents we grew to know them in the 'Good Morning' sense and my dad told us to always be kind to them and that they were lonely. I think of them every Jewish holiday. The man didn't say much, just smiled...but the woman would come to the door with a little something wrapped in a napkin for us...sometimes a matzoh...sometimes one of those lovely thin dark chocolate covered jellies that are still one of my favorite candies but only at Passover...or sometimes even a macaroon.

So, we seem to have been leading rather parallel lives and have never met till now. Now THAT is eerie!

Also, in reading back over the posts I begin to wonder about my first memories and what I'm wondering is are our first memories our own or have they become our own because our families have used them over and over as anecdotes about us and we have internalized them as memories. In Massachusetts we went to a church in Florence...I think a Congregational one and there were cows in the field outside the church. And I 'remember' my father taking me out after the service to 'pet the nice bossy'...or was it just that my parents repeated that story to anyone who would listen??? But I can see it in my mind's eye and I was not two years old at the time. Hmmmm...will have to think a bit more about my memories!!

Sometimes I think the posts are more interesting than any book!! But I do love this book so far...

Allie--Interesting question about Do we remember or have we been prompted by family stories (or photos). I use this earliest memory thing for a paper assignment early in the semester. We spend a whole class thinking of our earliest memories and then going around the room with everyone saying his/her memory aloud.

I rule out anything that seems to anyone to be something they have been told or seen many pictures of, but do not independently remember.

They all seem to be able to sort out the difference and the young people today have videos of them in addition to all the other stuff.

Main Entry: 1awake Pronunciation: &-'wAk Function: verb Inflected Form(s): awoke /-'wOk/; also awaked /-'wAkt/; awo·ken /-'wO-k&n/; or awaked also awoke; awak·ing

From the Meriam-Webster Dictionary.

Joan Grimes

MARNI, as you may know, English is not my native tongue. But we were given a thorough grounding in English grammar (and that of other foreign languages), which has rarely failed me, even in Russian, which is extremely difficult to master.

Awareness of English regular and irregular verbs and tenses was developed early on; and this was the method: present tense, past tense, participle

i.e. give, gave, given
go, went, gone
do, did, done
also
wake, woke, wakened
awake, awoke, awakened
etc. etc. etc.

When otherwise well spoken people, for instance on a talk show, say "We should have WENT (instead of have gone) the other way" or "I should have DID (instead of have done) that", I feel actual pain, silly me.
Then there is the perennial confusion between "lay" and "lie", and also the uncertainty about pronoun use.

We say correctly "This is from me" when only a solitary pronoun comes after a preposition. But what when the pronoun isn't alone?
It hurts me to hear sentences like
"Here's a gift from Tom and I" or "That was for my sister and I" or "This is strictly between you and I", when we would never ever dream of saying "This is from I" or "between I".
I won't mention the subjunctive or conditional modes (nor the passive voice, heaven help us) other than to say that I know people who feel that the correct formulation "If I WERE in your position" is "contrived" and who steadfastly use "If I WAS ..." (though that is really the past tense).

When a friend wrote "... it was the Depression and my father moved my mother, my younger brother and I (!!!) to wherever he was able to make a living." I gasped; of course I said nothing.

For me Latin was invaluable. It taught me to understand the absolute necessity of full agreement between all the components of a sentence, including the cardinal and ordinal numbers. It was indispensable in my learning other foreign languages, "foreign" meaning any language other than one's native tongue, which in my case is German. Forgive me for going on so. It's a professional hazard, I'm afraid.

P.S. I just went back to check typos and hope I caught them all.

Thank you for your post, JOAN G.

Goodness!! I'm off the computer for 24 hours, and come back to such an accumulation of riches!! Random thoughts:

I'm in the discussion too. I don't back out when the going's tough.

my first memory that I can date is my fourth birthday. I ran into my parent's room and asked them: "Am I REALLY four?", and was hurt when they laughed. This is not something I was told, because when I told my mother the story, she didn't remember.

I have other memories that may be earlier, but they are fragments: the bare patch in our side yard, the way a neighbor smelled, a dark hallway. We lived in that house from when I was 2 to 7, so they could be anytime.

First book I can't remember at all!! My parents always read to us and I'm told I got my own library card at four. So it must have been early.

The reference that struck me was to Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" and the famous passage where the taste of a Madeleine brings back memories. Yambo keeps trying things and asking if this is going to be his Madeleine. (A coffee shop near where I worked sold them, and I couldn't wait to try them. they are good, but of course hold no memories at all for me).

""The fog comes on little cat feet," : I live in an area where there is not much fog, so I had never seen that. Last year, visiting my daughter who lives near the sea, I saw what he meant for the first time. I looked out the window and saw fog rolling quietly down the street. "Yes!" I said. I was so excited, my daughter thought I was nuts!

There are two things going on in the book. One are the literary allusions (which as I mentioned ,there are 18 in the first 18 pages) which is to prepare us for the importance that literature and its allusions and illusions will play in the novel.

The second thing is to intrduce us to the characters .Then there is the amnesia ....the factor that moves the plot along.

I cannot compare Yambo and Eco. Yambo says silly things that Eco would never say. An example (besides the Asthma comment) is on page 89;"A pea brained owl." Owls are the symbol of wisdom and mystery especially in childrens Lit.i.e. Harry Potter, Winnie the Poo and Greek Legend. "Wise as an owl" is a popular childhood statement and belief.

For anybody who wishes to understand Amnesia I suggest you refer to the book by Oliver Sacks:The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat and turn to page 23 to the case of "The Lost Mariner". The story opens with a quote from the French Film Maker Luis Bunuel: "You have only to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to relise that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all...Without it we are nothing....."

Sacks' book deals with many types of amnesia.He calls it "the neurology of identity. I believe that is what we are dealing with in Ecos book.

More next time Judy

Ah, good old Oliver Sacks! Thanks for that, Judy.

And I wasn't being facetious last night, dear Deems, it's just that I can't possibly (or definitively) pinpoint my first memory, although I can capture many early ones. I'm amazed ANYone can say absolutely that a certain memory is the first they are capable of recollecting (unless it's one of those deals where it becomes the first because we say it's the first).

As for the pea-brained owl, oxymorons are very much the venue of intelligent men like Eco. Plus, having sat in many a professor's (or learn'd astronomer's, to tip our hats to Whitman) class, I can tell you that women and men with PhD's are more than capable of saying inane things. More than capable. Yes, even more capable than I am (and I am what I am).

It's interesting that the well-written and engaging opening discussion with gentle Dr. Grataralo actually gives our poor amnesiac a chance to show off his knowledge. To forget all yet remember that much? A wonderful thing. (And thank God, too, else we wouldn't have a book to read.)

I have never read St. Augustine's Confessions but felt a brief desire to do so after reading Eco/Yambo's paean to same on p. 29. Probably I'd hate it, but you never know until you go.

One important theme comes up on p. 35, where Yambo likens himself to Adam:

"... but I was certainly an Adam discovering his Garden of Eden. And an Adam who learns quickly, it seems: I saw, on a shelf, some bottles and boxes of cleansers, and I knew at once not to touch the tree of good and evil."

The Garden of Eden (and its famous inhabitants, Adam and Eve-ntually Eve), are a rich metaphor constantly mined by writers of literature, and why not? It works so well for so many things in life, the way it giveth and it taketh away, the way we find and then lose, the way we're innocent and good and then evil and bad.

The snake in this garden is amnesia.

And note, how later on, Eco will turn his attention to a rather obscure Jack London book, Martin Eden. (I told you writers are like drunken sailors on leave when they get into that Eden stuff!)

Anyhow, on p. 37, Eco returns to the saintly and August one (what a month we've chosen for it!) and quotes Confessions comme ca:

"I come then to the fields and the vast chambers of memory... When I enter there, I summon whatever images I wish. Some appear at once, but others must be sought at length, dragged forth as it were from hidden nooks... Memory gathers all this in its vast cavern, in its hidden and ineffable recesses... In the enormous palace of my memory, heaven, earth, and sea are present to me... I find myself there also... Great is the power of memory, O my God, and awe-inspiring its infinite, profound complexity. And that is the mind, and that is myself... Behold the fields and caves, the measureless caverns of memory, immeasurably full of immeasurable things... I pass among them all, I fly from here to there, and nowhere is there any end..."

The quote could serve as an inscription for the book. I'm convinced, in fact, it (and the Confessions) is Eco's entire inspiration for writing this book -- his own Memoirs written through a Glass (that'd be Fiction) Darkly.

just a note about "flame"

- a flame is something that flickers, can be inconsistent, and can be easily snuffed out i think this may be why eco chooses to use the flame as a metaphor for the flickering bits of memories as they return

i'm not in an e.e. cummings mode, i just have only the use of one hand today, so i hope you can be tolerant of that for a few days. i saw some posts relating to grammar, etc and i hope this isn"t one of those boards that is intolerant of typos, etc

i'm happy to do this experiment, but before i do...i'm not sure how this is like yambo? the pictures that he sees in his attic are ones that he had seen in his past. if our reactions are to be compared to his, wouldn't the picture have to be one that was in our past ? and the inkblot doesn't seem to me the same either- that would be more a shape suggesting a psychological element of ourselves

i truly am not trying to be the board noodge here, i seriously am asking. please advise me as to how this could compare to yambo.

as i say, i'll do the experiment but i don't see the parallel. tia....

don't know for sure myself, ginny. let's see what others say. my thought would be that it would have to be something we had seen before in our past(as in how we are reacting to pictures we recognize in this first section) so, ergo....

i could open a book here at home to an art piece and use that. but if we wanted to see how we all reacted to the same item, we would have to all use that same item. am i making sense ? for an example, we all look at mona lisa- but for each of us it stirs different memories.

then again, maybe i'm being too logical- it's a fault, for sure.

It took me awhile to find the sailing ships (the book needs an index)! It's on p. 110 near the top.

SCOOTZ: you're not in e e cummings mode, you're in Archie and Mehetabel mode (remember Archie, the cockroach who typed by jumping on the keys but couldn't do capital letters?) Actually, my sister and I once decided that with a computer, Archie could do capitals -- he could jump on the caps lock, jump on the letter, then jump on caps lock again.

Actually, I'm the fastest one-handed typist in the East. Due to cerebral palsy, I do almost everything with one hand. If your hand is agile, you can put your little finger on the shift key and reach all the other keys with your other fingers. But if you don't, your typing is fine.

Back later when I've done the test.

One of the problems of correcting the grammar of Eco is that I don't think he is unsophisticated or careless in the art of having his literature translated. Another factor is that style is used to build the characters in a work of fiction. Maybe this is a stylistic choice and we should be asking what this says of the character that he used the word odor rather than scent? The scent of another family member is something familiar. A stranger carries an odor. Is this an aspect of memory failure? I'm hesitant to suggest I am better at translating from the Italian to English than a trained professional assigned to meet the standards of a man who is a university professor proficient in both languages.

I live in a small town. I used to check out books from my small town library, James Lee Burke mysteries and WWI histories in particular. However, these books have been ruined by some idiot at the local library who writes in pencil in the books. When I read James Lee Burke, I want to read James Lee Burke, not some local unpublished idiot. And what does this idiot write? He corrects James Lee Burke's colloquialisms because they are not grammatically prefect. Guess what? If you wrote a book in which every character spoke only perfect English no one would buy it because it would not be published! It would be boring! Unreal! Unbelievable!

Is it the character? Or is it some horrendous mistake committed by the second-rate professional Italian to English translator that the careless Umberto Eco allowed the publisher to hire?

Kleo

Ginny--I think maybe what you need is a collection of stuff from popular culture--like the poster for Bambi and Mickey Mouse and a baseball card from the 40s or 50s and a candy wrapper (Baby Ruth) and maybe the cover of a comic book. Or a cereal box from the 50s or 40s, that kind of thing.

Eco's illustrations seem to be mostly from the Italian popular culture of his childhood.

It just occurred to me that all of us have not had an American childhood. We have people here from other countries I think? Back to the drawing board.

Ginny--for the USA, this kind of thing.

Popular Culture

Kleo, I wonder what your library phantom friend would do with a copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I mean, would he margin-correct all the dialect and turn it into his idea of proper grammar? No. Say it ain't so.

Hey, while open to p. 35 from this morning, my book brought to my attention the sensory detail paragraph which goes like so:

"I spent the afternoon testing things, feeling the pressure of my hand on a cognac glass, watching how the coffee rises in the coffee-maker, tasting two varieties of honey and three kinds of marmalade (I like apricot best), rubbing the living room curtains, squeezing a lemon, plunging my hands into a sack of semolina. Then Paola took me for a short walk in the park; I felt the barks of the trees, I heard the murmur of mulberry leaves in the hand"

The reason the book pointed this out, seeing how it was open and I was open to suggestion, was to show the importance of the SENSES to memory.

The taste of peanut butter, for instance, sends me way back to my childhood when I ate more than my share of PB & Js. And the smell of cigar smoke brings up Fenway Park, where my dad brought me to ballgames as a kid. The sound of circadas and wind in trees makes me sad for days when I lay on my back, the earth behind me and the sky a blue and white canvas above, in the endless summers of youth (which, trickily enough, ended).

Speak, Memory, Nabokov (I think) once said, but Eco/Yambo knows full well that we might also say, "Smell, Memory," "Taste, Memory," "See, Memory," and "Feel, Memory."

Hope that makes sense.

I'm not sure I understand. As each of us goes through our own attics what makes us laugh or cry or bring up memories has no relation that I can see to what others would see since they don't have the same past.

I'm beginning to think that maybe this "diary" approach is a style that is simply not my personal taste. I can't seem to get interested in the "stuff" from someone I don't know/admire, etc.

Hmmm...I need to think on this some more.

jane

Ginny-- And then there are the cigarette ads. Remember when smoking was fashionable and cool and beautiful women endulged?

Kools

If you click on the "back" and "next" buttons at the bottom, you can see a number of cigarette ads. For example, Maureen O'Hara is on the next one.

Thanks for the sailing terms- i will go look at those now. is your hand large enough to stretch from the right shift to t ? mine wouldn't!lol i don't know archie and mehetibal though i've heard of them. i'm 55 if that has anything to do with it.

i have RA which has pretty much now destroyed my left wrist with bone on bone in the joint. i have decided to jus plainnot use it at all for several days and let it rest. so, it's going to be lower case for a while.

Jane--You're right about the personal attics. That's why I'm suggesting that we find a few items from popular culture. Things that most of us would have seen and had contact with. It's not quite so personal as what Eco is doing, but at least there is a common base.

Now that I can see, I need to get back to work. Fortunately classes start in a couple of weeks.

Jane,
I agree. The diary approach doesn't work for me.
Also, not all of us have any cartoons/comic books as strong childhood memories.
I never had a chance to buy them, as a kid.
An in-law in my family said that she had no childhood memories that were happy -- isn't that a sad comment?
Along the same lines, if I were to riff on childhood, as suggested, a whole lot of stuff would come to mind that I could never "publish" here!
Does anyone have a more neutral approach to this?

Deems, your post came up after I entered mine; but I'm still stimied,
because I was exposed to hardly any so-called popular culture during childhood in the 1940s, that I can recall,
and there sure were not any candy bar wrappers -- we never had candy bars at all, in our rural life! Lots of home-made goodies, however, so don't cry for me, anyone.

Mippy--I'm trying. How about magazine ads or candy bar wrappers? Do you remember any from childhood?

I'm also a one-handed typer some of the time. I didn't come up with any literary allusions, however, I did wind up with comments about a book I had read, once I got to Siberia. I think that if I were in an 'attic' full of books, I would think about books. And if I thought about books, I would think about sections of the book, maybe quotes, that most impacted me or appealed to me.

Kleo

Kleenex

I still call all tissues for nose-blowing Kleenex.

this one also has a next button. Check the ad from the 50s. Anyone else remember Little Lulu?

I can reach the "e" from the left shift, the "i" from the right (if i use my thumb. It's easiest to use little finger on one side and index finger in the other.. But my hand is very limber from being used so much. If I ever get arthritis in my fingers, I'm sunk.

"I was exposed to hardly any so-called popular culture during childhood in the 1940s, that I can recall"

Lemonade on the porch, radio shows and adds (remember The Shadow?), paper drives, blackout curtains, learning to identify planes that flew over, calendar girls, white margerine with a "color pill" you had to mix in, ration books, standing in line to get sugar, after the war long skirts with petticoats, surely you remember some of these.

Ah, we begin to see the allure Eco felt when writing this book about He, Himself, and Him.

We're warming to the task ourselves, leaving Eco and his old flame (named Loana, of all things) in favor of more familiar ground and our own parlor games (attic games, I should say).

Umberto Ego (sic) would NOT be amused (but I am, being the highly amusable sort) that the focus is shifting and splintering. "Hey, back over here!" I hear him shouting.

Or maybe I just thought I heard that.

The tricks of Memory. And of Self.

Very Loki-like.

What evil lurks in the hearts of men?

The shadow knows

Ah, JoanK and Deems, Sunday night was the best night for radio. The Shadow was okay, but the Inner Sanctum that followed, especially the squeaky door, scared me to death. Both preceded by Jack Benny, and remember the Quiz Kids -- "My name is Joel Kupperman and I'm 7 years old."

Just want to say that my dictionary entry was not a criticism of the English used in the book. It was meant to show that e many times more than there is more than one accepted way to inflect a verb. I am not judging anyone's grammar here.

Joan Grimes

pedln--I loved Inner Sanctum--had no idea then what the words meant but that creaky door had me in its grasp. Jack Benny was one of the only radio programs my father used to listen to, with the exception of Opera on Sunday. He loved opera.

I went to school with some of the quiz kids. Believe me, they were smaaarrt. Better not to have quiz kids in your class.

was issued, perhaps inadvertently, but it's a hoot to reply.

Lemonade on the porch = no sir-ree, not out on the farm where we lived in rural Ohio
But we did sell corn and berries at the road-side! I started selling, and making change, at 7 years old.

Radio shows: yes, but having heard recordings of these it's all mixed up with present knowledge and memory.
paper drives? not until 11th grade, that's not childhood.
Learning to identify planes that flew over: ditto on rural life! None there.
Calendar girls? Not in our house; where could you possibly see those as a child?

Ration books, standing in line to get groceries: Thanks!
That triggered a kindergarden memory about the black market (not),
which was to me, the corner store, with the trim painted black. When the parents talked about bad people and the black market, I couldn't understand -- and would have been spanked if I asked -- why my mommy shopped at the black market!

All those lovely quotes from St. Augustine, and I never was able to read his 'Confessions'. I tried>, twice! Each time I reached the point where he was bemoaning what an awful, wicked person he was because he had kicked his mother when he was in the womb, well.. I just lost it! Oh, puh-le-e-e-eze! After that, I couldn't take anything he said seriously.

I was interested to learn, on pg. 90, that fog was very much a part of his childhood. Significant, don't you think; an additional meaning to the image of fog as he starts learning about his life all over again? It began in fog; it begins again in fog.

Can anyone tell me if the room arrangements in the country house are typical of old Italian homes? They seem so odd. His sisters room was on a hall that included a kitchen, just the other side of the bathroom. On the other side of the hall is the dining room, then more bedrooms. It seems so strange not to have kitchens and dining rooms on the lower levels, and sleeping rooms above.

I notice again, in exploring the rooms, Yambo finds that his body, his hands, know from old habit secrets that his mind still doesn't remember.

Babi

You made two points in your last post that I really appreciate. You wrote, "I was interested to learn, on pg. 90, that fog was very much a part of his childhood. Significant, don't you think; an additional meaning to the image of fog as he starts learning about his life all over again? It began in fog; it begins again in fog. " I love that last sentence about beginnning and beginning again.

And then you mentioned something that reminded me of information gleaned from a former student who was for a while a helicopter pilot in the Gulf (not now, thank heaven). You wrote, "I notice again, in exploring the rooms, Yambo finds that his body, his hands, knows from old habit secrets that his mind still doesn't remember."

Apparently this is called body knowledge. Once you practice something over and over and make it a part of your reflexes, you simply call on that when in an emergency situation. My student said that his body just remembered all the steps and went through them in the proscribed order once when he almost crashed into the mast of a ship. He said he was pretty sure he was going to die but his body paid no attention and just did everything right. Maybe it's called body memory. At any rate, thanks for calling the detail to attention.

Maryal

No, Ginny...we came to Philly in 1947 in February and went straight to my Aunt Ester and Uncle Al's near Olney then on to Lower Kensington. I only heard of Holmesburg when in 1953 we moved to the Ken-Rich area. Gee...we just missed each other. Were you the one who went to Maine after PA? or was that you Eloise...or someone else??

Well, I'd better go re-read page 107!! Alliemae

pg. 107.......

Perhaps realization that adulthood is only the fruition of childhood? That our fate is set in youth.That the sexual attraction he felt to Sibilla was only a reflaction of pictures he had mooned over as a youth.

Had he never considered this before? Hmmmm

If I had an attic with my few childhood treasures to ponder I would feel a profound sadness for what was and is no more. Or is, but in a less attractive form. I might smile whimsically at the items but mostly I would reflect on how these items influenced me and how that influence has followed me into the present.

Yambo has the great luxury of many ,many items and thus he is rich in memories and the memorabilia that evoke them.

Judy

I just 'remembered' that I MISS COMIC BOOKS!!

my dad worked at the Frankford Arsenal from about 1950 till he retired in 1968...small world, isn't it?

think the movie/book about a man who only lives through what he sees on screen is that peter sellers film where he is a gardener- chauncey someone-or-other. "being there", it's called. Then again, I haven't read MOVIEGOER so perhaps they both have that premise(?)

frankly, I don't know why he is so "withered" that he may not have actually had an affair with sibilla. and is that word Freudian at all? LOL

i plan to do the exercise later today, using an art piece here at home. I have never seen the Hopper thing and I drew a total blank with it.

i'm a bit overwhelmed with all the questions and don't know what to answer first. I guess that's good.

I certainly DO think that we are much more complex than a bunch of papers. What about our experiences? our relationships? our traumas? our spirits? The pictures and books come into our lives, but I see experience and our relationships with other people to be so much more important. perhaps this is what is so frustrating to yambo- he only HAS paper and wants so much more. What are the experiences tied to these papers? What is the "relationship" he had to Sibilla? he hungers for that so much more than the mere paper and is utterly disappointed, "withered" (and I don't think that word's random) when he think he may only be a paper connection.

GINNY, to answer an earlier question of yours regarding the title:

Eco borrowed it from a well known Italian children's book, a I said. But I don't know anything specific about that book, because I did not grow up in Italy and was no longer a child when I went there to study.

To my knowledge there is no special meaning associated with "Yambo"; abbreviations do not usually have deeper meanings, even in English.

The protagonist tells us that he didn't like his first name, "Giambattista" (actually a contraction of two names), and all his friends called him Yambo. Paola called him 'Papà' in the hospital, did you notice?

"Yambo" is unusual, though, and "Giambo" would have been a more logical choice. We are getting back to the old question, what's in a name? At times there can be plenty ... nomen est omen

I've got to run to an appointment now and will get to the blizzard of questions when I come back.

A cyberfriend just told me that
in Swahili and other African languages Yambo means "Hello, Greetings" and is well recognized as such = a pan-African "HI".

It's reread time already. Didn't Amalia tell Yambo that when he was a boy he told the family, "I am Yambo, di duh di duh di duh" (page no.?) and somehow the name stuck and it became his nickname? What we don't know is why he chose to be Yambo.

Oh Mel...you certainly have had more of your share of problems this year and then some. I sure hope things work out a lot better for you and soon, too!

Mel, if you went to Smith College you may have seen me as a little girl! I'm 66 and when I was about 5-6 years old I used to go to Smith College to sell greeting cards 'door-to-door' to the students there. My 'in' line was..."I'm working my way through college and..." Well, of course the women had a very gratifying response to this clever opening (which had been thought up by my dad...not me!!). I only wanted to make enough change to go see a Roy Rogers or Gene Autry double feature at the movies...my favorite thing on Saturdays.

Mel I hope you don't have to leave your computer...not nice at all! So wishing you all the very best and sending out the most POSITIVE of thoughts and vibes to the Universe for you. Alliemae

pedln--Yes, we have on page 74:

"And as for Yambo, it was Maria who explained it to me. You chose it yourself when you were little. You used to say, My name is Yambo, the boy with the quiff. And you've been Yambo ever since." (Paola to her husband)

According to the OED, a quiff is "A curl or lock of hair plastered down on the forehead, worn orig. by soldiers; more recently, a tuft of hair brushed upwards over the forehead. "

Maryal

GINNY, about 'muscle memory' and dancing, playing the piano, etc. Isn't that exactly why your teachers and your mother were always saying "PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!!!"

There is so much of the memorabilia illustrated in this book, I find myself wondering if Eco didn't design the whole plot just so he could show off his collections!

Maryal, I do hope you don't get cut off from your computer and all of us. Nursing homes supposedly want to keep their residents alert and active; you would think they would be a bit more up-to-date and install computer hook-ups in their communal areas. Meanwhile, we wish you rapid healing and a way to stay at home.

Babi

No, that was Malryn (Mal) who just posted. We are different people. People often get our names confused. That's why I thought of changing to my maiden last name, Deems. It still confuses people though when I sign my messages with my first name.

It's good to see you, Mal and I also hope that the nursing home is not necessary. You have had such a difficult time of it. It is good to see you typing here though and I hope you will continue to read with us.

Maryal (Deems!) - You brought back a funny memory to me when you mentioned Kleenex ads earlier. My husband's dad was an advertising executive with J. Walter Thompson Co. and one of the accounts he was in charge of was Scott Paper. Of course, Scott Tissues was under this, called Scotties (a product like Kleenex.) My husband's dad always made his family watch his ads on TV. Scott Paper was the sponsor of "Father Knows Best" so the family always had to watch that show and check out the ads and tell their dad what they thought. Well, of course, everyone called any kind of nose tissue "Kleenex" - even my husband's family - EXCEPT for their dad. He got really mad at his kids when they said "Kleenex" and insisted that they say "Scotties." So, to get back at dad, all the kids called them "SNotties." To this day, they say "Snotties."

I'm a bit behind, but I did get to the tests this afternoon. I agree that this is completely a different thing from what Yambo was doing - looking at his own personal memorabilia which would, of course, bring back his own memories. However, I checked out the tests anyway. They didn't even bring memories, I don't think; they brought thoughts or reactions, not memories. Maybe one brought what might be a memory - the Rorschack (sp?) test. I thought it looked like a scary Coyote (from the Roadrunner/Coyote cartoon) with his long nose hanging down. Then I just started laughing.

The idea of one losing one's soul when one loses one's memories....doesn't seem fair if one is a religious type. You can't help it if you lose your memory. I certainly have lost a ton of mine - and it gets worse every day. Scary! But, I'm not worried about the soul thing. I don't think I believe in a soul. But, for those who do believe, what makes the soul? Wouldn't it be your actions throughout your life, your beliefs and thoughts, what you've made of yourself, whether you remember it or not?

I see in definition of soul on the web the following: "the personal identity of a living being, its feelings, thoughts, impulses, memories, and sense of self." Maybe that is what Eco is thinking of. Wow, there a many definitions of "soul." Take a look:

Soul

The name "Yambo" did seem a little pathetic to me. Sad to get stuck with something like that. But, I can understand. When I was a baby, my slightly older sister, just learning to talk, called me "Baba" instead of "baby." So for years my family called me "Baba." What an embarrassment.

The whole name thing got me thinking. A name can be representative of one's self. You identify your feelings about yourself with your name. I lacked self-confidence when I was growing up. I hated my name (which really is Mary Ann, and which people were finally calling me.) I think I hated my name because I didn't like myself at the time. In girl scout camp, we were asked to come up with a nickname to be called at camp. I had just read a novel about a girl named "Mary Ann" who was called "Marni" and I thought that was great. So my camp nickname was "Marni." It stuck and that's been me every since. I gained self-confidence that summer and I think I felt I was a new person with the new name.

Hmmm.....Yambo.....Has he stayed a boy to some extent?

One more thought....As Yambo went through his memorabilia, I found it interesting how many items were American translated into Italian. Like the Italian name for Mickey Mouse, etc. Interesting to see how many American things were purchased by Italians, or American movies, etc.

Now to Yambo's flames...just what is he looking for? His memory, yes, but there are a number of indications that he is looking for something more... From the book jacket - "Yambo struggles through the frames [of his memory] to capture one simple innocent image: that of his first love." Then there are the words of the song - SOla me ne vò per la città which are included in full on pg.67 -

All alone through city streets I go,
Walking through a crowd that doesn't know
That doesn't see my pain.
I search for you, I dream of you, but all in vain...

All in vain I struggle to forget,
Inside my heart a name is written, a single name.
I knew you well, and now I know that you are love,
The truest love, the greatest love.

I noted the flame of Yambo's memory is most often associated with his mother - her wedding photo, her bedroom. Is that it? Is he trying to go back - to the beginning? (Babi, I hadn't read the passage in Augustine's Confessions where he expresses his remorse for having kicked his mother in utero! hahaha - I'm going to look for that right now.)

Yambo seems to be searching for his memory, yes, but he is also searching for lost love. It would be great if this love turned out to be Paola, wouldn't it? But this is very young love that he is trying to retrieve. If only it were possible to LABOR back into memory to relive those early loves. Do you remember your first love?

Marni, I think I do believe in the soul in all of us - but need to think about it more before writing about it. The word that comes to mind right now is "animus"...

Someone, way back in the beginning, and forgive me for not scrolling back, said that the women were there mostly to serve Yambo--or that Yambo thought they were. I don't think this is true. I noticed a number of times when Eco gives Paola the best line when the two are in conversation. She is an admirable woman.

For example, after Yambo has reacted to the Mickey Mouse comic (the buried treasure one) we have this exchange:

Paola: " That isn't semantic memory, that's autobiographical memory. You're remembering something that made an impression on you as a child! And this cover sparked it."

Yambo: "No, not the image. If anything the name, Clarabelle."

Paola: "Rosebud."

It's not just Yambo who makes references. "Rosebud" is the first word of "Citizen Kane," spoken by the dying Kane. It turns out that it's the name of the manufacturer of a sled he had when he was a boy.

That's both a clever reference and an interesting exchange.

I also loved the section, p. 50 and following where Yambo wonders whether he had an affair with the young and beautiful Sibilla before he lost his memory. He seems to almost talk himself into it. Of course, he cannot ask Sibilla (he had to work up his nerve to ask Paola if they still made love) so he consults with his best friend who doesn't know.

And then, a little later, Sibilla announces that she is getting married and he provides a quote about knives in the heart. The quotes are pretty well worked in, it seems to me. I thought the whole thinking about Sibilla and the outcome were funny. Not laugh out loud, but chuckle funny.

One more example of Paola getting the best line:

Paola tells her husband that, in addition to other activities, he was a member of the antivivisection league:

Yambo: "Animal vivisection, I imagine."

Paola: "Of course. Human vivisection is called war."

I'm having a good time reading this book.

MAL: you're back!! Yeah!! I hope you can stay!!

I've been thinking about your idea that this was a comic book ever since you told me. I think you are right. In the interview with Eco that was linked earlier, he says that in a fascist Italy, where they were being fed a lot of propaganda, he learned what freedom of the press meant by reading American comic books. there people were fighting for truth and liberty (quoted from memory -- please correct). This ties in with what MARNI said, about so much of his childhood reading being American.

DEEMS: I'm the one who said the women in the novel have no role in the book except to serve Yambo. I may be wrong -- I'll have to take another look at Paola.

"The pictures and books come into our lives, but I see experience and our relationships with other people to be so much more important. perhaps this is what is so frustrating to Yambo- he only HAS paper and wants so much more. What are the experiences tied to these papers? What is the "relationship" he had to Sibilla? he hungers for that so much more than the mere paper and is utterly disappointed, "withered" (and I don't think that word's random) when he think he may only be a paper connection. "

That's an interesting point. Certainly, this book so far has been more about his relationship to books that about his relationship to people. This is the result of his memory loss, but it may also be the kind of person he is (and perhaps the kind of person Eco is?) Those of you who have read his other books, are they more about ideas than about relationships? Did you feel the same dense of distance between the protagonist and other people that (I at least) feel in this book?

I have been trying to discover why I like this book so much. I think that the reason is that I am going through something that I think is similar as I go to a French conversation group now. I am recalling my French vocabulary. I have not lost it completely but have been away from daily use of it since I retired from teaching. So I have to pull it out of my memory. I think there is a similarity with what Yambo is doing. I realize that others may not agree about this.

Joan Grimes

Joan, you seem to be saying that retrieving memory is labor, not a luxury! Good luck searching the caverns of memory for those elusive French verbs. Hopefully your French will just come back to you - much like riding a bike. Muscle memory?

There's no doubt that "Yambo" is a nickname and, from all appearances, there is no particular meaning attached to it.

But it so happens that "Yambo" is known and widely used in parts of Africa as "Hi, Greetings", according to a cyber friend who told me so this morning (my # 122). She was born in Congo.

MARNI, I agree that in this case "soul" may well be understood as the essence of an individual's life, particularly since Yambo does not recall having been particularly religious in his youth.

Besides, we are again relying here on the translator's word; HIS rendering of Eco's words, NOT Eco's own words. There is a huge difference. That is why some translations are "good" and some are "bad" with shades in between.

DEEMS, I also tend to agree with the poster who commented on Yambo and his women. It isn't so much that the women "served" Yambo but that they were adornments (for wont of a better word) in his life, (and the narration thereof) whether as a living presence, like Paola and Sibilla, or ones whose memory he was a able to conjure up. That will soon become much clearer; this is only the beginning of Yambo's (and our vicarious) journey.

It is obviously significant that, once he stopped actually living in Solara, a place Paola and the family loved, Yambo was reluctant to stay there for any appreciable length of time and, when there, never went up to his grandparents' quarters on the second floor of the main house.

There are many humble and modest abodes in the Italian countryside; the big houses are often enlarged over generations by adding another wing, but (costly) maintenance of the original structure is not always kept up, as Frances Mayes found out when she had to extensively renovate her Italian property Under the Tuscan Sun .

__________________

We have not yet mentioned the fact that memory is also selective , i.e. we tend to remember pleasant events more often and more fondly, which is indeed our prerogative.

When I came to this country, I left a large part of my life behind, but the memory of my childhood is as vivid now as it ever was, possibly because I cultivated it deliberately to compensate for its irretrievable and irreplaceable loss.

I have long believed that there is a storage place, an "attic", that holds our compartmentalized memories in various "drawers". Some of them may have become "sticky" and won't necessarily open at the first try, but they will of their own accord, just as has been suggested above.

One of my early memories has to do with Afghanistan and I thought about mentioning it in parentheses in the folder when we discussed "The Kite Runner". I never did because that remembrance had no real bearing on the story or the discussion. I am mentioning it here because we are discussing memory and its power.

I want to take the opportunity to welcome MAL (Malryn) here, the head of WREX, the Writers Exchange, on SN.
MAL, I'm glad you found the strength to post and hope it will increase in the days to come.

Re: "this book so far has been more about his relationship to books that about his relationship to people"

He was an antiquarian book dealer. Much of his life was books - old books. That right there may say much about Yambo. Books may have been much more important to him than people. Perhaps he had been hiding in the fog of old books.

I am skimming over the first section. I just read something I had forgotten. In the hospital when he awoke with amnesia his wife told him that when they "got together - as a trial" she became pregnant and he married her "because he was a gentleman." Then she said that they really loved each other. Well...maybe not.??

"We have not yet mentioned the fact that memory is also selective , i.e. we tend to remember pleasant events more often and more fondly"...Traudee, when I read what you had written I am reminded of an observation Paola had made back on p.67. I remember thinking it was important at the time and made a note of it.

When she noticed that Yambo didn't react with interest to older songs (from the 30's and 40's), Paola attributed this to a "repression of childhood."

Now what person wishes to repress memories of childhood - unless there is something to repress? Is there an internal struggle going on then, between the desire to find out who he is and the need to repress something unpleasant?

Marni, maybe these old book memories are "safe" territory - a way of avoiding old memories of people.

Yes Joan P. That is exactly what I am trying to say.

I find that I understand the spoken language very well. However getting it back to where I can think of something to say is really hard work. The verb conjugations come easily because that is probably muscle memory. However remembering what to say is very hard work.

Joan Grimes

Yes, we are seeing a most interesting character develop. I'm just typing some notes for myself, sort of categorizing a few things. I wrote some lines about Yambo and the fog. Interesting:

Paolo tells him he was fascinated by fog – he used to say “he was born in it” – he always made note of descriptions of fog – complained that the fogs of his youth weren’t around anymore p.32

What would it be about Yambo and his youth that have made him so fascinated by fog?

MARNI,

thank you for sharing the origin of your name with us. It is charming.

Could the fog "business" simply have been Yambo's (and Eco's) "idée fixe", a fixation ?

Later on in the book there are passages one might describe as nebulous - to stay with the image of fog. The word is "nebbia" in Italian, "(der) Nebel" in German (where all nouns are capitalized), and "le brouillard" in French.
"Eco" is the Italian word for echo = a somewhat uncharacteristic Italian surname (= cognome, in Italian).

Thanks to all who posted.

Re: "idée fixe", a fixation = But, why? What would cause it? It seems as though Eco must mean something by it. Yambo has collected 150 pages of writings about fog. p.60

Hmmmm "She [Sibilla] was there, the fog was not. Others had seen it and distilled it into sounds. Perhaps one day I really could penetrate that fog, if Sibilla were to lead me by the hand.” P.62 Very intriguing. What is this all about?

Another intriguing thing Paola said about Yambo: "You were always a jovial man, you liked good-looking women, good wine, and good music, but I always got the impression that all that was a shield, a way of hiding yourself." p.65

Someone may already have quoted this. What is a "mysterious flame"?

When Yambo teared up after singing a song about first love, he said to Paola, “It’s that I felt something inside. Like a tremor....As if someone were to come here from the fourth dimension and touch us from the inside-say on the pylorus-gently. What does it feel like when someone tickles your pylorus? I would say...a mysterious flame.” P.67 [pylorus = opening from the stomach into the top of the small intestine (duodenum).]

Hmmm...to be simplistic, as I am wont to be...maybe it's like 'butterflies in the stomach' but deeper...like a 'gut-feeling' but still gentle, as he says...like butterflies??? Just another way of saying what's already been said actually...

I am finding myself actually avoiding reading this book now in the morning. I began bogging down two days ago, skimming, and not really being interested any longer.

I'll continue to skim, read your posts, address any questions that spark anything at all. It's a lively discussion here but I really don't like this book.

I keep meaning to ask, or comment at least in this section about the dog testicles in the jar he bought. See..things like that just plain annoy me. I feel Eco is saying/doing things for shock value.

Scootz- a bit cranky this morning cuz I now have to go skim the next 16 pages! Blah!

I have skimmed my pages for today and decided to do my test. Click here to see the image I used.http://faculty.valpo.edu/bflak/dickjane/spot.html

My thoughts

first grade

books

living with grandma

Darlene Shaw

watching Tom Terrific on Captain kangaroo as I wait for Darlene to walk to school

walking to school- recalling hearing about a "bad man" on a school corner"

the smell of the juice at school, and the yucky milk we drank

cannot remember teacher

walking to library with class every week- quite the adventure

libararian reads story, we all clamber to shelves to try and find THAT book

walking back with our library treasures

the school bathrooms in the basement- dank and scary





Those are all the thoughts I can garner from seeing the book I posted. I would have been 6 at that time and have very few memories from this time. To me, this is still not what Yambo is encountering. He sees, but does not remember. So, the part that *would* be like him is the part where I think.."All those days and I have no memories other than these few. What was I doing, thinking?"

. http://faculty.valpo.edu/bflak/dickjane/spot.html

Not sure why that didn't post as a link ,so here's another try. ::;fingers crossed:::

SCOOTZ, you are not alone in being annoyed. My annoyance began earlier when, on pg. 14, Yambo elaborated on his sensation while scratching his groin. The description of the dog testicles preserved in formalin, which he ends up buying (pg. 68-9), goes a bit further. Then comes the scatological description of physical functions on pp. 85-87, which is coarse IMHO and patently unnecessary, also un-funny to this reader.

MARNI, fog was very much a constant during life in Solara, perhaps it invaded his "soul"?

Yes, we can't really skip anything in this book, as tempting as it might be. What we learn e.g. from Paola about her relationship with Yambo is quite telling.
After finishing school, Yambo went abroad for three years (to study, one assumes); when he returns he and Paola reconnect and "live tgether", as we call it today. When she becomes pregnant, he marries her because he is a gentleman - as you had already outlined.

With all the (almost blinding) brilliance, erudition, phenomenal encyclopedic memory, what is there to like about the MAN? His irresistible smile (only) ?
Eco smiles quite irresistibly himself on the backcover of the book (!)

More later about those illustrations.

OK, I see I'm alone here. To me Yambo is one of those charming men who is secretly fond of his own masculinity, who is attracted to dog testicles in a jar, and having a mistress (even if he didn't) and yes, pooping outside and then following said behavior with a meditation on excrement ("shit"), making a point I think is true. We are not repelled by the smell of our own waste but the smell of others'.......I go no further. I don't think any of this is here to shock any more than Chaucer intended to shock with his open references to sex, sexuality, criminality, the abuse of the clergy and so forth. Rather I would call it ribald.

One reason that the reader may see Yambo's women as "adornments" lies in the fact that we have a first person narrator here.

Whenever a first person narrator is involved, we see only through that narrator's eyes except when conversation is reported. When we have conversation, we get to see the women in Yambo's life as quite independent beings who think for themselves.

Sibilla is no pretty blonde airhead. She is Yambo's student who is now in the position of reminding him of how the business works. It is Sibilla who comes to Yambo with the news of a "widow" sale, one involving the buying of a large library from the heir or heir of and estate. Sibilla has to go through the procedure step by step. When she is through, and they in fact buy only the thirteen valuable volumes from the widow, Yambo wonders if he is not cheating somewhat.

I persist in liking the book and finding funny moments in it.

Another woman who seems well-drawn to me is Amalia who has worshipped Yambo since he was a child. She is simply delighted that he will be coming to stay for a while.

I wondered exactly the same thing. I think that we can conclude that Yambo has shut his childhood away before he had the incident and the resulting amnesia. His childhood coincides with fascism in Italy and the second World War. He doesn't even want to return to the family country home before he is stricken. He has buried his childhood away and is now in process of rediscovering it.

Perhaps the amnesia was necessary for him to be able to once again look at his past. It doesn't seem that he would have done so willingly.

But DEEMS, aren't all men fond of their masculinity and virility ?

Mind you, I never said I didn't LIKE the book; it's too early for me, and I never reach a definite conclusion until the end of a book when things have "gelled". By the same token I admit that I am not exactly enchanted with Yambo. I have known quite a few charming men in my time and am not easily impressed, certainly not by charm only.

The term "adornment" does not fully convey what I intended to say, sorry about that. I still hope I can get across what I DO mean as we proceed. The translation continues to irritate me, e.g. on pg. 107, second paragraph, "... Suddenly the project I was undertaking in those rooms took on a new valence." We get what is meant even though it is poorly expressed IMHO.

MARNI, an oped by H.D.S. Greenway in today's Boston Globe is titled "World War II and the Fog of History". Fog, again, as a metaphor, in that case for doubt.

Traude--OK, we disagree on Yambo. That's fine. But do you see what I mean by the problems of having a first-person narrator? If we had a third person narrator here, who would no doubt round out the women, one wouldn't have to work so hard to see them as the strong independent women they are.

I agree with Deems (and Maryal, too) about the first-person narration. Down in the RAW thread -- er, discussion -- I was just blathering on this morning about it. Not just the first-person POV but the dreaded unreliable narrator.

In school we were taught to beware of unreliable narrators (chiefly 1st person) such as we find in the infamously famous "Tell-Tale Heart." You know the guy. He keeps saying he's not mad and in fact quite keen as he suffocates old guys with Sealy Posturepedics then slices and dices them so they fit under the floorboards better.

Then he starts hearing a dead man's heart. Ba-BUM! Ba-BUM! BA-Bum! BA-Bum! It's true. Read it again and he'll even tell you so (again).

Well, although I learned that in school I started my own school of thought -- namely that ALL first-person narrations are unreliable. Remember (if you had 2 or more kids) trying to get the straight scoop on who broke the Ming vase from first one kid then the other? Two quite different stories, neither entirely reliable, both expertly plausible. The story is shaded by the teller, sometimes in a BIG way (Edgar Allan Poe-like) and sometimes subtly (Kevin Allan Freeman-like).

Yambo's that way, too, and doubly so. One, because his memory is suspect, and two because he says, "I this, I that." So the women are seen through his eyes, told through his eyes, slanted through his eyes.

When you see the whites of their I's, put your guard up. -- Miss Allman, Grade 11 English.

Deems: Re: "...having a mistress (even if he didn't)"

He did - or had, I should say, although not Sibilla.

His friend, Gianni, told Yambo (when he asked him) that he had had many affairs with women, maybe too many.

His wife said to Yambo “[You were] always considered a good-looking man... irresistible smile, and some women didn’t resist. Nor did you – you always said you can resist anything but temptation” p.15

A few things about Yambo:

Re Yambo's past at his home in Solara: Yambo had spent all childhood summers, Christmas and Easter vacations, many religious holidays, and 2 full years (1943-1945) at his grandparents’ house in Solara p.33. But, when he returned to the Solara house after childhood, he never set foot in his old bedroom, parents’ and grandparents’ rooms, or the attics p.34.

Now, I think that is pretty intriguing. Why would he avoid those rooms in a house where he had spent so much of his younger life?

His wife told him: “If there was a death sentence somewhere, you’d sign the petition...” (otherwise not be interested in getting involved)....You were always a jovial man, you liked good-looking women, good wine, and good music, but I always got the impression that all that was a shield, a way of hiding yourself. When you dropped it, you used to say that history is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.” P.65

Yambo's eyes teared up when he sang a song about first love. This was the only time I saw him get emotional like this in this first section of the book.

Marni

marnie--right you are. The evidence is that he had mistresses. There's that one whose name I've forgotten that he meets on the street. He can't remember what happened with her although obviously something did. And his wife knows. I was thinking of Sibilla who is a rounded character. The student who surpasses the teacher, she is.

Traude: How interesting about the Boston Globe article!

Deems: I think her name was Vanna.

And marnie--Yes, I find Yambo's avoidance of Solara intriguing too. It's a lovely place as we can see now that he has returned to follow the paper trail and yet he avoided it like the plague (or the fog?)

marni--I do believe you are right. Names of mistresses always escape me.

Deems: You're right about the fog in Solara! Amalia told Yambo that it was often extremely foggy.

Marni

I can't remember names either. Last night I couldn't sleep, so I was skimming through our first section of the book typing some notes. (I have to give up my copy of the book on Aug. 10 - back to the library - and I'll never remember anything if I don't jot down some stuff!)

I found some interesting statements about flames and sun. Here goes:

•When Yambo begins to wake up in hospital he sees sunlight coming thru blinds “...in the fields rejoices” p.4

•When he drank hot tea in hospital, he felt “a fire, a flame...” p.14

•When the doctor asks Yambo to write the first thing that comes to mind, he writes: “love that within my mind discourses with me, the love that moves the sun and the other stars, stars hide your fires, if I were fire I would burn the world….” P.22

•The doctor says, “Certain images spark something inside you.” P.24

•“I...suddenly I understood, for the first time, what the heat of the sun was. The warmth of a still raw spring sun. And the light: I had to squint. You can’t look at the sun…”p.26

•“I’m like...a burning log. The log burns, but it has no awareness of having once been part of a whole trunk nor any way to find out that it has been, or to know when it caught fire. So it burns up and that’s all. I’m living in pure loss.” P.37

•(Here's a repeat) When he teared up after singing a song about first love, he said to Paola “It’s that I felt something inside. Like a tremor...As if someone were to come here from the fourth dimension and touch us from the inside-say on the pylorus-gently. What does it feel like when someone tickles your pylorus? I would say…a mysterious flame.” P.67

•“And me with my mysterious flame sparked, perhaps, by thoughts of Sibilla.” P.68

•The cover of a comic book “sparked” a memory from childhood.p.71

•Sibilla’s blush “spread its flames across your faces” p.75

•Barn owl fleeing in the night gave him feeling of mysterious flame p.88 – made a pssst sound

•“great flaming poppies” etched on a newspaper rack p.93

Marni

MARNI, re Yambo's being reluctant to stay at house in Solara, which family loves, and avoiding grandparents quarters :

exacty the point I raised in my # 140, par. 6.

DEEMS, yes, the caveat regarding first-person narration: I remember it well from other discussions, e.g. Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day.

Well, I think I agree with Traude here: "With all the (almost blinding) brilliance, erudition, phenomenal encyclopedic memory, what is there to like about the MAN? His irresistible smile (only) ? "

So, he remembers how to write his name but actually has to pause and think to masturbate?

The book is becoming rather tedious. I think discussing the book generally can get me intrigued in even the most uninteresting book, but discussing this just compounds the blechiness.

Kleo

As to the women serving Yambo. Yes, it's first person, it's also sick person. I can hardly ever remember anyone over the age of 5 clambering for attention in the presence of someone very ill. It would be odd to find him not being tended by everyone, particularly the women who had woven themselves, with him, into the fabric of each others' lives.

Kleo

Traude: The Remains of the Day - Was that book made into a lovely very sad film starring Anthony Hopkins?

Yes, the Kazuo Ishiguro novel The Remains of the Day was made into a movie with Anthony Hopkins playing the role of Mr. Stevens, directed by James Ivorty:

The Remains of the Day

Kleo

I have to agree - and with gusto! I don't have to read an entire book to realize whether I'm enjoying myself or not. I'm not. I'm just short of 200 pages, and began really dreading it two days ago. It's so redundant as t be stupifyingly boring. At first the pictures carried me through, but I'm not even enjoying those.

I'm not going to spoil the rest of the read for you all. I don't intend on finishing this book. It's not for me at all. Life is too short to drink bad wine- or read boring books. (that last part is mine)

Don't give up the ship, Scootz. I was really dreading reaching for the book, too, which rarely happens with me. But, I got to a point where it became very interesting. Then I really got into it.

Scootz has read the first 200 pages and doesn't like it. I've read the first about 150 and love it. That's what makes a horse race, doesn't it? We're never all going to agree.

More than one reader seems perturbed at the perturd Yambo left in his garden. Really Freudian in an infantile, fixated kind of way.

And truly, if you look, there's a lot of childishness on Yambo's part. Look at the lecture Little Yambo gets from his "mummy" (Paola in the role) about overindulging.

Here's Paola schooling her child husband on gluttony as he reaches for seconds. It's on p. 42:

"Listen, Yambo, you've retained all your automatisms, and you have no problems using a knife and fork or filling a glass. But there's something we acquire through personal experience, gradually, as we become adults. A child wants to eat everything that tastes good, even if it will give him a stomachache later. His mother explains over time that he must control his impulses, just as he must when he needs to pee. And so the child, who if it were left up to him would continue to poop in his diapers and to eat enough Nutella to land him in the hospital, learns to recognize the moment when, even if he doesn't feel full, he should stop eating. As we become adults, we learn to stop, for example, after the second or third glass of wine, because we remember that when we drank a whole bottle we didn't sleep well. What you have to do, then, is reestablish a proper relationship with food. If you give it some thought, you'll figure it out in a few days. In short, no seconds."

Professor Eco did it again (write about peeps and poops, I mean). Tee-hee.

This doesn't bother some of us and it exasperates others of us. But, as the empty pitcher, Yambo must be filled with rather humiliating and infantile instruction from Paola. Fortunately, she's an experienced mom and up to the task! (Hopefully she remembers to watch her step in the garden, but the hazards of motherhood are well-documented.)

So anyway, I'll split the difference between scootz and maryal. The book left me decidedly luke cool.

P.S. Fans of Nutella rejoice! It made the book!

While working with Alzheimers patients I noticed that sometimes very basic and elemental body functions and feelings leave people with memory disorders a little awed. It also tends to help orient them.

WhenI wrote my handbook for nursing assistants in our facility I strongly suggested that in addition to washing up their patients they took them into the washroom, to the sink, and let them put their hands under running water...give them the soap...and 'remind' them how it feels to touch and feel and wash their own hands and faces.

I don't know if Yambo's experience with defecation and other contacts with his own body were helpful to him in that way but I know that some people with memory loss really become elated when re-introduced to their most basic bodily functions and rituals.

... by Yambo's insight into his organs, is being bored. I wish it was interesting enough to annoy me, to make me toss the book in disgust.

I can read a book I hate, and love doing it.

Kleo

KLEO: I agree. I admire those of you who are doing such a good job of analyzing the book. More and more, I am finding Eco's prose flowing over me in an endless stream, leaving me stupefied, and unable to think. As Yambo is gradually recovering his memory, I am gradually losing mine. (Maybe Eco is an alien, able to suck the juice out of his readers and into his characters. LOL)

I'm getting tired of telling spellcheck that I DO mean Yambo, not Rambo!!

I really think Kevin has a point about Yambo maybe being still a child in some ways. I mentioned something about this when discussing his name. Why did he keep a little child's name? I think he got stuck in time in a way. Let's see as we move forward.

My son's name is Daniel. We always called him Danny. When he was 13, suddenly he decided we couldn't call him Danny anymore. He was grown up. And his name couldn't be Daniel because that was too formal. He had to be "Dan." (I thought "Dan the man.") A manly name. He was growing up and wanted a man's name.

Yambo is the little kid saying, "My name is Yambo and I have a quiff." (or something like that when he was a little boy.)

My son is Daniel also. At some point we moved from Danny to Dan, but I can't remember when. You have a point.

In edit: as I was writing this, my husband came by and said something about "Danny". Oh, well, it's more natural for parents to get stuck in their children's childhood.

This story really strikes me as I go through this section. I think Yambo mentions it twice:

Story of “Signor Pipino, born an old man and died a bambino...born in a cabbage at sixty years of age, with a nice white beard, and over the course of his adventures he grows a little younger each day, till he becomes a boy again, then a nursling, and then is extinguished as he unleashes his first (or last ) scream.” P.99

Yambo is about 60 and has a beard. He's going back to his childhood trying to find his memory. He's even a nursling, as someone pointed out the way his wife was treating him.

A couple of very telling things about Yambo:

“Why had I decided to become an antiquarian book dealer if not in order to have a fixed point, the day that Gutenberg printed the first Bible in Mainz, to go back to? At least you know that nothing existed before that, or rather, other things had existed, but you know that you can stop there…”p.122

It sounds like he became what he became in an attempt to grab ahold of something and stop the world from whirling around, like he needed something to focus on desperately. Like he's running away from something and needs to stop someplace.

Quote up above: “Was there nothing between myself and Sibilla but this profile (of image in magazine)? And what if there were nothing but that face between me and all the women I have known? What if I have never done anything but follow a face I had seen in my grandfather’s study? P.107

Running away from something....following something...

I just thought of something. Yambo got malaria when he was a child. He got recurrent fevers. He had to take quinine tablets.

My dad said when he was at Anzio in the World War II invasion, he got malaria in Italy.

I've always thought"fog" was a symbol for forgetting or partial forgetting. The fog covers and rolls and lifts or it can envelop or curl. Watch the fog in San Francisco or London and you will see that it has a personality that shifts and moves and effects those that live in it. "I was in a fog " is a common expression for confusion or an excuse for not doing the expected of you.Fog, like memory, can be hazy or thick or enveloping or even wispy. Ecco is preparing us for the memory shifts by using the image of the fog. He brings us back to childhood by mentioning, in one way or another, 18 childhood books in the first 18 pages.

Eco is a manipulator and he is trying to manipulate us to be in tune with Yambo. Some of you feel the manipulation and hate it. There is so much to dislike about him. But there is much to hate about Humbert Humbert in "Lolita". That doesn't make it a bad book. it makes it a fascinating portrait of a man. So I don't as yet know Yambo. I won't till the end of the book and even then it will take time to congeal within me.

Going back to memory of childhood must necessarily be somewhat sad for what was left behind and will never be again. Of course growing up is inevitable. But we leave a trail after us that can be retreived by memory (mine begin at 2) but can never be relived. So the most beautiful memory can be accompanied by the longing for that moment to be again...but it cannot be. Yes, one is happy that it happened but a bit of longing for that moment must accompany it.

This is the most lively discussion. The input is very exciting . It makes my brain work overtime.

Judy

Re: 'Zeta'

Do you mean as in Greek alphabet...

or Catherine 'Zeta', wife of Michael Douglas, Queen of some kind of cell phones, also, star of "Darling Buds of May" a delightful Britcom???

Grinning, Alliemae

Ginny--You know I love dogs. So I offer this possible help for taking meds. If your dog likes peanut butter, put the pill in some peanut butter on a spoon (Extra crunchy works best around here). Because I've had to give meds to a number of dogs, I know their personalities differ. With some dogs, it works best to give a bit of regular peanut butter (on said spoon) first and then the next spoonful with the pill in it.

The other alternative is cheese which is somewhat messier to manipulate but which most dogs love. Sorry about the pouch. Kemper Elizabeth just had a tooth extracted--both roots were decayed. She kept getting infections. Back to her old self she is now.

Your dog has more extensive dental surgery than Kemp did, but she was feeling better after two days, much better after about four.

How about cheese that is strong, mixed with Velveta. I'm thinking of how to hide the smell.

And, yes, I've had to give antibiotics, pain meds and some capsule--have forgotten what it was--that was REALLY LARGE.

Geez, I miss one day and come back to 62 posts!! I confess I didn't even try to read them all, and I probably missed some great stuff. Meanwhile, and the last page, I find dogs and cheese and peanut butter. I don't even want to know how we got there!

Has anyone else commented on that list of words beginning at the bottome of pg.111? Here I've prided myself on a fairly broad vocabulary, and there were only four words in that bunch I'd ever heard of before. How about the rest of you. I won't believe the bold soul who tries to tell me they knew every one of those weird words!

Babi

"I think bookish people often retreat into and are beguiled by a world of fantasy, a World of Words. The characters in books, in plays, in poetry, in song, come alive. Sometimes they become more alive than real life is, and then real life becomes the shadow, the fog and the reality is in the printed page".

I think this is right, and hits the nail on the head. This is Yambo: whether it is Eco or not, I don't know. Perhaps he makes me so uneasy because I'm afraid it might happen to me?? Naaah -- there is nothing in books that is as thrilling as my grandsons' laughter.

Does the book remind me of Italy? It reminds me of Proust "Remembrance of things past", at least the first book, before he got to the Paris salons. So I'm guessing it's not so much Italian as European (in spite of all the references to fascism that come in the next section).

Ginny: What a sad story about your doggy. Labs are the best. Who would shoot him???

Re: More recurrent images or themes to add to our list up above:

I added "sun" to "flames"

Soul

Sibilla

Facism (more to come on this next week)

That was so cool to see Ginny's comment about Solara, the name of the home, sun. It never even occurred to me!

Babi...the list contains many words I don't recall ever seeing/hearing before, and I have no idea why they're there or what their relationship is to each other...and it's one of those many things I skimmed over as my eyes glazed over yet again.

Sparble: (v. t.) To scatter; to disperse; to rout.

http://websters.wunderdictionary.com/dictionary/def/english/sparble.html

It's a little chilly tonight; I'd best take my vespillo with me to church.

Actually, a vespillo is an Italian moped. Yambo gambols on one in the book.

And Ginny, you noted recently how it was interesting how those who finished the book in many cases lost interest by the end. Actually, I lost interest in the middle and regained interest in the end after being interested in the beginning.

Meaning: it was a reverse Oreo. I preferred the crumby cookie bookends to the crummy creamy middle ("reverse" because, in RL, I prefer the always-first creamy middles to the always-last crumby cookies).

Judy posted a long time ago about Yambo's remark about asthma. Here's the quote from page 87:

"In order to rediscover lost time, one should have not diarrhea but asthma. Asthma is pneumatic, it is the breath (however labored) of the spirit: it is for the rich, who can afford cork-lined rooms. The poor, in the fields, attend less to spiritual than to bodily functions."

The passage is not really about asthma but about Proust who lived, I can't remember for how long, in a cork-lined room during which he wrote and forgive me for not having the correct accents, A la recherche du temps Perdu (Remembrance of Times Past), seven volumes.

His subject in this long book of many parts, or at least volume one, is Childhood. It is eating a madeleine (which Yambo has also mentioned at least once) that takes him back in memory. The Encyclopedia Brittanica has this: " through the accidental tasting of tea and a madeleine cake, the narrator retrieves from his unconscious memory the landscape and people of his boyhood holidays in the village of Combray. "

Proust suffered from asthma all his life. His father was a physician and the family was wealthy.

There are a number of other references to Proust so far. So we seem to be on the right track.

Maryal

A fine image from Kevin--the book is a "reverse Orea." The tasty frosting bits are at the beginning and the end. The cakey bits are in the middle.

This sounds like a Greek philosopher, before looking it up, or
one who loves (philo) his father (pator); a very wild guess.
But looking it up, that wasn't what Eco meant.
The name ties to the history of Syria.
If you don't want to know yet, don't click on the link.

Philopator

Ginny, As a Lab lover, I hope so much to hear that your beloved dog is able to recover! Good Luck!

GINNY, I trust all will go well with your beloved canine. As a dog lover from way back I can empathize. Good luck.

Since I've been off-line most of the day, I need to catch up with the posts.
Regarding Solara, if such a place exists in the Italian region of Piemonte = Piedmont in the northwestern part of Italy close to France and Switzerland, it is not shown on my fairly recent map; I'll scan it again. Torino = Turin is the capital of Piemonte; Milano = Milan (to the east) is the capital of La Lombardia = Lombardy.

Yes, Eco refers several times to "my search ..." or "my remembrance of the past", without further comments, but clearly alluding to Proust's famous multi-volume À la recherche du temps perdu = In Search of Lost Time. He has a habit (unfortunately) of making a given point several times - for good measure.

I've been checking Italian web sites to see what Eco's compatriots have to say about the book and found some interesting reactions. Will report in due course.

vespillo = what you take to sit on the hard church pews.

Eco refers to Proust many times -- I'm sorry I didn't mark them. The incident he refers to occurs in Swann's Way: Volume ! of "in Search of Lost Time". Here are some excerpts (Moncrieff and Kilmartin translation):

p. 59"It is a labor in vain to attempt to recapture (our own past); all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die".

this object is what Yambo is looking for, as he tells us. more in a minute.

Indeed, MARNI, Yambo is looking for the spark to ignite the flame that will restore his lost memory and solve all mysteries; will the search be successful?

KEVIN, actually the Italian scooter (moped) of the era was called Vespa , and latter-day variations thereof are still zipping through the narrow streets of Rome and other major Italian cities, leaving pedestrians scurrying and tourists terrified.

A much prized early car was the Fiat Topolino, 'topolino' meaning little mouse : from 'topo'= mouse, plus the ending "-ino" (or "ina", depending on the gender of a noun), as the diminutive.

DEEMS, I should have read the previous posts more carefully, especially your # 206, sorry. The duplication was unintended.

May I add that Proust, born in 1871, had his first asthmatic attack at age 9 and almost died. From then on he spent his summers in Cabourg, a resort on the English Channel, fictionalized as "Balbec". It was there that he began writing Remembrance of Things Past.

After the death of his father (1903) and mother (1905), he began to withdraw from his circle of friends and, in 1907, moved into that cork-lined apartment on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, from which he rarely stirred for his remaining years, nibbling on those Madeleine cookies, partly to prevent serious asthmatic and nervous attacks, partly to avoid being distracted from his writing. He died in 1922.

GINNY, I fully agree that this is not so much a typically Italian but rather a European novel. By extension, the contents of my "attic" regarding childhood are more similar to Yambo's because I too grew up in Europe; I began my new life here as an adult, fully formed.

There are many interesting terms Eco includes here, ones we would not use in everyday language, in ANY country I confidently say, e.g. in the third paragraph on pg. 108 to pg. 111 and elsewhere.
Does Eco really expect the reader to KNOW them all and, if not, to look them up? Which leads me to ask, again, why does he so desperately try to impress - especially when readers would rather know whether Yambo WLl regain his memory ? He is an expert in the field of semiotics and other fields and known throughout the world. Does he feel he still has something to prove?

Some of you have already commented on Yambo's seeming immaturity. I believe he is also insecure (which will become clearer as we read on). What about the author?

The narrator then says that for years he had no memory of his childhood at his grandfather's. Then one day, his mother gave him tea and a little cake called a petite madelaine.He dipped the cake in tea and ate:

p.58 of above)No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with crumbs touched my palate than a shiver ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin ...this new sensation having had the effect that love has, of filling me with a precious essence, or rather this essence was not in me, it was me".

He struggles for some time to try to decide what this sensation is, and finally realizes it is the memory of the taste of tea and madeleines from his childhood. When he recognizes this taste, his childhood memory comes back, although he "did not know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy"(p.64)

Some other material from Proust above that might be relevant.

On page one, he describes falling asleep while he was reading. In his sleep, he went on thinking of the book but in an odd way: "it seemed to me that I was the immediate subject of my book". Later "the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to apply myself to it or not, and at the same time my sight would return.

On p. 4, he wakes from sleeping again with no memory of who he was. "I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence -- I was more destitute than the cave dweller". But then memory starts to return "like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being from which I could never have escaped by myself".

For my cat who takes thyroid medications I grind the meds up, add clam juice or tuna juice (water-packed) to the grindings, stir it up, but it on top of a small portion of her canned cat food, then add a 1/2 teaspoons of tuna on top of that.

If you try this once, Ginny, and it seems to work, let me know by e-mail (burszt AT aol.com), and I will include a couple of other details.

My cat is the only hyperthyroid kitty her age (15) at her vet with normal weight.

Good luck.

Kleo

Re: page 111 and all those words. Taking this at face value, Yambo is waxing enthusiasm over his old encyclopedia, the Melzi, and marvelling about the things he encountered there that "tasted like magic words." I don't think he necessarily knew what they meant, but he liked them nevertheless. I remember at an early age I learned to spell the word "appreciate." I doubt I knew what it meant, I just liked spelling it, much the way Yambo likes saying the words from his book.

I get the feeling here that we're going to watch a boy grow up, will learn what shaped the boy. I don't think Eco is playing with us, he's just setting the stage.

For the record, p. 111 -- Dongola is a small town in Illinos, subject to frequent snow days. Grangerism is what the farmers believe.

"...and Hansel is eating them."

and that, my friends, is 'BACCIVORUS'

Alliemae

...to DIE for!! Saw him in a film about some incredible treasures, esp jewels...I think the jewels finally won my heart however!!!

As I sit here on a Sunday morning, enjoying the quiet, only the sounds of my brain and computer working, I MUST thank you for SERMON.

It will be something to 'chew on' (there's that 'BACCIVORUS' again!!) for the rest of the day off and on!!

I do like the end quote by Jimmie Carter!!

p.s. Jeff CHANDLER??? oh my, YES!!

WOW...never knew that about Granger's name...

Moving into the new section:
One of the sources for Yambo, the name, shows up in the picture
on p. 136, whenever you are ready to move ahead into that section.
Look at the lower left corner of the picture, even if you haven't read the section.

The Adventures of Ciuffettino look pretty scary!

Grangerism again. Wasn't there a Farley Granger too? Dark curly hair? But I thought the grange was the meeting place for farmers and rancher -- probably where they duked it out over sheep and cattle. As for BACCIVOROUS -- I keep thinking bacteria, but maybe that's only 1 "c" -- eating bacteria?

Much of the reading here has reminded me of "boy stuff." Would a female protagonist growing up in the 30's and 40's be talking about the same things? Eco has left me with a mental picture of a little boy, left much to his own devices, spending hours by himself with his books and toys. Much as the adult Yambo is doing now, reading about the tortures, preparing Captian Potato for battle.

And Mippy has shown us where he got his nickname, "Yambo, the boy with the quiff." That reminded me of the small boy in "God of small things" -- who was so proud of his "puff," which I think is the same as a "quiff." Another "boy" thing, that you don't see much of today.

Who cares what the words really mean, when you all have such wonderfully creative definitions of your own! I much prefer yours.

Yes, we finally know where Yambo came from. The small boy took the name from some of his favorite books, announcing to the family "I am Yambo!" Haven't we all done that as children? Apparently this one stuck.

Did any of you enjoy as much as I did the initial ramble thru' the attic the first time up? There were enough goodies up there for a whole segment of 'Antique Roadshow'. I can declare with certainty, however, that all houses do not have cellars. And nowadays, even the attics tend to be cramped and only partially floored. Just enough to allow the repairman to get to the air conditioning vents. Pity. I'd love to be able to browse thru' an attic packed with old stuff.

Babi

"Who cares what the words really mean, when you all have such wonderfully creative definitions of your own! I much prefer yours." Babi

I agree with you here.

I grew up in a house with eves. The upper story was an attic that had been partially converted. There were various eves on three sides and a roof over the sun porch on the fourth. My room had a closet with a panel that removed to reveal eves that my sister's built-in dresser drawers backed into. All of the eves were real eves that one had to walk only on cross beams to pass through. The ones on the north side of the house led to a lowered level above the front-porch, then curved around to a secret set of shelves built in. In the basement we had a crawl space under the front porch and a dirt room under the back sun porch. In the dirt room their was a walkway between the two sides with sand filling the one pit and soil the other. Needless to say hide-and-go-seek in my house involved mostly hiding with books and flashlights. There were 6 secret rooms/hidden spaces and 7 siblings. Whoever lost (their batteries went out first) had to give up one of the secret rooms.

I think being lost in childhood, when one has a romper-room of memories, must be a secret fantasy of Yambo's. That's why he never grew up, maybe, not a tragedy that kept him there, but an adult responsibility that made him want to go back.

Kleo

Ah Kleo, you touch on something important here, I think. Does he really want to go back?

Isn't it just wonderful that this book is taking us to some cobweb-covered corners of our own memories?

But may I linger just a moment longer over Stewart Granger, great actor with a distinctive, sonorous voice. I remember him less for his swash-buckling roles than movies like "King Solomon's Mines", which I loved.
His marriage to the lovely actress Jean Simmons (15 or 16 years Stewart's junior) was thought to be made in heaven - alas, few are. Do any of you remember Jean Simmons in the made-for-TV movie (a series) of Colleen McCollough's book The Thorn Birds'? What a wonderful cast and magnificent photography.

BABI, you are right. We are having fun with those words, familiar or not, and are free to puzzle about their origin, even invent our own definitions. Let's enjoy the bursts of our own creativity.

I haven't had time yet to investigate the word du jour , but certainly will, and ditto for other intriguing words that (justly) give rise to all kinds of word associations. And that's right up my own alley.

_________________

There's at least one very true, somewhat funny aspect to Yambo's exploration of his grandfather's library/studio and attic.

Apparently persons unknown had attempted to create a shrine of sorts to the collector grandfather and, in doing so, had taken into consideration the exigencies of interior decorating more than the legacy of the man.

These exigencies do play an important role even today in this country: where some real estate agents tell sellers to remove family photographs, clean up clutter and, in some cases, have (and pay for) a total make-over.

Back later. People at the door.

Hi, folks! I'm back from revisiting old memories at my (GASP) 40th high school reunion. Talk about memories! My hs graduating class had 362 people! That's a big class. Not everyone there Sat. night, but quite a few. Some people looked great! But, thank heavens for name tags. We had a BLAST!!! Talking, remembering, laughing, dancing, drinking... My first crush was there. I didn't recognize him and he didn't wear a name tag. Kept asking me if I recognized him, which I didn't. I almost dropped when he told me his name. He looked older than my father. Sad story. In hs he was always president of our class, captain of the baseball, basketball, and football teams. Played professional baseball. But he was injured, lost his job, lost everything, wife divorced him, and he is crippled permanently with terrible arthritis because of all the sports, and is in some sort of poorhouse. Man.

I, however, felt great! Wore the right clothes (casual.) Looked fairly slim. (Maybe.) Hair came out right. The poison ivy was clearing up because I used my son's leftover prednisone when my own doctor made me arrange for an appointment some time in the future before prescribing anything (thanks, doc, that's helpful for my reunion Sat. night). I had poison ivy everywhere. But, I have to explain Ginny's reference to my "collagen implants." That sounds really BAD. Two years ago, my husband and I went to his 40th hs reunion. The night before the event, a bee stung me on my lip. So I looked like I had a bad collagen job. I cried so hard. This time I was just covered with poison ivy welts.

And this was so cool....Last week somebody stole my portable MP3 player from my jeep. My raffle ticket won and one of the choices was a portable MP3 Sony Walkman!! Fate! I'm still smarbling!!

Joan: I really enjoyed your posting #226.

Lots of really interesting postings. I loved being directed to the Yambo picture on pg. 136. There's the quiff!! I can't even tell you what I first thought a quiff was until someone defined it.

I'm really wondering about Yambo's trip through the Solara house attic. I'm thinking: Was this a real trip? Did he really go there to find his memory? Every time he turns around at Solara, he's magically discovering a new box, or container, or drawer containing something triggering a childhood memory. These boxes keep sort of popping up out of nowhere after awhile. Every time he thinks that's it, there's another one. I'm thinking: Are these just containers in his mind that he's finding?

Baccivorus: I think means drinking everything (from the god Baccus and vorus).

Assur-Bani-Pal: first one I REALLY recognize besides 'dogmatics' (math for doggies?) and 'benzoin' (as in tincture of benzoin--smelly stuff and kind of sticky/tacky when half dried--used in olden days around the perimeter of a bedsore to toughen the skin and contain enlargement.)

Assur-Bani-Pal--someone (or somewhere?) in either ancient Sumerian or Mesopotamian culture or thereabouts.

Kafiristan may have been or is in Central Asia

This is without looking them up right? Hmmmmm--possibly, POSSIBLY 4 out of 25!!!

'inadequation' looks more like it should have been part of Camille Paglia's commentary on Theodore Roethke's "Cuttings" for those of you also doing Break, Blow, Burn!!

Out of 25, I have heard of five. LOL

As to Kafirstan, I have just finished reading THE POWER OF ONE set in Africa, where blacks were referred to by the Dutch as "kafirs", so I'm wondering if there's a connection.

Good morning! Here we are set to begin the second instalment of our book to see whether Yambo comes any closer to discovering the mystery of the flame and the flame's connection to Queen Loana, and who is really behind Queen Loana.

But first I'd like to warmly WELCOME BUBBLE to our discussion; it was she who contributed the information that "Yambo" is also a pan-African greeting. It's wonderful to have you with us, BUBBLE !

Since a mystery is implied in the title of our book, the reader has every right to expect suspense , but the lists of words and terms, many in alphabetical order, on pp. 108 - 112, are a digression on the part of the author; simply put, they are holding things up while not helping Yambo much in his quest.

But just one last comment on two words on the list that were mentioned here: (1) "baccivorous" (sounds almost like carnivorous). I too am baffled but I do not believe it has to do with the Italian word for kiss because there's only one 'c' in bacio (singular) and baci (plural).
In parentheses, there's a fine line of chocolates made in Italy by Perugina; one bears the name BACI, and love messages are included in every box.

(2) I do know about Kafiristan, though (perhaps from reading James Michener's Caravans ?) : it is a region in Afghanistan now called Nuristan.

_______________________

We saw earlier - DEEMS mentioned it, I think - that Yambo does not fully open up to Paola, who is worried and anxious for his physical well-being, his BP and the moderate diet that was recommended.
When she calls to inquire how his work is going, he is "circumspect" (pg. 118), talking in platitudes.

_______________________

There is more about The Adventures of Ciuffettino and the name Yambo on pg. 134, and it is not the last such reference.

Now I have a question about children's books and the violence so often found in them,"Grimm's Fairy Tales" not standing alone by any means.

Is there, could there be, an inherent danger to children who are reading such books or, for that matter, seeing the bashing of bad guys on puppet shows (those I remember), in cartoons, and now in video games ?

MARNI, thank you for sharing the wonderful experience at your HS reunion. You described it so well, it made my heart sing!

Reunions are one of the things I have missed. When I emigrated, I lost touch with most of my classmates. One of them had been close to all of us after graduation. She became a pharmacist in Heidelberg and was able to supply us with items unavailable during the war, our anchor in those turbulent times when some of us were made homeless in the bombing in the nearby city where we had lived.

I visited her several times on my trips back home, and sad to see her in failing health. During one visit in Europe when both my daughter and son were with me, I called her, just to hear her voice. She was in great pain but hopeful about further surgery. She died later that year. She was 45.

Late last night I saw the news that Peter Jennings has lost his battle with lung cancer. How very, very sad.

Found him! Assurbanipal (Ashurbanipal) was the last great king of Assyria. I knew I'd heard the name before; just couldn't pin him down.

Was it Traude who wondered if the attic and all it contained were real? I think it probably was, That big old house had been in the family for generations, and the attic was huge. I don't think you could go thru everything in it if you spent all summer at it.

Some of what Yambo is finding is disturbing. He re-reads the ending of Jack London's Martin Eden, where the hero commits suicide: "...as he feels the water slowly filling his lungs, he gains, in a final glimmer of lucidity, some understanding, maybe of the meaning of life, but 'at the instant he knew, he ceased to know'".

It placed a 'pall' over what Yambo was doing, his attempts at rediscovery. He thinks that maybe he should stop searching, since fate had granted him oblivion. I think he is wondering here if perhaps that oblivion is a kindness; who knows what remembrance might reveal. Still, he had to go on. I can sympathize with that. I would have to know. I have always felt that I can handle anything, if I know what it is I'm facing. Ignorance has never been 'bliss' for me.

Babi

Re from the Jack London: "....he gains, in a final glimmer of lucidity, some understanding, maybe of the meaning of life, but 'at the instant he knew, he ceased to know'"....

I think this quote, posted by BaBi, is one of the most important in the book. It's worth remembering, I think.

Yes, BaBi, EDEN is one of the key allusions in the book, and MARTIN EDEN is no random choice on Eco's part. Remember that "the Fall" in the Garden included Death as part of its package deal.

Before the tangy snap of A&E Network biting into that crisp apple plucked from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve's was a world of immortality.

Eh. Overrated, I'm sure. I can only imagine how old it might get living forever in a garden where everyone's an animal and you only have your wife (who keeps carping for you to sign up at the Navel Academy) for company.

Re: FAIRY TALes etc.

First and foremost I want to differentiate between Fairy Tales and Cartoons versus Video Games. I wish to refer to the former and not the latter since in one case the child is a passive observer or listener and in the other an active participant.

All children are beset by conflicts, anxieties and irrational processes. A particular story may ,at first, seem to be anxiety provoking. However after hearing the story or seeing the cartoon many times the fearsome aspects seem to disappear while the reassuring aspects(the witch dies, the wolf is destroyed, the Ogre is vanished or banished etc.). The original displeasure of anxiety is turned into the pleasure of anxiety faced and mastered.

By denying access to stories which tell the child that others have the same fantasies, he is left to feel that he is the only one who imagines such things. That makes his fantasies really scary. Knowing that others have the same fantasies makes us feel we are part of humanity and allays our fears.

The most primitive society abounds in legends and stories that children hear from infancy. They help the child face difficult situations with hope and knowledge that he need not be overtaken or destroyed by these things but learn how they work and build defenses against them.

In cartoons good always wins over evil. The outcome is certain even though the plot may be long and winding, and yes, scary at times.

Video games are a whole other venue and if I understand it correctly,made for older children who have passed into the more realistic understanding of how the world works and can differentiate between Good and Evil. Although some fantasy is used, the good that is done by Fairy Tales, Legends and Cartoons is not the main goal. Winning and points become the goal. This is a different type of mastery.

Judy

GINNY asked if we should read Proust in Seniornet. I would say NO. It has to be the world's longest novel == eight volumes, each about 600 pages. And not an easy read. Some of his sentences are, literally, a page long (The longest sentence in the English language comes from a translation of Proust.

I have only read Volume I. That was more than enough. But the first 200 pages, where the narrator recovers his memories of childhood at his grandparents' house in the country, is well worth the effort. And it was clearly the model for the middle part of Flame. The parallels are striking, not just in the situation, but in the feel of Chambray (Proust)/Solera(Eco). The old servants in the two books are also the same.

The differences are even more interesting. Where Proust describes (sometimes with incredible vividness) the people, countryside, and gardens, Eco describes the plots and pictures in books and, lacking Proust's descriptive genius, relies on illustrations to bring them to life. Proust's child catches a glimpse of a little girl in a garden, falls hopelessly in love, and says he spends his life vainly trying to capture her love. Eco transforms that into the sight of a picture in a magazine, which he is presumably trying to capture in his attraction to his assistant (and perhaps others).

Eco has been very brave to set up this comparison, and inevitably falls on the short side of it. But, as you all have pointed out, there is much in Eco to ponder.

JUDY: very interesting point. I once attended a meeting of people who told fairy tales to children. One said she always changed the story to give a happy ending. Another argued, as you did, that children need stories such as Grimm, that deal with real fears.

Almost alone among my friends, I thought fairy tales were CREEPY. Didn't like the stories, didn't like the characters (princesses and such), didn't, really really didn't, like the ILLUSTRATIONS which seemed to be Victorian in nature and cast with a light, the source of which I could never determine. As an adult I don't like fantasy in any of its incarnations.

And yet. . . .

I loved being scared. I loved scarey radio shows.

I am now a fan of mystery and suspense (in writing and in movies).

But those fairy tale books--BAH. Still don't like them.

Thank you for your posts and input.

Babi , it was GINNY who wondered whether Solara was real. I think it was real, and so was the attic. And I'm quite sure that Eco drew heavily on his own experience, his OWN store of memorabilia as presented in the book.

I believe that eventually we'll have to talk about the illustrations and their effect. Their numbers proliferate as Yambo struggles to recover his memory, their colorfulness a welcome, counterpoint (antidote?) to the pervading fog of the story.

Excellent points, BUBBLE, MARNI AND KEVIN.

JUDY and JOAN K, it was the aspect of violence, generally speaking, I meant to touch on. In the period Eco refers to, there was no TV yet, much less video games.

JOAN K, it would take time and a possibly superhuman effort to read the entire work of "Remembrance .." and follow the continuing thread of family, marriages, love relationships. At home we had the French texts and I remember the volumes all neatly lined up side by side. The first one was Du côté de chez Swann = Swann's Way, I am certain of it.

Among the other titles, if memory serves, were À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur; Le côté des Guermantes; La prisonnière ; the others I have quite simply forgotten. Most of my father's library and my parents' apartment were destroyed in a bombing attack during the war. I have never read Proust in English.

Like Proust, Eco's narrator is literally "in search of lost time". Yambo tries to stimulate his memory through associations with objects and circumstances of the past in an effort to reconcile the past and the present.

However, Yambo sets about this rather leisurely, it seems, coddled by the stalwart Amalia and fortified by the obligatory bottles of wine.

And so I wonder, shouldn't he be more frantic, desperate in fact? This sounds so much like a deliberate exercise.

What do you think ??

DEEMS, thank you for your post, sorry to acknowledge it late.

To carry the thought further, Grimm's Fair Tales were the "diet" of my youth, and I tend to feel exactly like you. Later on I gravitated to Hans Christian Andersen, even though I was reduced to tears over and over again by the story of "The Little Match Girl", and ever so glad to be under warm covers.

But WHY are there - in all countries and different languages - children's fairy tales that embody violence as a natural given?

"However, Yambo sets about this rather leisurely, it seems, coddled by the stalwart Amalia and fortified by the obligatory bottles of wine.

And so I wonder, shouldn't he be more frantic, desperate in fact? This sounds so much like a deliberate exercise." Traude

Ah, this is about the only thing that rings true. I keep getting irritated with how obsessed with his own amnesia Yambo is in the beginning, as if he is really aware of his lack of memory. I don't think that when one is missing memory, one is really that conscious of the fact that the memory is missing. This not from personal experience, but from thinking about amnesia, because in fact my personal experience is not a well-founded thing in my own consciousness and truly offers me no insight. It is not something I can pick up at leisure and examine. This is the fog: the intangible aspect of amnesia. Memory's loss is not an object in the attic that one may examine at leisure. I am now railing at the book: lists! books! so many starting places, as if you have not lost your memory, merely set it aside for fun, this is psychoamnesia for certain! Get over yourself already! Get over him you silly women!

Kleo

I don't know about Yambo's memory, but I am astounded at the amount of research that must have been required for this book!!!

Oh dear, I just lost an entire post and this time cannot blame AOL for it. Don't know what key I hit in my rush to complete the message before my doctor's apointment. Can't do it now but will start afresh when I get back.

I always take plenty of reading material with me because the waiting period can be long.

A quick reply to KIDSAL; the research is truly astounding, and I bet Eco did most of it right at his home in Milan that holds 50,000 books, we have been told.

Some words are unclear, for example "friable clay" (childrens' toys, pg.127). What is "blue sugar paper", I wonder? And there are other examples.

There has been no epiphany as yet, and we are still proceeding at Yambo's agonizingly slow pace. Ah, pazienza = patience!

Will be back.

Question 10 above asks -- What so far strikes you as being particularly Italian? Would you have known that the country of origin is Italy?

I wouldn't have been able to tell while reading our first section, but now, almost finished with section II, I find the descriptions of Fascist/National literature fascinating. Buffalo Bill as Signor Tombini, born at Mussolin's birthplace? The Balilla Boys? Youth of Italy and singing for Benito. Yambo lived at Solara during the last two years of the war. I am wondering if this section is building up to something relating to that period.

Kleo, who are you talking to here? "Get over yourself already! Get over him you silly women!"

Nothing has struck me as Italian. That's been one thing I've been disappointed it. I'd hope to "feel" like I was in Italy. I don't.

Yambo's musings on the 'cultural anthropology' of his childhood readings gave me food for thought.In Salgari he read of dark-skinned people who were heroes and whites who were villains. Not only the English were 'odious', but those fellow Fascists, the Spanish. Not all the heroes were Italians, and there were both good and bad Indians (as in India).

I don't remember my own childhood reading being so broadminded. I remember reading about Americans, Amer. INdians, British, Europeans. I remember some wonderful Japanese 'fairy tales', much, much better than Grimm. I must have read something about Africa, but I can't remember it just now. My childhood contact with African-Americans, as best I can recall, consisted primarily of Jim traveling down the river with Huck Finn. Of course, from much earlier, there was the now much despised Little Black Sambo. As I recall, I doubted very much the bit about the tiger running himself into a puddle of butter, but wished very much I could join them for the pancake supper! It's still not entirely clear to me why the little boy is now considered a negative image.

Thinking back, I don't really find that I picked up any negative views regarding any peoples from my childhood reading. Maybe it was diversified enough to prevent that, or maybe the impact of what one reads is not nearly as strong as the influence of those around us.

Have any of you a different experience of cultural impact from childhood reading?

Babi

Off topic , things could have been worse; I' ve waited there for hours before, but's been worthwhile because there is no more caring, competent, compassioate physician hereabouts.

The last posts in answer to one of GINNY's questions seem to express a certain disappointment and should be looked at further.

But before we do that, may I counter with a follow-up question:
What exactly did those of us who voted sight unseen for this book actually expect?

As for me, I rushed through the first reading but decided to take a second look, which has indeed produced new insights, though I still have mixed feelings.

We know this is a work of fiction, the narration is in the first person and, by implication, the first-person narrator is, or may, not reliable.

This leads me to ask what audience Eco meant to address here. How responsive the non-Italian audience could be expected to be ... and more.

Traude: What did I expect from a book I hadn't read? I guess what I expect from any good (to me) book.

• Something in it, be it plot, characters, ideas, descriptions of a place, etc., that captures my interest.
• Some degree of "connectivity" that allows me to see where the plot/story line/idea/concept may be headed or which at least seems to be headed somewhere.

jane

I have ordered a print copy of the book. I cannot discuss a book from just the cd version. I don't know what page I am on. I will say that I really enjoyed the part of the book about fascism. I do feel that I would know that I am reading about Italy. Will be glad when my print version of the book arrives.

As for what I expected of this book. I expected a well researched, erudite book. It certainly is that. When I have mentioned reading Name of the Rose to some well educated , intelligent friends I have had many of them say oh I could not read that book. It was too hard to understand. I really don't think this book is that much different from others by Eco. I am amazed that those friends of mine thought that Name of the Rose > was so difficult to read. I loved it.

Joan Grimes

From the praise of those of you who had read it, I expected the book to be very well written, and I was intrigued by the theme, and wanted to see how he developed it. I think I also assumed there would be more: either in plot development, character development, or penetrating psychology of the protagonist.

The leaders are lobbing the questions faster than I can answer them. So I guess it's catch as catch can.I'll relate to two.

Why is there violence in childrens tales and legends?

Young children, no matter how loved, face a scary , unknown world from the moment they start perambulating(and some before that). The world must be mastered, the unknown become familiar and new things, people and places explored. We need the examples of Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood to show us that though we make terrible mistakes(we spoke to the wolf when Momma told us not to) everything will turn out O.K. in the end.

He sparbled the words on page 111 because he could. He deals with semiotics and he wants to show off and have a good laugh at our expense. Not out of meaness but out of fun. So I laugh at how dumb I am. How about you?

Judy

I loved the part about facism in Italy, also. I found it fascinating to read about Yambo's youth experiences in the Ballilo (sp?) Boys group. It sounded so much like the Hitler Youth which you hear so much about on TV on the History Channel. But, the Ballilo Boys was new to me. Imagine being a parent in that culture and struggling, juggling, WALKING THE RAZOR'S EDGE trying to follow conscience yet not be hauled off and murdered for your political opinions. TENSE.

Marni

Backtracking to fairy tales....They were a very important part of my childhood. How different they were - you'd read an Andersen's version of a story and then read the Grimm's version. Woah. What a difference. I remember being so shocked reading Grimm's "Cinderella" and seeing that the evil stepsisters hacked off their toes or heels in order to slip on the glass slipper as the shoe filled with blood. I also have heard so many people tell me how traumatized they were when they saw Bambi's mother killed in the Disney movie.

You wonder why it is that cultures provide these frightening stories to children. I was terrified of the wolf in some of the stories. I believed the wolf lived under my bed. Of course, I had a bratty jealous older sister who shared rooms with me. She ordered me at night to close the door after the lights were turned off. I had to climb out of bed to close the door. As soon as it was closed and the room was dark, my sister would shout "WOLF!" I'd frantically jump into bed pulling my feet up as fast as possible thinking the wolf was about to bite off my toes. Nightmares. Don't get me going on what she did regarding spiders!

I don't think you can keep some horror away from children, though. When my son was little, there was a big push not to sell toy guns to children. The theory was that if they had toy guns, they would grow up to want to use real guns. I think that's a crock. My son and his little buddies used their FINGERS as guns pointing to each other and shooting when didn't have toy guns. We were also into buying our sons dolls (Cabbage Patch dolls) then so that boys had the same wonderful parenting experience with dolls that girls had. My son and his little buddies loved their dolls. Their dolls were always punching each other and wrestling and dying. I think there is some instinctive need for war inside boys.

By the way, my favorite children's book illustrator, who did many books of fairy tales, was Arthur Rackham. Fabulous. Here's an example:

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/rackham_arthur.html

Marni

Marni, your story about the dolls reminds me of a little neighbor boy who had only girls for playmates. The one thing he wanted for Christmas was a "best doll." The little girls would let him play with their dolls, but never with their "best doll."

Malryn, I sure do remember Terry and the Pirates, both on the radio and in the comics, along with Captain Midnight and Jack Armstrong the All-American Boy. Had I known there were Nick Carter comics (p. 130) I most likely would have thought I was in heaven. He was my (radio) hero. I wanted to be his secretary when I grew up.

Hi Judy...re:

"He sparbled the words on page 111 because he could. He deals with semiotics and he wants to show off and have a good laugh at our expense. Not out of meaness but out of fun. So I laugh at how dumb I am. How about you?"

Love it!! I am also laughing at how dumb I am at times when reading this book (unless I let myself 'freefall' as I did when reading the 'Seth' material where if I stopped thinking and went with the flow of the writing I kind of 'groked' it, or is it 'grokked'--"Stranger in a Strange Land by Veblen I think.)

Have decided if I ever have time (silly me) to read Eco's work and others' on semiotics...sounds like fun!!

Cheers, Alliemae

Going back to fairy tales and violence. They are also "hero" tales, with the good guys winning. And if they die, it's always a "heroic" death. Marni asked why did cultures provide these frightening stories to children. Was it an ancient way of making bloodshed and death seem natural, palatable?

On page 207 Yambo says,"So it was not only myself, but my elders, too, who had been raised to conceive of a love for our country as a blood tribute, and to feel not horror but excitement when faced with a landscape flooded with blood. . . . . . I understood that even the massacres in the Illustrated Journal of Voyages and Adventures must not seem exotic to me at all, for I had been raised in a cult of horror.

I had nightmares from the movie Pinocchio -- some of the images were just as scary as that picture.

I like the current trend in dolls for kids. Since 9/11, there has been a new series of "action figures". Instead of GI Joe, we have The Rescue Heroes: firemen, police, lifeguards, EMTs, all the people whose job it is to rescue people. Some are men, some women. My grandsons play with them endlessly, and want to be them. Joey, who loves animal, wants to rescue animals when he grows up.

Just lost another post as I was trying to send it grrrrrrr

Thank you all for your wonderful posts and insights. The comments regarding violence in childrens' books are all valid. We might put something in the header, actually.

I am sorry if my questions were "fast and furious" (sometimes one question begets another and then another ...) but there is no rush, let me assure you. The questions in the header are intended to stimulate, to put something on that "tabula rasa" that bare table which every new book is. We can answer them and/or ask our own, just As you Like It.

JANE, I will respond regarding reader expectations in a separate post so as not to make this one too long.

JOAN G, the book will complement the audio nicely, I am certain. The illustratations are essential.

Yambo's (Eco's) propensity to flaunt his encyclopedic knowledge is obvious from the start: when Paola brings him home, he looks around the apartment and notes with satisfaction "we are well off", then picks three books from the shelves,m (1) I promessi sposi = the Betrothed (1827) by Alessandro Manzoni, (2) Orlando furioso = Furious Roland, a romantic epic in 40 cantos, published in 1516 by Ludovico Ariosto, (3) Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger. Why those three, but for effect?

This was not entirely lost on some of his generally deferential Italian readers, one of whom called Eco "saccente" = show-off.

Many younger readers knew very little about the Fascist period, and that is no accident, for after the war the Italian Government made a massive effort at white-washing the past and minimizing the once "cordial" association with the other axis country and with evil incarnate, Hitler.

One of the early posts here mentioned malaria, and it is entirely true that a number of swampy and therefore sparsely populated Italian regions were hotbeds of malaria.
It was to Mussolini's credit that he undertook an ambitious, successful project to drain and reform these areas (the project was called "bonifica"), eradicatiang the scourge of malaria and resettling them. One such was the Maremme . (Will check for further details.)

Part 2, half of which it is my duty to cover this week, seems a little inflated to this reader, but thanks to the old 78 records, stacks of newspapers of the period and his old notebooks Yambo finds himself finally on what looks like the right track.

the importance of news from the BBC in wartime cannot be praised enough. It was of course absolutely forbidden to listen to the broadcasts; in darkened rooms we huddled close to the radio at midnight, Big Ben tolling. My parents never knew (my mother was a fanatic Hitler fan and saw him as a new Savior).

I will add, with your indulgence, that I still have difficulty with the translation but will not bother you those linguistic concerns. I have checked Geoffrey Brock, a poet, an American, who has a website. It is his first work for Eco.

For many years Eco collaborated with the pre-eminent William Weaver whose polished text were perfection. He and the author had an excellent professional relationship and went on lecture tours together, to the delight of fans.

Again, thank you JANE, JOAN G, JUDY (with whom I totally agree), MARNI, MAL, PEDLN, ALLIEMAE and JOAN P.

I think this section is interesting in how a number of Yambo's memories are about the war propoganda - children's books, comics, cartoons, magazines, newspapers, radio, music, illustrations, ads, school lessons, translations - a total onslaught of information giving the Italian nation Il Duce's version of the truth, twisting events and words to make them fit, no matter what was really happening in the world.

I liked the way Eco used irony to compare propoganda to history as he described certain memories. "Allied troops were landing in Sicily, and the radio (in the voice of Alida Valli!) was reminding us that love is not that way, love won't turn to gray the way the gold fades in a woman's hair...." p. 203

It is in this section, too, that Yambo relates fog to wartime blackouts.

I think it's important that in this period Solara was to be the safe place for Yambo - the home in the country where Yambo was sent during the war years to escape the city bombing.

I also think Yambo's 1942 story about the "unbreakable glass" was important - he relates his discovery that supposedly unbreakable glass really is breakable to his own metamorphosis from a naive gullible boy to someone "existentially, if ironically, bitter, radically skeptical, impervious to all illusion." p. 210 Yambo wonders how did this happen that he changed so much in 9 months.

You see that Yambo's family in Solara aided the rebels. They hid escaping partisans in a hidden secret room and were brave.

I think we can see Yambo relating much of what he finds to his own "metamorphosis", MARNI. The example you mentioned in your post I missed entirely.

Remember his story of the man who was born old, then regressed until he eventually died as an infant? Yambo drew an analogy there to himself, coming as an old man and regressing, thru' his search, to his childhood.

And then, the stories and pictures of Sherlock Holmes. He saw Holmes as "reconstructing" remote events from his home, "isolated, deciphering pure signs". And here is Yambo in his country home, trying to reconstruct remote events in isolation, from nothing but whatever memories he could hope to stir up from the books in the attic.

He finally came to the conclusion that he couldn't read everything, and attempting to 'remake' himself by re-reading what he had read before. And if he could...would he be the same person? And if he could...he still would not know Paola or his daughters. Plundering the attic doesn't seem to be working.

Babi

Yambo's rereading what he read as a child to discover his lost memory: I don't believe you can go back and read at the same level as a child. Always remember loving the book "The Blue Bird." Finally bought a copy and then wondered why I thought it was so wonderful. No longer was reading it as a child!!!!!!!!!

Thank you, for your posts, Joan K. , Marni, , BaBi, and kidsal . I'm back from checking historic dates and names. But comments first.

MARNI, # 271 re propaganda. But things began years before war propaganda, in Italy and in Germany, with the insiduous indoctrination in schools books, progressively influencing children's and adolecents' minds and outlook. Under a dictatorial system there is only ONE way, ONE (accepted) truth, and total conformity. Total submission.

The masses are likewise indoctrinated by propaganda, slogans, cathwords and expressions of ridicule and hatred for the enemy at wartime; the press, books, radio programs and all forms of entertainment had to toe the public line under punishment of incarceration or death.
As soon as Hitler came to power, concentrations camps were built for the naysayers, and many outspoken German opponents of the regime were held there, e.g. Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller, who was one of the survivors, and Dietrich Bonnehöfer was not so lucky.

There was a resistance movement in Italy and in Germany (where a group of German officers plotted Hitler's assassination, which failed; all were hanged). In Italy the resistance fighters were called partisans. They deserve further description, later.

BaBi, yes something about the man in the fable who is born old and dies young did strike Yambo as a possible personal connection to himself. But there was no illuminating spark.

Kidsal, when we read a book again after years, we likely approach it differently because we have "matured" and a different outlook. And sometimes we form an entirely different opinion of the book, in either a positive or negative sense.

But in that case we do remember having read the book and our impression of it, but how much more difficult must it be for an amnesiac to come upon and process , for example, notebooks from half a century ago, unaware of even having written what's in them ?

The proverbial scales are falling off Yambo's eyes slowly, gradually, like light flickering in different corners of a darkened room, which makes the narrated reminiscences appear dream-like, in a sense.

Obviously, this is a single-minded, solitary, persistent, introspective endeavor on Yambo's part, still I have the overwhelming feeling that this is solely an intellectual exercise. To me he is still curiously "detached", and I'll try to formulate what I mean more clearly.

to be continued

Ginny, I was doing some wondering about Yambo's relationship with Paola after that visit. He lied to her about his blood pressure, and I suspect that was something he was accustomed to doing. Perhaps it was just so she wouldn't worry, but it certainly seemed to come easily and naturally. Then he says, "That made her happy, poor thing." I find a man referring to his wife as 'poor thing' definitely demeaning, and it put my teeth on edge. (And I wonder where that phrase came from?)

I was thinking of the form that propaganda took with us during the war. I remember all the war movies that came out depicting the courage, the bravery, and the compassion of American soldiers, and the cruelty of the enemy. Books, I think, were a bit more realistic, but I can't think of a specific book that causes me to think so.

Looking at all Yambo heard and read, and the contrasts he makes between the Fascist songs and stories and the popular songs, etc. of the time, I believe he is making a point here. It was the diversity of what he heard and read that prevented his being tainted by the propaganda. It seems to me that fanatics tend to be formed in semi-isolation from the outside world. They are surrounded by people who all believe the same thing and speak the same 'line'. They develop a 'them vs us' mentality; they tend to see others in caricature in stead of as they really are.

Babi

Oh Ginny...I'm truly sorry you broke the spine on your Once Upon a Time...that would have upset me no end!

I remember two books from when I was a wee tot. One was red covered and the other blue covered and we were read the stories in them time and time again...even after we were able to read them ourselves. One was called Stories That Never Grow Old...and I can't remember the name of the other although at times it is on the tip of my tongue and I know I would recognize it if I ever came across it. One of them was filled with fables (I think that is what they called stories which taught children ethics and morals and the one story that NEVER left my head was Lying By Keeping Still...wonder if lawyers and such ever read any of that story...

My mom didn't mind fairy tales but my dad thought they were horrid...in fact, although the word 'sexist' wasn't in vogue at the time he didn't like them because he thought they put girls in a bad light and presented situations that were not healthy for a child to consider real. We did read fantasy and were read fantasy but a more Hans Christian Anderson type. Alliemae

ALLIEMAE, it sounds like your Dad was a man ahead of his time. Intelligent and discerning...like his daughter!

Babi

"CAN any of you get your own foot within a million miles of your face without breaking something?"

Twenty five years ago, when I did yoga, I proudly showed my teacher that I could touch my big toe to my nose. "OK", he said. "Now bring it over your head and touch the back of your neck with your big toe".

Yeah, right! Now, I'm delighted if I can tie my shoes.

Lying to Paola: with all the affairs Yambo has had, he must have had a lot of practice "making her feel good" by lying to her. Wonder why it didn't work? What a guy! He says he is so detached from his family because he has no memory: I think the guy is just a cold fish, in spite of all his sexual activity. He relates to books and pictures, not people.

GINNY, thanks for the link in # 276. They used to say that three Romes are represented in the city's architecture, the Rome of antiquity, the Rome of the Rinascimento (Renaissance), and Mussolini's Rome.

Mussolini was not really "handsome", he had a very pronounced chin and stuck it out even more in his posturing. One of the illustrations in the book shows im in just that way. Louis de Bernières had him down pat in his book "Corelli's Mandoline", which we dicussed here a few years ago.

Re Paola: she was a little bland - but that is the ROLE the author has given her, and a minor one it is. Why he made her a psychologist is not readily apparent, nor necessary. Any loving wife could have provided background information in the first confusing days/weeks, or suggested he go to the family home to find his past.

As for "poor thing", I'd like to know what the Italian term is. The word for "thing" is cosa in Italian, but I never heard a person referred to as "thing" in Italian. (But it does sound like Yambo - condescending.)

Paola, Amalia, the members of Yambo's family, Gianni, all are staged around him, follow in his orbit , not one of them has direct individual significance. That is what makes this book so arid and dispassionate for me.

___________

Now I'll reply JANE as I promised, and answer at the same time my own question as to what a reader expects to find in a book.

Let me venture this answer, which is not meant to be all-inclusive by any means:
an interesting subject; fleshed-out, believable characters the reader can truly care about; a story well told with good plot development.

Your comments and additions are welcome.

Thanks for your posts, BaBi, Joan K., Alliemae.

Ahhhh BaBi thank you so much! Yes, Dad was definitely ahead of his time...and I miss him and remember him dearly. I was very fortunate...Mom was of Italian heritage, Dad English.

Dad was the words; Mom was the music.

JoanK & Ginny - Re: "Now, I'm delighted if I can tie my shoes." I'm still laughing! I feel the same way. It's so hard to bend down now in exercising when I try to touch my toes. The old spine is so stiff!

I loved the Nancy Drew books, too, plus the Hardy Boys. It seemed to me that the same author wrote both series, they were so similar. I loved Cherry Ames nurse stories. And, check this, the Garry Grayson FOOTBALL series!! Yes, me. Someone gave an old set from around 1912 to my dad and they were in the house. I was always hunting around for something new to read.

My husband's great grandfather, Peter Newell, wrote a children's book called "The Hole Book" and another called "The Rocket Book." Has anyone heard of them? They were both on the same idea. There was a hole right through each book. The story revolved around the hole. In one, a boy accidentally shot off a gun, the bullet takes off through an apartment house, and each page shows a room the bullet flies through. Nothing stops it. The bullet is stopped only when it hits a cake baked by a newly-married wife.

I'm thinking about the change in war movies. It seems to me that the John Wayne type was typical for a long time. I suppose they were a form of propaganda. Propaganda or rally. Is there a difference? I just remember when I saw "The Deer Hunter." That was the big difference. War movies have never been the same since. That started the reality in war films in my experience. What an incredible movie. Finally the concept: war is a terrible thing. Then came "Appocalypse Now"..."Platoon"...."Full Metal Jacket." Interesting how the film "Pearl Harbor" kind of went back to the John Wayne type again.

I remember Cherry Ames, Student Nurse. I read those. I loved the Little Maid series about colonial girls in different colonies. I have been buying all of those that I can find now. I just loved them. There was another series that probably no one here knows but me as they are Southern books. That is what we called the Miss Minerva books. I think the first one was Miss Minerva and William Green Hill, another was Billy and the Major. I loved those books. My 6th grade teacher read those to us. She read everyday right after lunch. I have a couple of those books but am not sure they are available any longer .

I just googled Miss Minerva and William Green Hill. It can be read on line. It seems there were 12 books in the Miss Minerva Series. I am shocked that it is online.

There was also the super sweet Elsie Densmore series. Oh I could go on and on forever. I guess that you all see that all that I ever did was read. I always had my nose in a book.

Joan Grimes

My husband and I were adults when we came here with our 4-year old little girl. Clearly the outsider here, I never read any of the books you've mentioned since GINNY's # 271.
My son, born in Washington, is the only "real" American in the family. The rest of us are naturalized Americans.

Books have been my great passion since I taught myself to read. I remember a gloomy morning in my father's study when I saw a picture of the Loch Ness monster in the daily paper on my father's desk. To my father's surprise I was able to read it and he provided the background information.

In the same issue, I vividly remember, was a story about a woman who had traveled to Afghanistan but didn't understand the language. She sat down with a group of Afghan women and had tea with them. As soon as her cup was empty, it was filled again, again, and then again. She became uncomfortable -- until one of the local women turned her cup upside down, and so did she, much relieved. I was about four years at the time.

Traude,

I never liked the Fairy Tales. Many of them frightened me and the others just did not interest me.

Joan Grimes

When I think of my childhood reading I remember the little public library whose books I read non stop until I discovered Nancy Drew Mysteries. Then a neighbor boy lent me his Tom Swifts. And lo and behold.. Boys books were different than Girls books!

Perhaps we are all considering Yambo from a female perspective (what else is possibble for us?). His books are, for the most part, masculine books given to him mainly by his Grandfather. They are very strongly male oriented, sexist attitude , women as vaporous heroines. No wonder his attitude toward his wife is so disgusting.

I loved Nancy Drew because she was so smart and courageous. She always solved the most difficult problems and conundrums with bravery and intelligence. In the boys books girls were non-existent or there waiting and worrying about their heroic boyfriends.

Yambo is a sexist . So was he raised..being fauned upon by the women in his life. His wife does not faun nor does she ever say she believes his stories. She is busy with her own life for the most part. She does not expect much from her husband, is aware of his dalliances and his weaknesses and seeems to have made peace with the person who is Yambo. That is not to say I would put up with this character. But he is a man in a book. Not my husband(Thank God). I am having lots of fun following the plot and enjoying the fantastic illustrations.If I was bored I would shut the book and forget the whole thing. But my interest is aroused and I will follow till the end.

Judy

BUBBLE, exactly. Thank you.
What came to my mind was "povera mia" or, indeed, "poveretta". We are reading a translation, not the original text.
Nuances are so important. There are other words and phrases I would have liked to check against the original, but it would have been an expenive pleasure.

Onward = avanti, popolo !

Joan hi...I remember my mom giving me Elsie Dismore and although I enjoyed the book I couldn't quite get it together with my mom's 'Sophie Tucker' imitation when 'the gang' came over on Friday evenings (that was soooo embarrassing for me as a kid)! I also thought it was a little soppy compared to Little Women...

But your mention of this book brought me back to a wonderful childhood filled with books and stories...how lovely childhood was for me in that way...

Hi Alliemae,

I read the Elsie Densmore books but thought they were extremely soppy. I I loved Little Women.

Mal, our whole household listened to War news constantly. My Dad kept up with it all.

Joan Grimes

I found out about a terrible WWII event just last year. I had always known my mother had been married twice. I knew her first husband had been killed in WWII. My parents took us children to visit 3 sets of grandparents - my mother's parents, my father's parents, and my mother's first husband's parents. We loved them all.

Well, my dad told me last year a bit more about what happened to my mother's first husband. (My mother never ever talked about him.) At the beginning of the war, he had enlisted. After training, he was to fly to Europe from Maine. He and my mother were married the day before he left. Several planeloads of soldiers took off at the same time from Maine. Upon takeoff, his plane and another blew up. Everyone inside was killed. Apparently, there was suspicion of sabotage. I don't know. But, my mother was married for one day and her husband was killed.

She married my dad just a couple of years later, still during wartime. Then he left - enlisted in the navy. I absolutely cannot imagine what my mother could have been feeling at that. It's amazing to me how people can carry on in the midst of horror and tragedy.

Marni

Re Yambo being sexist. I've heard that Italian men in general are sort of sexist. I wonder if that is a stereotype. Every single woman I know who has visited Italy has been pinched my an Italian man. I can't even imagine that happening in the US. I also have heard stories about the relationship between Italian sons and mothers - that the sons are very spoiled and expect their wives to spoil them like their moms did. Is this, too, a stererotype? Perhaps Yambo was just a typical Italian man.?

MARNI: Dad was the words;Mom was the music.

What a lovely way to describe your parents, Marni. Thanks for sharing that.

Now Yambo proposes to form a 'hypothesis' of how he would have reacted as a child, and tells us about the 'historical method' of cross-referencing for comparison. All with more pages and pages of showing us old songs, old poems, to follow up the old books and old illustrations. I become more and more persuaded that his 'plot' is nothing more than a vehicle for boring his guests (us) to death with his extensive collections and reference sources. I am finding myself skimmed pages of the book, just to get past all the detailed exposition of songs, propaganda,etc. That's really much more than I want, or need, to know.

I do wonder if Eco actually wrote those schoolboy stories and essays as a child. If so, his writing talent was evident at an early age.

Babi

MAL, good question !
That was my first question too, and I thought at first the translator might have made it up.

Not so ! The name is exactly that in the Italian reviews (=recensioni) of the book; one of which begins with "Nella nebbia si risveglia YAMBO dopo un incidente che gli ha fatto perdere la memoria", (literally = 'Yambo wakes up in a fog after an incident which has caused him to lose his memory.')

We have to conclude THAT is indeed the narrator's name, and only Eco can answer your question.

MARNI, I think he did write those stories. Also, who but the author could have collected all that material and put together the montages in this illustrated novel? He must have drawn from his own experiences of the time: the picture of Napoleon(pg 23), which Yambo drew at his doctor's request, is from the author's pen, we learn.

Babi, I am certain that the meticulous, pain-staking enumeration of everything Yambo read in his youth may mean more to Italians than to American readers, although I read some Italian readers' expressions of frustration with the "minuziose e spesso inutili descrizioni" = 'detailed and frequently unnecessary descriptions'.

It is a known fact, though, that the impressions and experiences of our formative years stay with us forever and are indelible.

________

A word about the Italian presence in Ethiopia (aka Abyssinia). It is UNrelated to WW II and dates back to the Abyssinian War of 1935-36.

By 1934 Ethiopia (Abyssinia) was one of the few independent countries in European-dominated Africa; Italy had long had its eye on it. A border incident between Ethopia and Italian Somaliland gave Mussolini the excuse to intervene.
Rejecting all arbitration offers, the Italians invaded Ethiopia in October of 1935, led by Generals Rodolfo Graziani and Pietro Badoglio. The capital Addis Ababa was taken in May of 1936; Emperor Haile Selassie, 111-th in the succession of King Solomon, went into exile in London.

Mussolini proclaimed Italian King Victor Emmanuele III emperor of Ethiopia and appointed General Badoglio viceroy. The King bestowed the title of Duke of Addis Ababa on him. (There is more about Badoglio later in our book.)

The League of Nations condemned the Italian invasion but was unable to muster support from other nations for its recommended economic sanctions against the aggressor.

The Italians stayed in Ethiopia, and fought in North Africa alongside Rommel's Afrikakorps - abeit more "nolens" than "volens" = unwillingly rather than willingly, until the British victory in Africa in 1941. Emperor Haile Selassie then came home.

Traude, thanks so much for the info re: pre-WWII Ethiopia. I often wondered what Italy was doing in Africa.

the books sounds like a bore but the comments are great. . . I'll tag along for a bit. My Nancy Drew period was actually taken up by the Judy Bolton series anyone remember reading those? I didn't buy comic books just perched on the display ledge and read them in the local store where they knew me and left me alone. . . .spent hours there and like Mal preferred love stories to battles. . . .claire

Just after Yambo has gone through all manner of childhood books and just before he moves on to the phonograph, old 78s and sheet music and then finally to school records, essays, fascist propaghanda, he comes to a realization that a number of people have mentioned:

"I realized that those days in the attic had been badly spent: I had reread pages I had first encountered at the age of six or twelve or fifteen, falling under the spells of different books at different times. That is no way to reconstruct a memory. Memory amalgamates, revises, and reshapes, no doubt, but it rarely confuses chronological distances. A person should know perfectly well whether something happened to him at seven years of age or at ten. Even I could now distinguish the day I woke up in the hospital from the day I departed for Solara, and I knew perfectly well that between one and the other some maturation had taken place, a change in my thinking, a weighing of experiences. Abnd yet in the past three weeks I had taken everything in as if as a boy I had swallowed it down all at once, in once gulp--no surpirse that I felt dazed as if by some intoxicating brew."(italics mine).

It's this sort of insight that I enjoy. I read and reread this paragraph and thought Just so. He has been going about his research project, reconstructing himself, in the wrong way.

Maryal

I remember seeing The Italians invading Ethiopia in News Reels that were shown before the movies I attended. The scenes were terrible as Italian planes flying over were shooting people on the ground. I remember these vividly and I remember my dad explaining it all to me. He used to take me to movies on Saturday afternoon while my mother was shopping.

Joan Grimes

that memory is a right side brain function and naturally irrational, not lineal and that his attic is a reflection of this. . full of unconnected odds and ends and his desire to put them together is left sided or lineal an exercise in being rational. It's an illustration of what could happen i such an experience. I wold find it frustrating and sharing it with him on that level upsetting as well. . . .

then there is the use of pictures. children have this iddetic imagery ability in which they remember things as images which usually is lost as adults. The content may not be important but the association could trigger something else which may.

Claire

Joan P--Of all the many books I read as a child, some of the only ones that I still enjoy are the Anne books, especially the first two. I've reread parts of a Terhune book and thought, Goodness, how stuffy the writing is, ditto many another dog book--and horse book--except for Black Beauty which is still good.

I read a lot of animal books. Never got into Nancy Drew (read a bunch and tried) I think maybe because I just couldn't believe in a girl who walked down the street memorizing license plates. But I liked her better than Cherry Ames who left me cold. But the Anne books. Ah yes. Such hard reading that was in spots--excellent vocabulary. Do you remember when Anne accidentally made Diana drunk?

I also read many comic books as well as the Sunday comics section (Chicago--huge selection). And the Classics comics too. Loved those. Was astonished later when I read the actual books at how well they were done. Very hard to get Moby Dick into a comic book, even if you add extra pages!

Maryal

I was also a fan of LM Montgomery who wrote the Anne books. Read other books by her also.

Maryal, I did not like Nancy Drew either. I never knew why I did not like those books but did not read more than one of them.

I read comic books also. Loved the Classic comics too.

See I told you all that I always had my nose in a book.

Claire, interesting points about memory.

Joan Grimes

Traude, thanks for the history on Ethiopia. I was confused when reading Yambo's musings about when it took place and who was involved.

A friend found a collection of Elsie Dinsmore in her grandmother's attic and I plowed through up to Elsie's Grandmotherhood. I've been told I sobbed over how mean everyone treated Elsie. What I remember is that this child was allowed to drink coffee. No kid I knew could.

My older brother used to take me to movies (he probably had to) and undoubtedly there were some earlier, but what I remember is Guadalcanal Diary, mainly being confused because it wasn't about a "dairy" at all. And another early standout was "Madam Curie."

Like many of you, I'm waiting for something to happen here. They've hidden the Partisans. Is this leading up to something? And Yambo is questioning the change in his attitude over the nine month period between the two compositions he wrote -- Balilla Boys and Unbreakable Glass. To me, the latter could have been written by a bright 10 or 11 yr. old. That the first one was written by a child was hard to believe.

I guess I'm going to have to do some rereading -- hard to do with all the lists. I really don't see much character development coming from Yambo. As least not yet.

Joan G.--I guess neither of us could figure out what Nancy Drew was all about, eh? I don't think the Anne (remember she added the E to be more elegant?) books can be beat!

Maryal

I didn't discover the Anne books until I was an adult and saw the movie on PBS. I must have seen that movie ten times -- I love it.

But I devoured the Nancy Drew books. And Nesbit (I bought The Railway Children for my children). And when I was younger Winnie-the-Pooh (still a favorite -- when I worked, everyone else would carry around these fancy, expensive Daytimer Calendars, and I would pull out my Winnie-the Pooh calendar).

I loved Haliburton too.

I loved those Classic Comics. They were the only ones my parents allowed us to read. I just saw on the web the first Classic Comic was The Three Musketeers, 1941.

I am on a search for metaphors. First it was fog . now in the second part it is fire....Page 128, bottom paragraph we find "I could never have managed to see it all, but I was already dazed by recognitions that flared and were snuffed out in an instant. Books in various languages, from various eras, some with titles that sparked no flames, because they belonged to the repertoire of the already known, like the many old editions of Russian novels....."

page 143 at the bottom"They were not stacked in sequential order, and the first cover I saw sparked a burst of mysterious flames."

Is this the way Eco is hinting that memories is returning? Not in a steady stream but in fits and starts. Jumping around like flames that illuminate dark corners.

The German author Gunter Grass wrote about WW 2 from the point of view of a dwarf growing up in the Nazi Era. He could not attack it as an insider but as an outsider, a dwarf.The book is "The Tin Drum" . Another German author wrote about WW2 from the point of view of a female dwarf. That book is "Stones From The River".

So ,perhaps to face the horror of the reality of your country on the wrong side of the war Eco writes about it as a child trying to regain his memory of his self and how he became the man he is(or was).

Judy

I see I forgot to name the female author of Stones From The River. It is Ursula Hegi. It is truly a wonderful bok and a thrilling read.

judy

Stones from the River has been discussed on SeniorNet. It was a Bookclub online discussion in 1998. If you would like to read the discussion just click on "Stones from the River ~ Ursula Hegi ~ Book Club Online"

Maryal,

I agree with you about the Anne books.(smile)

Joan Grimes

Thank you for the posts.
I have been up since 5, put on the sprinkler for the two hours allowed, paid bills and did filing. The day will be extra hot and humid so I'll limit my errands to those absolutely necessary and post when I get back.

I remember a piano teacher who taught difficult passages not as a series of notes but as a collection. the same goes for touch typing familiar terms. the collections noted by someone previously are coming after the detail of the lists. . . could this be similar? . . . Claire

Actually, I do remember hearing a song called "Besame Mucho", ie., "Kiss Me A Lot". All I remember tho' is the first three words of the song. "Besame, besame mucho.." Very helpful, no?Memory amalgamates, revises, and reshapes

Maryal</b, I was also greatly struck by that paragraph on memory, esp. the description: "Memory amalgamates, revises, and reshapes." That's one of the best definitions of memory I've come across. Unfortunately, Yambo has nothing to amalgamate.

I wonder if he will try investigating old, familiar scents? I've heard that scents can be powerful triggers for memory.

Pedlin, do you think Paola may be right about the reason for the difference in the two stories, "Balilla Boy" and "Unbreakable Glass"? The two were completely different in their attitude, but I can readily believe that a child would write what he felt would please his teacher. Any school child knows better than to write something they know would upset or anger their teacher. Still, the change in attitude does seem more in keeping with the person Yambo appears to be now. My own instinct is to think that a change did take place.

In all this, I still see no evidence of a crack in his walled-off memory.

Babi

Thank you for your posts, WINSUM and BaBi. Will reply more fully soon.

Before we close this second installment of the book, we might keep an eye open for the following points -- they struck me on re-reading :

1. Yambo's preoccupation with "impure thoughts" (pg. 14). That is going to come up again, more explicitly.

2. The frequent mention of the family's religiosity, or the lack thereof; his mother's missal.
Also, Yambo was born "during the Christmas holidays of 1931. Like Baby Jesus." (pg. 32)

3. The grandfather's laboriously constructed Nativity Scene, and the yearly faithful re-enactment.

4. The unsused, walled-up chapel where the mysteries will begin to be revealed.

But isn't the trapdoor literally representing the opening of Yambo's mind a rather broad hint in such a sophisticated book?

I'd like to know what Eco looks like, is he tall? short? medium, portly? How does he carry himself? What is his physiognomy? (That word comes up later in our book, and I thought I'd throw it out now.) Gosh we need some levity in all this gloom ...

As for Yambo, we can conclude -without giving away anything prematurely- that he was bookish as a child, perhaps a loner, and is now rather cerebral. He has one friend from HS, one, the socially inferior Gianni (yes, class mattered).

I must bring this up in the Story of Civilization folder where my friend Robby Iadelucca has brought up CLASS, simply because it was a factor throghout the centuries.

to be continued

Interesting thoughts Traude stimulates the imagination. btw does Yambo have much of an imagination? Is he creative and is it possible to tell. It's funny about memory I remember the tune to besame mucho very well but not the words although one line ends with "hold me my darling and make all my dreams come true". Memory is so selective and melody more universal than words. . . .accessable in any language. . . . Claire

so I ordered it used from amazon and the store that ships it should have it here by Wednesday price used hard cover 10.95 total 14.44. so maybe the print will be big on a hard cover version and 430 pages not to heavy. the reviews were interesting in themselves. will go back to see what others thought again when I have it.

Claire

Traude, you cannot imagine how much I needed this direction. I had picked this book up and put it down again more times than I can remember...basically feeling, every time we went through another pile of words and papers and pictures, like I HAD to get out for some fresh air.

I am not a fan of flea markets, garage/attic/cellar sales although I love watching antiques shows and things like BBC's Cash in the Attic. I think it may have to do with dust and mold allergies or else just NOT being interested enough in someone else's 'memories' when there is such a vagueness and to me sometimes 'eerie uneasiness' in this searching of Yambo's.

But your 'thinking points' are a lifeline for me. I want to finish the book and see how it all turns out and even to get to know the characters better.

So, thank you again for your direction and especially thank you for your remark about 'levity'! I needed that!!

Also, I want ALL of you to know how your postings keep me informed and grounded and determined to continue reading this book. Again, I must say, I love reading with a group...especially the folks I have found in these wonderful book discussions!

Stimulating posts, thank you.

CLAIRE, while I usually refrain from making predictions about anything, I am certain that you, an artist, will truly enjoy every aspect of this book, especially its visual impact.

ALLIEMAE, originally I felt exactly like you, picked up and put down the book many times, had a library copy first and then bought my own, even toyed with the idea of buying the original text but gave it up - not only because of the steep price, but also to avoid getting hung up on linguistic nitpicking, definitely a professional hazard with me.

Eventually it came to me that this book is about much more than poor self-absorbed Yambo but instead the story of a generation, of an entire era, and in fact part of my own life and cultural heritage.

There's a reference to Alida Valli in the book. Do any of you remember her? Did you ever hear of Zarah Leander? I can tell you about both - they were icons.

JOAN P, yes, the opening of the walled-up chapel is the breakthrough for Yambo. But we'll deal with that next week.

trust Mal to search out anything. . .the sweetheart soap. and me to find something relevant in the Washington post as this article which greeted me this morning.

exercizing the brain They don't mention us but they should. . what we are doing here at Seniornet is a real WORKOUT . . . Claire

And thank you Mal for posting the title of your book Precarious Global Incandescence back to Amazon to see if they can send me that too.

At the end of this second week of our dicussion, there are still many loose ends. More questions have come up and some have yet to be answered, especially the one concerning my personal recollections of the time.

And there are a great many of them, suddenly tumbling out all at once. Please let me take a little time to put them in some kind of order.

___________________ There was an interruption, sad news from abroad of the death of a cousin's daughter, Christa.
It was not unexpected, in fact it was a blessed release, but the family, especially Christa's mother, my cousin Anneliese, never gave up hoping for a miracle.

___________________

I must comment here on page 251. Thank you for pointing out the meaning of the "walled off Chapel" and it's relationship to Religosity. However it can have other meanings as well.

One might be that he walled off the horrors of the war years and Italy's losses. The realization that it was all for naught and worse,caused harm to so many.

Second he may allude to his burgeoning sexuality which he had to keep under wraps during these developmental years. "I was assuming the Toga of manhood, becoming an adult in the maelstrom of the darkest years, and I had to conserve in a crypt a past to which I would devote my adult Nostalgia".

Then he reveals the title of the book and where it comes from. This is not coincidental. He talks about the book and on page 253 he ends with"And years later my memory in shambles I had reactivated the flame's name to signal the reverberation of forgotten delights.

This is followed by the mention of "the fog within".Talk about symbolism.You have enough here for a Thesis on the use of symbols.

Judy

Oh, goody! New questions! However, I am now without my book because it is now $1 per day if I keep it past the due date. I did take some notes, though. So....

Re: 1. Yambo has suffered another "incident," which has returned all his memory. What caused this incident? Is the cause significant? What does this mean for the plot?

If I recall correctly, the 2nd incident occurred after Yambo's friend, Gianni, told Yambo that he heard from Lila (Sabilla) Saba's friend that Lila died shortly after leaving school.

Yambo now remembers Sabilla, the most beautiful girl in his class in his 3rd year of high school p.287 Sabilla was Yambo's first love – she had left school suddenly when her family moved to Brazil. Yambo had pined for her his whole remaining life. He always looked for Lila’s face. Yambo had spent the rest of life (40 years) looking for her. And now he finds out that she has been dead all of these years. His years of searching had been for nothing.

The 2nd incident did not return ALL of Yambo's memory. There is one thing missing - memory of Lila's face.

I found that I wondered about Sabilla's family's abrupt move to Brazil. It reminded me of the German SS who moved to Brazil to escape with their stolen wealth when they realized the war was a lost cause. Were Sabilla's family facists escaping the country? The timing doesn't seem right - seems too early.

And what did Sabilla die of? Did Eco say?

Marni

Ooooh, I seem to be falling behind. I am modestly excited over the revelation of the source of the title, and here I read posts that Yambo has had a second cva and recovered part of his memory!

Nevertheless, a comment or two in closing the previous section: ---Yambo's conclusion that he developed a social consciousness from reading comic books. We all read comic books growing up, and I think we quite likely got some of our ideas of what/who we should be from them. The struggle of good guys against bad guys, coming to the aid of those in need,etc., were constant themes in the comics.

----In a wartime Italy with censorship and propaganda, Yambo learns about the ideal of a free press from Mickey Mouse!

After initially groaning at the prospect of now being ushered through endless details of comic books, I find the original "Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana". The story, we learn, was silly and 'insipid'. It is the idea of the mysterious flame that settled deeply into a young boy's imagination. It is that mysterious flame that flares whenever he finds something that he knows is significant, even if he doesn't know why. "And years later, my memory in shambles, I had reactivated the flame's name to signl the reverberation of forgotten delights."

Babi

New revelations - for Yambo and for the reader.

JUDY, you are right. There are different meanings/connotatins regarding the chapel. It is the place where he had actually "entombed" his memories at about the time it was walled.
Last par. page 250,

"In the chapel I had in any case understood something about my discovery of the flesh and the way it both frees and enslaves. Well, that was one way to escape the thralldom of marching, uniforms and the asexual empire of the Guardian Angels."

And there... there, on pg, 251, is the picture of La Misteriosa Fiamma della Regina Loana
and Yambo writes

"Among the many Tim Tyler Luck albums, I finally stumbled on one that made me feel I was on the cusp of some final revelation. ... here lay the explanation for the mysterious flames that had shaken me since my reawakening, and my journey to Solara was finally acquiring meanaing." But he is miserably disappointed and describes the (meticulously recorded) trite story as "the most insipid tale ever conceived by the human brain" and "incredibly dumb". (pg. 252 through the middle of pg. 253.

Then Yambo takes aanother detour by way of philately, which was easy enough to follow.

Some helpful details begin to emerge in chapter 17, pg. 267, framed by the date of July 25, 1943 when Mussolini was dismissed by King Vittorio Emmanuele, who made Gen. Badoglio head of the government. Fascism was effectively finshed. The title page of the Corriere della Sera marked the event and is shown on pg. 268.(pg. 268).

More substantive revelations begin in chapter 13, "The Pallid Little Maiden". At the end of par. 2 on pg. 272 we find this remark,

"All my archeology boiled down to this: except for the story of the unbreakable glass and a charming anecdote about my grandfather, (but not about me), I had not relived my own childhood so much as that of a generation." (emphasis mine)

Yambo finds photographs and poems he had written decades earlier; there are further observations on impure acts, this time mentioning masturbation and homosexuality (276), and finally the discovery that
he "had gone in for pious practices. Was it a reaction to the war's events, a way of dealing with the tempests of puberty, or a series of disappointments that had sent me into the welcoming arms of the Church?" (pg. 276)

The following pages are absolutely required reading.

Please please would y'all put up with me - yesterday I read 326 messages and here another few today - I wanted to be a good girl and just join in where you are reading but but but -

There has been so much good stuff shared and in addition I had a few slants that were not mentioned as well as some reactions that were a bit different that I really want to share -

If I am boring you - please - just scroll on by - but the more I read to catch up the more stuff piles up - and I have just so many book marks that I can slip in the pages that are saying things that strike me as important -

I am absolutely loving the book - I did not know about the various forms of memory. That was eye opening information as I saw my own struggle with memory - then the way he foretells his references in the book is a hoot but sure got my attention as being the perfect antidote.

And I must agree, the inclusion of fog is perfect to make us think of what it is like to have part of our memory hidden - I choose to say hidden because there appears to be no injury or surgery to have removed it - and so I say his memory is hidden. When I read The fog comes on little cat feet I immediately thought Elliot but I was thinking Prufrock and only reading April is the cruelest month did I look it up to learn it was Wasteland - in either poem there is a tone of an identity crisis - Do I dare - Disturb the universe? from Prufrock and the Hollow men in Wasteland.

What struck me particular was he lost the part of his memory that is tied emotions - your identity, personal experiences - what I honed in on was understanding that it was the part of his memory where the episodic is tied to emotions.

For me two thoughts immediately - of course the one, loosing that part of his memory had to be a male character - the word on the street has always been men have a difficult time expressing their emotions so that some wonder if they have any at all. They seldom explain themselves using emotions to justify their position.

And second like all of you I reviewed my own experiences with memory - what struck me was how some of my childhood I remembered not just as it happened but rather, how adults around me to repeat the story and remember. They gave me the Q this was how I should remember what happened - I used words to describe what I thought would be approved of my mom and grandmother so that I came to believe that was how the incident played out. It wasn't till I was in Therapy, Golly it is now 15 years ago - that with guidance I remembered the occurrences as I had convinced myself they took place and was guided to stay with how I remembered feeling during each episode - each time I was shocked to realize what really happened and then put it all together along with what was expected of me and the probable reasons why...

All to say, as the book addresses memory I am coming from PTS disorder...I can see now why soldiers, when they visit their old battle fields, finally grieve what happened 50 and 60 years ago. Also, how if someone or something reminds us of a past experience, even with no conscious memory, we go into reaction, which he explains when he includes his discovery of his attraction to Sibilla after he sees pictures saved from his childhood.

Hmmm we are only complete when we have our memory that is related to our emotions - then of course I went off into thinking about the limbo many are living who have buried memories that were never put to rest. I think that is what he is suggesting when he includes thoughts like You only have one mother, your mother is still your mother and then what good is it to have had an affair if later you cannot even - I am not talking about telling your friends, but should you not at least be able to savor it now and then...

Early among the various posts Joan shared how he was surrounded by women - my take while I was reading before the discussion on that was - oh the poor guy - that is what happens to a guy when he becomes ill - caretakers are usually women and more, he would be plunged into the world of women - after reading some of y'alls comments I thought more about how guys meet and are surrounded by other guys in the world of work, business and sports but few other places. So if a guy becomes ill he is home, which is essentially a woman's domain, and he is being cared for by women since we have traditionally been the caretakers, therefore a guy's masculinity must be something he questions unless he is very comfortable with himself surrounded by women. The book has his old classmates and and good friend as male visitors. They represent his school years when boys chummed together and he visited his friend at his place of business as well as ran into some male shopkeepers. hmmm

I thought further it must be a challenge for a guy who retires from work and in his advanced years has few sports as a way to chum with groups that include other guys. That explains the golfing communities, the fishermen and the hunters and gave new meaning the the PBS Red Green show...

I've more to share from what has been read that I just must get out but I need to take a break and fix some dinner...

Hello, BARBARA, it's good to have you back with us. You are absolutely right, there are umpteen things to check and research for weeks. We haven't even started to look at the Futurists yet, nor the Hermetics.

Eco has not made things exactly easy on the reader. The story, and the number, range of details and endless lists of all kinds of "things" have evidently overwhelmed some Italian readers also and puzzled reviewers, from what I have seen. The structure of the novel is another thing that may hamper eaders.

There will be actual developments in the chapters we are discussing this week and greater clarity, even though the fog that suffuses the entire story not only remains but intensifies. We might say that fog is its lLeitmotif .

MARNI, checking back and re-reading is really important for me, I and am happy to have my own book and can mark passages and/or pages to my heart's content.

It may be useful to backtrack and identify the dramatis personae , peripheral though they are, because Yambo is indisputably the center of the book. So far we have met


Yambo; Dr. Gratarolo, his doctor; Paola, Yambo's wife; their daughters Carla and Nicoletta; three grandsons, two are Carla's and one is Nicoletta's; his old school friend Gianni;

Sibilla, Yambo's beautiful young assistant; Amalia, nanny and manager of the country house at Solara. We hear about Lila Saba.

MARNI, apparently Lila Saba's father "was in some trouble, fraudulent bankcruptcy or something. He left everything in the lawyers' hands ... No one knew were they had fetched up, some said Argentina, some Brazil. ..." (pg. 291)

At Yambo's insistence, Gianni finally tells all, and that brings on the first incident, the nature of which is not identified but easily imaginable.

This is the part where I felt compassion for Yambo for the first time. Eventually we learn that he spends three months at Solara. Fortified by vino and even the (devilishly potent) grappa , he pushes himself obsessively, ignoring his frequently racing heart & high BP, and continues to smoke heavily (like Eco himself). At times he is feverish. A prescription for disaster.

What is the book about? Although I haven't finished it yet it seems to me that it's about three things:A man:A country :An era.

Each of the three is complex but they intertwine and diverge and their fates are linked. Tensions arise when reality and fable clash. (The fog and the fire "Duke it out"). Fog is amorphous and fire is very real.

Like all good fiction good and evil have their day and their say in the mans'life, the countrys' history and the eras' events.

Judy

Re: What is the book about?

I think the book is about an Italian Catholic boy growing up in his formative years during a terrible war in which he is forced to participate and witness tragic and terrible things that impact his life forever, no matter how he attempts to escape his past.

Marni

Ok back again...to just let you know while I am writing this I have the BBC Proms playing - I'm hearing Nuccia Focile sing Tchaikovsky's Iolanta -

I thought it was a hoot how he foretells Maine de Biran with his pleasurable scratching. Not only did Biran write about the three parts of memory but explains to the satisfaction of the Catholic Church a philosophy of "Will" not "Fatalism" - he says he knows himself and exterior things by the resistance to his effort - ahum and like a good poet Unberto shows us rather than tells us - Yambo's pleasurable scratch is showing us Biran's principle.

Biran says, that morality is the consciousness of deliberate, willful activity...we know ourselves when we act with free will and we cause our actions. The more we realize we are free we are not victims of habit.

And then Joan Parson brought up St. Augustine as did Kevin - I wonder did y'all notice how he used the slumber story to foretell St. Augustine - time and the hours almost like the books - 13 in all with 9 of them speaking of his childhood - he woke at 9:00 - I found what was important to me in St. Augustine's Book 10 Where I am whatever it is I am Book 10 chapter III and in chapter VI And I answered, "A man." For see, there is in me both a body and a soul; the one without, the other within. and even St. Augustine talks about color I can bring out colors in my memory if I wish,

This is what I love about reading most European authors - they know intimately so many great writers and refer to them with snippets of quotes or obscure references...and if this has anything to do with memory it brings a smile to my face as I remember my mother who commented on everything we shared, I mean everything, with a short usually one liner quote from a book, song, poem.

Someplace in the Book and now I cannot find the page but I love "questions are my only foglights."

Whatever the Mysterious Flame is saying it sure is obscure as his reference to such an obscure part of our body that who knows what it would feel like to even be able to identify when something, anything is tickling the pylorus - I must say for two weeks I had more than a tickling of my pylorus but then maybe that was only preparing me to realize just how obscure the reference would be...

Now his off the wall purchase in Largo Cairoli was another story that foretells such a profound truth - the difference between roses and a dog's balls is the value we put on each - we prefer the look of one over the other and we associate various dreams, ideas, possibilities, beliefs, attitudes with each item we value, every decision we make, thing we do, save, act upon. In other words our free will is in question if we choose out of habit - part of habit is choosing what society says is approved - the look of one thing the possiblities of one thing versus the other - with no value the design and structure of either is interesting just like many socities chose paper or silver for money as their exchange for goods and service versus others chose of shells and beads...we must choose as Yambo says, You cannot have everything.

Then the imagery of nature when they drive up to the farmhouse - so many cultures use the concept of a physical passage to symbolize re-birth - this wall of trees through what felt like a tropical forest was like being birthed and so again the visual image of the story about finding himself is shown rather than simply told to us.

And then the fabulous imagery of the attic - how many authors have used the reference to an attic as the storage of our memory - then to have the building and it's attic to number 3 - how wonderful - we are back to Maine de Biran's three parts of memory.

I loved it when he says on page 98 Signor Pipino is born in a cabbage My Mom used to say she grew up like Topsy born in a Cabbage patch...for me a quick smile of recognition... memory... as de Biran said, human conscious experience connected to external causes...

I love it on page 119 he describes the attic space as if describing a graphic of the inside of our brain...

Marni what is this book about - hmmm - so far I see it as an adventure into who we are as individuals allowing us to question and see our choices in a new way - he uses snippets of other authors but he also brings in some profound truths as he shares the various incidents that show philosophic truths - but then I still have much to read to catch up with everyone -

This is not a quick read is it - but like walking through a wine cellar holding a fine collection, if you don't know your wine you cannot appreciate what is in the collection or, like walking through a garden and not knowing enough about the various plant to appreciate the garden. So far I have had to stop every other page or so and look something up where as most books I am tickled if I get to look something up every other chapter.

Well I'm off to read a bit more before I fall asleep...

hehehe here is another one that is so perfect - the potato nose soldier from the land of cockaigne Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Land of Cockaigne wikipedia says The word Cockaigne traces to Middle English cokaygne, tracing to Middle French (païs de) cocaigne "(land of) plenty," ultimately adapted or derived from a word for cake...Like Atlantis and El Dorado, the land of Cockaigne was a fictional utopia, a place where idleness and gluttony were the principal occupations. In a 13th century French poem called "The Land of Cockaign" --

"the houses were made of barley sugar and cakes, the streets were paved with pastry, and the shops supplied goods for nothing."

... roasted pigs wander about with knives in their backs to make carving easy, where grilled geese fly directly into one's mouth, where cooked fish jump out of the water and land at one's feet. The weather is always mild, the wine flows freely, sex is readily available, and all people enjoy eternal youth.

And so where does Yambo take is cache of books - to the lush garden walking through Amalia's wing of the house where a huge room holds olds rakes, pitchforks, shovels, lime buckets, old tins while behind this part of the house chickens scratch among rabbit hutches, pigsties - an image of a full peasant life...the basics of life are a peasants first concern and where Yambo, even as a boy, felt protected as he filled his mind, heart and soul with children's stories...

My only concern now is for me and the character Yambo - I am filled over the top with references to books and authors - I know from my own experience, Yambo will not touch the core of his memory related to emotions by reading, reading, touching all the things of his childhood, and catching up on what he read, saw and played with...he is working too hard...his work is putting a barrier between him and his recovery - it takes relaxation, drifting into meditation, talking to your inner self - he is too busy - so we shall see what we shall see as I get deeper into this book to learn if Umberto really knows what it takes to recover the scenes of ones childhood much less the conclusions about life we made our of our experiences...

Can't help it - another insight and another post - almost caught up - I'm now on page 222.

But what struck me is, I wonder how many oaths were kept so that secrets have gone to the grave - and what does that mean in the case of memory -

If our identity is built on our emotional memory then the individual who keeps the secret is not affected - they have their memory and know how they felt about the incident - so who is in a fog...society is in the fog.

Hmmm and so with each oath of secrecy that is carried to the grave is one chunk of the collective memory of a society that is missing - which says we as a society - as a collective group of people - do not have a full and complete identity - part of our social identity is buried never to be recovered -

I do not think I would have thought that was a big issue except I can see Umberto showing us the dichotomy of our lives as we experience stories, graphics, pictures, songs etc. that illuminate not only heroism but the most horrendous aspects of behavior and thinking, all the while we are singing about tip toeing through the tulips.

I thought it was fascinating and a lesson in how to read the news when the grandfather would research what he read in the newspaper to get the complete story - I wonder how many folks read in that manner today - here I think I am better informed because I pick and choose from a variety of news sources both here and abroad but the idea of analyzing and comparing reports never occured to me...hmmmm being informed is work...!

But more there seems to be a basic belief in the Grandfather that we are not all good or all bad - I guess that is what war really kills - the societies ability to know the truth about who they really are by blowing into greater proportion the stories of a societies courage etc. the virtues that allow them to feel strong and victorious during war but is really putting the society in the old cliché, 'a fog or war'...or some would say propaganda...

As losers, it appears that both Italy and Germany have had to uncover their secrets and both are probably a healthier society today because they collectively share fewer buried memories -

In fact, as Yambo is shocked and overwhelmed with his own childhood essay about fighting the enemy, this must be a common experience as children uncover family secrets and older folks re-look at who they were 60+ years ago...

I think we started to get a glimpse of how a soldier endures combat with some of the Viet Nam stories but then national heroism, without the views we would prefer to think were not there, crept in as we have honored the WWII Vet - yes, they did heroic deeds but very tiny bits peep through every so often that they were human - not all good but not all bad...lots to think about while reading this book...

Re: "4. What role does the "fog" take in this section?"

I think the fog of the Gorge is very important in this section. The path through the perilous Gorge (where "hellcats" lie in wait) is so foggy that it is nearly unpassable. One step off the path and one can easily fall to one's death. Yambo and his friends decide they will memorize the steps along the path of the Gorge so they can follow it basically blindfolded. The fog will not matter because they know where the path is without seeing it. It is sort of a rite of passage in a way.

The fog in this section is the cover that allows one to escape from the fascists or the Nazis. It allows partisans to covertly carry on their activities without being caught. Of course, Yambo's ability to lead others through the Gorge in dense fog becomes vital in saving lives.

Marni

Yambo will not touch the core of his memory related to emotions by reading, reading, touching all the things of his childhood, and catching up on what he read,

You touched right on the nitty-gritty of all Yambo's earnest efforts, Barbara. None of this is going to restore his memory, so we must suppose Eco has other purposes for taking us through all this detailed cultural review of the times. Maybe it is as simple as hoping his readers will enjoy it as much as he does.

Babi

I just wanted to post a few more things Yambo remembers about Queen Loana in this section.

Qheen Loana is the comic book queen of a mysterious kingdom in Central Africa, guardian of an ultra-mysterious flame that grants long life, immortality even. She had ruled for 2000 years. She is "charming and evil," "neither alluring nor unsettling," is "enigmatic." She wants to marry one of the book’s heros because he reminds her of a prince she loved 2000 years earlier whom she had killed and petrified when he refused her charms. She could use her mysterious flame to bring her mummified lover back to life. Then her mysterious flame is extinguished forever.

So, we are now seeing the "mysterious flame" as a means to long life or immortality, of bringing the dead back to life. No wonder the mysterious flames are so important to Yambo who, in a coma, is in a kind of mummified state, perhaps dying.

Marni

My mind is just kind of whirling on in some fog here....

Does Yambo relate Sibilla to Queen Loana? In his 40 years of searching for Sibilla's face, was Yambo yearning hopelessly for someone to bring him out of a sort of mummified or petrified state, a world of fog (lost in books) that he had escaped into after being traumatised during the war?

Marni

The salient points about Yambo's physical state, the important women in his life, and the folio can all be found in this week's assignment.

Re the folio see pp. 260 and 297; that will also reveal the cause of Yambo's second incident.

Re Yambo's life-long, futile quest for the ideal woman see i.e. Chapter 14, The Hotel of the Three Roses.

Perhaps most important for Yambo/Eco is Chapter 16, The Wind is Whistling, which begins on pg. 325. Many Ialian readers said they found that most "significant" about the book. Some said, "my "nonno" (grandpa) was in the war and never said much about it. Perhaps I can get him to talk now..."

but having all the comments which provide a guide , I think makes the book more interesting and understandable. When I finally have it in my hand I"ll enjoy it mmore. . . claire

My hard copy of theBook has arrived. However I have not had time to do anything with it yet. Sure do wish I had bought it at first. Although having the audio version has probably made me stick with it more. I still like the book very much.

Joan Grimes

You know, not all of Yambo's youthful poetry was so bad. I thought the line, "incautiously I built upon the transient sands of moments spent in the presence of a face.."

Some of the poetry seems truly prophetic, or it would be if this were fact instead of fiction. Such as: "so many seasons now have changed the cells and tissues of my body that I may not persist even in memory." How prophetic is that?!

Then, he could not "dream about those endless summers", because "there remains my own roadblock on the road to the gorge.".

One verse suggests to me an incident occurring during the war. "the clear nights in which the Partisan in the woods watched the little birds so they couldn't sing". Some partisan is watching to be sure no one attempts to betray them.

Babi

Ginny: I didn't remember all of the stuff I wrote down by any means. I wrote myself some notes and the pages they were on because I knew I'd have to give the book back to the library. (It was a special order with a waiting list, so I couldn't renew it.) Now, I wish I had written down more notes because there are so many things I'd like to look at again. I'm definitely not going to do this again!!

Marni

I think the Gorge incident is the pivotal scene of the book. Eco got there in a roundabout manner. He didn't write the story in a chronological plot format from beginning to middle to end. He used a rather foggy approach to get there, creating a mystery. I think Eco shows that the events of Yambo's childhood led up to what happened in the Gorge and that the Gorge incident shaped the rest of Yambo's life.

After I read this section, it was like lightbulbs going off. I think the fog in the gorge was probably the first important fog for Yambo. I think it created fog in future aspects of his life. I think what happened in the gorge may answer some questions we've been asking: Why did Yambo stay away from Solara for so many years? Why did he develop a fixation for Sabilla? Why did Yambo grow up so much in a 9-month period? (He asked this of himself as he went through the attic.) Why does Eco spend so much time at this point in the book describing in great detail the events of the gorge story? He just touched on other events through brief bits of memories. Why is Yambo thinking so much about it as he lies in a coma?

I wasn't shocked at the pictures of concentration camp Jews. I think Eco led up to the horrors of wartime be showing bits and pieces of Yambo's childhood. We saw some horrors of youth (through scary book illustrations) and then other horrors. Actually, some of the illustrations, such as record covers, were horrible in their own way as Eco explained how light-hearted music was played on the radio simultaneously as terrible events occurred in the real world. This was a kind of horror because you see how people were led to block out what was going on. We know today how people blocked out what was going on with Jewish populations all over Europe. To suddenly see the reality of photograph of the concentration camp was shocking. But, we also suddenly saw the reality of the war and evil that Yambo was pulled into.

Marni

I agree, Marni. And you explain it well. The photo of the Jews (survivors) and the one of the pile of bones were introduced and justified as yet another of the horrors of that time.

I remember (and I was maybe 5 or 6) when photos of Concentration Camp survivors were first published. I couldn't believe that people had done this to people. I vaguely remember being ashamed, for all of us. And the photos are introduced by a good deal more than a single sentence.

For example, Yambo recalls a gentleman sending his regards to his grandfather and being told the man was a Jew and that's why he was sweeping the streets. The lowest jobs have been given to Jews, his mother explains. Yambo doesn't understand because he associates Jews with fine hats. His grandfather also warns him that maybe it is a good idea not to mention the man to others. Later this gentleman disappears from town.

There are other references to information that Yambo gleaned from his friend, Gragnola (much guilt results from what he thinks of is his part in G's demise) about "the Ardeatine massacre in Rome."

I looked up this event since I had never heard of it. It all started when 33 German soldiers were killed when a group of Italian Communist partisans set off a bomb close to them. Hitler supposedly ordered that 10 Italians were to be shot for every German soldier.

Three hundred and thirty Italian civilians, many who in prison for minor offenses as well as many Jews, were rounded up and taken to the Ardeatine caves and shot. There were 75 Jews in the number. It was the largest single episode of the Holocaust in Italy.

The photo is not without a context.

Maryal

BaBi, I agree, some of Yambo's prescient poems are quite good, actually - and here the translator, a poet himself, shines -- not so in the prose translation where there is an irritating number of mixed metaphors. But that's not what we are about now.

It is apparent, however, that Queen Loana and her mysterious flame was merely a book title, a word, that intrigued and nourished Yambo through his youth. And it proved to be an illusion, as he clearly states in the pasages I indicated yesterday.

Three women are important in Yambo's life and fantasies : Sibilla (not Sabilla), Paola and Lila Saba.

Yambo and the readeer learn from Gianni that "Lila" was the girl's nickname. So thre is already the syllabic fusion. But we have to wait until next week for confirmaton and resolution.

MARNI, I quite agree, but that puts into question the very existence and inclusion of all those "illustrations" in the first place, something I have pointed to from the very outset and repeatedly since.

But WHO and WHAT is (or should be) really the focus of the discussion ? If it is Yambo, we ought to concentreate on him. The "whats" would take a great deal longer.

Traude: I do think the memorabilia was there for a distinct purpose. It was a means for Eco to show us Yambo's background as he grew up. We learned about his family, friends, homes, country, the spreading facism and propaganda, the spreading terrorism, Mussolini, the progress of the war, some horrors. We were able to see Yambo grow up in a very unique way that enabled us to learn about his thoughts, desires, love, fears, rites of passages, fixations, etc. in a fairly short period of time.

I think the fog of Yambo's mind as a result of his stroke was a rather brilliant vehicle to display the memorabilia. Also, the intense focus on fog ties in perfectly, finally, with the fog in the gorge incident. We uncover the reason for Yambo's fixation on fog; we see why he maintained his list of 150 fog quotations.

My problem with all of the memorabilia was that there was so much of it for such an extended period. I was getting really bored with it and began to skim. It wasn't until I finally realized what was going on that I appreciated what Eco had done. I must say, though, I think Eco did some overkill on the memorabilia. I think he was having a good time and maybe showing off.

Marni

Re: "...that puts into question the very existence....of all those "illustrations" in the first place..."

I'm still pondering whether the memorabilia that Yambo browses through in the attic and elsewhere really existed AFTER his stroke. As I mentioned earlier, it began to seem to me that the attic was in Yambo's mind rather than in Solara. I didn't think Yambo actually went to Solara at all. There were too many magical boxes popping up one after another in the attic and in other rooms in the house - and conveniently in a sort of chronological order so we saw a progression. In a real attic full of old stuff, wouldn't one uncover the past in a more random fashion?

I'm still wondering if Yambo ever actually got out of the hospital bed after his first incident. Could all of the things that he did between his first and second incident have been in his mind?

Marni

I am with Ginny on the pictures from the concentration camp. Not that he shouldn't have put them in, but the way he did it. I'd be willing to bet someone told him "hey, you can't talk about the war without mentioning the camps", so he slapped something in.

This is the very thing I complained about at the first, with the trivial example of the sailing ships. I believe an author should respect and care about his material. And I feel Eco doesn't always -- he just slaps stuff down to be complete or show off.

GINNY asks of the incident in the gorge: "Is THIS what the book is about? After all of these papers, pages, memorabilia, stuff stuff stuff, is THIS it?"

You would almost have to think so, yes. But it doesn't fit!! Even with the fog, it comes out of the blue, and doesn't follow from what came before. This incident and Queen Leona's flame are like lumps in a pudding. They stick out, and are important, but seem unrelated to what's around them.

I generally agree with you, Marni, about the use of the photograph of the death camps.

JoanK--if Eco had not included a picture of the death camps would it have been reality for what was going on in his world? Whether someone told him that or not, it is true. And leads me to ask, can WWII be a story about a boy growing up in Italy? Does the horror of others trump his own personal horror? I work with a woman who grew up in Nazi-occupied France during WWII. It has forever marked every aspect of her life. Yet she repeatedly expresses deep compassion for those who suffered so greatly in WWII, especially the Jews who were killed in the death camps.

I don't know what Eco's purpose is with the images, but it doesn't really interest me. Thank you, Joan, for telling us that the book is good to listen to on CD. I think this is simply a bow to modern culture.

Kleo

KLEO: I didn't express myself very well. I was not trying to say that Eco should not have included the pictures: I was trying to say that he should have given the Holocaust deeper attention, that by not doing so he was, as Ginny said, disrespectful. I believe very very strongly that the only way we can prevent something like that happening again is to remember, and remember, and remember.

As far as the holocaust "trumping" Yambo's pain, that is true and not true. What happened to anyone caught in the Holocaust was much worse than what happened to Yambo. But pain is pain, and the pain of any human is worthy of respect.

hmm we all have our take it seems on the Holocaust pictures - small as they were and next to the sophisticated couple living the good life to me was more of rose versus dog's testicles - I think we all put a certain value on what makes us uncomfortable - the Holocaust is something we prefer not to talk about except in certain circumstances and we want the subject treated reverently where as, other torture and death, often on a smaller scale, is again something that is part of the human existence however we prefer not talking about it period. That to me is the message that Umberto Eco is making when he shows the dichotomy of photos next to each other that we are in the habit of seeing as separate.

And a step further, I think he is saying we cordon off in our minds the kind of people that are capable of these atrocities as we also cordon of and label people celebrities who publicly live the good life - the message I think he is going for is all of that is not only within society but within each of us...

I still have a few more pages to read to finish this weeks reading - I'm on page 330 - I am looking forward, because of your posts to reading more about the Gorge - sounds like a pivotal point in his story.

For awhile I was agreeing Babi - why give us the history lesson of common culture if it was not going to help him retrieve his memory till I read Sometimes elevating the blandest thing to the status of a myth - added to seeing Charlie Rose tonight interview Cunningham - the first piece of Literature the man read at age 15 was Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, which he said he didn't understand at the time - but then continues to say, all it is is one day in the life of a women of a certain age and with certain means, who goes out, comes home and takes a nap and then gives a party. The wonder of it all he finally figured out was that in each life, no matter how mundane there is wonder and profound meaning - my words, I forgot his exact words but both he and Charlie Rose shared the excitement of their shared agreement.

With that interview, I am thinking Eco was showing us that the mechanics only takes on meaning when they were filled out with emotional memory which became active during Yambo's second attack. Part of the meaning of the mechanics was dependent on 'things' no longer with us - the toy ceremonially cremated - therefore, without our stories all our artifacts saved is an opportunity to spin our wheels in a tomb allowing us to make those parts of the story that make us feel safe and joyful seem larger, without justiposing the parts of the stories that make us uncomfortable and include the two halfs of our lives - in other words we are, as is society, the Janus, both Cain and Able, with the free will to choose only after we acknowledge both extremes are part of our history.

Ambiguity is difficult to accept and we all prefer to think of ourselves as 'good' believing that those we elevate as models within society, leaders of our community are also 'good' - I think the grandfather is an example of a man who took revenge on the one who did not live up to the ideal of 'good' - just as I think the Italian people unleashed all their pent up fear, anger, defeat and disenchantment with their own accepting of the early propaganda when they hung Mussolini.

P.S. the more I read the more this book is reminding me of the academy award winning movie "Life is Beautiful" also set in Italy, that shows the autrocieties directed at the Jews in a concentration camp in a humorous way as if a Three Stooges or Marx Brothers movie - nothing could be more comical than the father marching himself for his son, hidden in the box, to see him at his last a comical figure that would bring a smile to his sons face as he was being marched off to be shot dead - the chaos of feelings that bit stirs within us is not unlike the pictures of the Holocaust next to the couple living the good life.

But I think that's the point Joan: "I was trying to say that he should have given the Holocaust deeper attention, that by not doing so he was, as Ginny said, disrespectful." He gave the Holocaust the amount of attention it got during his boyhood, but he gave it its reality. The juxtaposition was contained in the startling image itself, compared to the others, as in the time dedication to the event while it was occurring versus the horror of the actual event. You don't necessarily give something 'deeper attention' by volume of words.

Kleo

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Bonita Granville inside cover. You can see here and in some of the inside illustrations that styles are quite different, can you imagine boating in those outfits? hahahaa It's really a period piece. (She plays HERSELF in the book!) haahhaa

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But this just blew me away. You will notice it's called The Adventures of Dorman?



If you look closely you can see it's a depiction of a local high school (Dorman High School) football player, pictured like a Superman, flying in front of the largest high school in South Carolina, which is near me. ALL the players it seems, have these done. Here art imitates life, I found this an incredible coincidence, it was in yesterday's newspaper, to our subject matter here! He's flying after a Spartan High Viking, the similarities just blew me away.

MARNI & BARBARA, I agree that we need to see Yambo's past, all of it, and in a meaningful way. That is, so we can see how they would have affected him, emotionally and mentally.

At the same time, I don't see that it was necessary to be so detailed as to, for example, give us every word in every song, or pages and pages of costumes and uniforms. The information could have been given and the points made w/o quite so much of that.

Frankly, I feel Eco is guilty of self-indulgance here, at the expense of the flow of his story and the patience of his readers.

Babi

hehehehe - OK - Uncle - and yes, at times I was reading without focus till I had to jar myself back and re-read in case I missed something -

I just have a difficult time though thinking an author is self-indulgent - I keep thinking there is a reason for all this that we just have not been able to plumb and we better keep digging or it will go over our heads - this guy is too good an author for a publisher to allow him to be self-indulgent - but who knows maybe his status over-ruled everyone at Harcourt Books -

Great additional graphics Ginny - thanks for sharing them - this is all my childhood only the Italian version - I was born in '33 and I think they have Yambo born in '32 - I forget now and I am not going to wade through and find the dates again - this is one book I wish was indexed but hay it is a novel.

This is the first chance for me today to sit down at the computer, and, regrettably, it will be short.

(A friend and I had lunch and went to a remarkable exhibit about the phases of the Japanese tea ceremony at a museum in a nearby town; a wonderful, edifying experience, cut short because of my rebelling bad back.)

For now, I can respond only to BaBi's post to say that it represents my sentiments exactly.
What we have here is clearly endless self-praise in the extreme.
WAS all of that necessary? WHY did the author FEEL it was necessary?
Here's the question I've been asking from the beginning, what IS the role or meaning of the illustrtions ? Are THEY necessary ?

We've read any number of novels where a protagonist's background is examined from every possible angle, yet illustrated novels are rare.
So WHY did Eco feel the need to complement and amplify these personal reminiscences, which are very clearly his own through the filter of time, with these various illustrations and montages ?

Whether Solara is real or not (I think it was), could we at least agree on that Yambo had two incidents?

Ginny: Re: Does the attic really exist?

I think Solara really existed and that the things Yambo is remembering really happened. But, I think it is possible that he is remembering them in his hospital bed. But, maybe not.??

Re: "I am wondering, Marni, how Sibilla somehow gets tangled up in the Gorge stuff, you had wondered the same thing. I don't see a connection."

I DO see a connection, but I'm not sure if the group has read that far yet. I'm going to hold off. I wish I had my book back to check the pages.

Does anyone else see a connection in the pages we've read so far?

Marni

Love the pictures showing the difference because of the fog. I grew up on the water in New London where the Thames River meets Long Island Sound and the Atlantic. It got REALLY foggy there. It was like the expression - fog "as thick as pea soup." Sometimes we'd be on a boat and the fog would come in. It's like in the horror movies. You see this thick blanket of fog roll in and cover everything up. You might not be able to see two feet ahead of you. Everyone who had a boat had to have a fog horn. In thick fog on the water, everyone would be honking their fog horns all around to make sure they didn't crash into each other. From my house, we'd always hear fog horns blowing on foggy days. That's one of my remembrances from my childhood. I think the fog horns were something that depressed Mary Tyrone in Eugene O'Neil's play "Long Day's Journey Into Night" which took place in New London where O'Neil spent his summers growing up.

I can really envision the foggy gorge - fog so thick you can barely see someone standing right in front of you. It really happens like that.

Marni

Ginny's posts, 369 and 370, are incredible. They are also very like the book. Therefore Ginny has become Eco's alter ego. It's contagious.

Traude--Why all the illustrations? I'm guessing that Eco knows about the popularity of the "graphic novel" and thought maybe it was time for him to bring back the illustrated novel. Apparently it is now much cheaper to produce full color illustrations on standard book stock. Daughter told me this.

For those of you who haven't read a graphic novel, I recommend Persepolis and I regret I can't recall the author's name. It's in black and white, resembles a comic only it is hard (and soft) bound and is the true story of the author's childhood in Iran during the years of the Iran-Iraq war and the cultural revolution in Iran. All of a sudden women had to be veiled. You can read it in Border's or Barnes & Noble. There's now a Persepolis 2 which takes up the story after the narrator's parents send her out of Iran.

DEEMS, I renmember the NYT review of "Persepolis", the author is a young Greek American woman, I recall; there was a sequel too, if memory serves. But I did not inquire further because I've never had any connection to comic strips and no interest in developing one.

Author's name is Marjane Satrapi and she is Iranian.

From Publisher's Weekly: "Satrapi's autobiography is a timely and timeless story of a young girl's life under the Islamic Revolution. Descended from the last Emperor of Iran, Satrapi is nine when fundamentalist rebels overthrow the Shah. While Satrapi's radical parents and their community initially welcome the ouster, they soon learn a new brand of totalitarianism is taking over. Satrapi's art is minimal and stark yet often charming and humorous as it depicts the madness around her. She idolizes those who were imprisoned by the Shah, fascinated by their tales of torture, and bonds with her Uncle Anoosh, only to see the new regime imprison and eventually kill him. Thanks to the Iran-Iraq war, neighbors' homes are bombed, playmates are killed and parties are forbidden. Satrapi's parents, who once lived in luxury despite their politics, struggle to educate their daughter. Her father briefly considers fleeing to America, only to realize the price would be too great. "I can become a taxi driver and you a cleaning lady?" he asks his wife. Iron Maiden, Nikes and Michael Jackson become precious symbols of freedom, and eventually Satrapi's rebellious streak puts her in danger, as even educated women are threatened with beatings for improper attire. Despite the grimness, Satrapi never lapses into sensationalism or sentimentality. Skillfully presenting a child's view of war and her own shifting ideals, she also shows quotidian life in Tehran and her family's pride and love for their country despite the tumultuous times. Powerfully understated, this work joins other memoirs-Spiegelman's Maus and Sacco's Safe Area Goradze-that use comics to make the unthinkable familiar."

I am not a frequent visitor here, but I think that before we judge Eco, we should look at other books that deal with the loss or nonexistence of memory. I can mention one, published in 1901, the "Caspar Hauser" by Jacob Wassermann. The problem of Eco's book is the loss of memory. Should we think for a moment about other books that treated the same subject? Who did it better than Eco?

I happen to know several people who lost their memory, or never had it. The subject fascinates me.

As to pictures to recall the past, I would like to mention W.G. Sebald. (and would also like to recommend his books, especially "Austerlitz".

What's wrong with me? Some of you think Eco is self praising, self indulgent. The words of songs and book illustration excessive. But reread what you have written from the beginning of this discussion. What Eco has evoked from Yambo he has also evoked from you and me. Dozens of forgotten memories have come back to us and we have revealed them to others. How many books evoke us to remember forgotten details of childhood and then discuss them with other?

Why the illustrations? The ones I recognize return me to that time I first saw them. Those that are specifically Italian introduce me to Yambos world (and perhaps Ecos'too.) Yambo was born in 1931- Eco, I think, later. Eco, a man of Semiotics uses pictures in this case because words are not strong enough to transport us to the time and place he wishes to send us. Words and pictures together are a more powerful tool. Look! this is the way it was. These pictures entranced me and perhaps they will entrance you too.

Judy

He sure gave us a look at the cultural history of our times didn't he Judy -

I just finished the whole bit on the Gorge - Wow!!!

A lot to take in but a quick reaction to all the talk of God and Jesus - reminded me of reading Slaughter House-Five - I loved the irreverent explanation of God, although Vonnegut had a different take, they both have this powerful God as a version of a humanized God -

I was so taken with what I read in Slaughter House-Five that I memorized it like a poem some 40 years ago...

Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels. so the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't be any repercussions, the lyncher thought. The reader would have to think that too, since the new gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.

And then just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son giving him full powers and privileges of the Son of the Creator of the Universe and from this moment on he will punish horribly anyone who torments a bum who has no connections.

Umberto Eco's God was not out to punish horribly anyone who tormented the bum, which is what Gragnola appeared to be - Gragnola had to commit suicide where as Vonnegut's Jesus was murdered.

This whole chapter - The Wind is Whistling is filled with a topsy turvey look at morality - kill or be killed - versus God's commandment, Do not Kill - bravely help those who had recently been your enemy - measure a man by his usefulness - on and on go the decisions that Yambo sees played out while so young - talk about trauma - the kind of trauma that you carry with you for life - the kind of trauma that makes you question the rules of society and how to follow those rules when good cannot be measured by those rules...my thoughts are still in a jumble but that was quiet the experience shared in the book.

Except for wanting to call Mamma when he was so scared, I do not see in the Gorge story his connection to the women in his life. I wonder if he ever again climbed a Gorge or a Mountain for sport. He developed a skill that may have become dormant because that skill ended up being the cause of such a traumatic experience in his life.

It was almost like a passage to adulthood - he waits alone and leaves for a midnight meet with other men - the stuff of initiation into manhood...

Nothing. In fact what you question as possibly wrong with you, your very different take on the book from that of many others, is what is so very right with you in my opinion.

Kleo

Hang in there, Barbara, the connection is there in the next section (the last and short compared to this chunk).

There is an overal organizing principle to this novel (I'm speaking only for me here) that in many ways is not like a typical novel (whatever that is). We don't get much character development in this book--even Rambo is pretty shadowy for someone who has had so many words. The other characters are not developed at all, or appear for brief moments, like Gagnola, who is very important but only present in a few pages.

I think the Gorge section is wonderfully written and almost seems like it belongs in another book. It is very like a turning point might be--if we had a turning point. It is certainly important in terms of what Yambo becomes.

Barbara says that the Gorge section is almost like a coming of age story. And it is, but it is also more. Young Yambo is introduced to Death in this section. Not in an abstract way but viscerally. He is there. Men die. Shortly after another man dies, by his own hand, with the lancet hanging around his neck that has so fascinated Yambo. That's upclose and personal. All the horrors of war become real to young Yambo in that brief time period. He doesn't even know yet what he knows.

Maryal

I love the illustrations. They especially help me, an American who was a child about the time Eco was, to see an Italian child's visual memories. I don't know how I would respond if I were Italian and my age. But as it is, I did look at the illustrations, some of them quite carefully. I respond to images.

If I were going to cut something from this book, it would be some of the song lyrics, partly because the lyrics to love songs (especially when you don't have the music playing in your head) can be tedious and repetitive. I suppose the lyrics and the music are playing together in Eco's head and Yambo has actually set up the old 78s to try to recreate hearing some of the music he heard on the radio when he was a child.

Judy--there is nothing wrong with you. Different readers respond differently to works of fiction. I respond as you do and you expressed it well.

Maryal

Well, I'm just checking in to let you all know that I continue to stumble and sometimes even stagger through this book. I must say, I am beginning to enjoy it more but not as much as I did in the beginning chapters...not yet, anyway. I have a feeling I will. I did renew the book as it was due back at the library yesterday and now I have it till September after we have finished this discussion.

I think my resistance is partly very personal. Wrong century for me...wrong location for me...I am so entrenched in the near and middle east both currently but even moreso historically that this is an exercise in determination and commitment to finish this book.

What has helped me most: reading all of your posts. They really open my eyes and give me a much wider vision of things outside of the scope of my 'present, little personal sphere of interest...and that just has to be a good thing! Don't want to get rigid or stale...so, thanks to you all!

You are so right Deem - these characters are not well developed - what is developed is the cultural history of the times...

I think I figured out why it appeared like overkill on all the bits and pieces of pop history...I think I got it...the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain...tra la la lala...

Ok yesterday I needed to locate a CD with photos taken of a house - I had the CD developed and used it about 6 weeks ago and since my life went tipsy topsy this summer my paper work was higgly piggly all over - I have this good size dining table that will sit 12 which is opened now to sit 8 in the breakfast area in front of the bay window - well that table is located just as I came in from the garage so that everything in my hands including all the mail gets dropped off on the table - Also, the office has several piles plus cabinets and drawers where I sometimes shove piles till I can sort through them and then I often sit on my sofa in the Den and work while I am watching TV.

All to say I needed the disk to upload more photos on this listing and could not find it - I started in the logical places and then had to start sorting through not only the past 6 weeks of paper and mail but the couple of weeks that had accumulated before the 6 weeks -

I'm sorting in piles - opening envelopes - reading stuff so I could deside what I wanted to save, getting more and more frantic - first the office, then the table, then out to the car to find any folders in the back seat or in the trunk that I scour through - I've been looking and sorting for over an hour by now before I look around the garage to see if I took a pile out of the car and laid it down till I returned - the same in the Laundry room where I did find a small pile with some maps I was looking for - than started looking in rooms that I seldom go in - than two piles I had put in pantry to clear the table one day - finally after over 2 hours I spy on the floor of the pantry a shopping sack of paper that I sort and empty and last, this really higgly piggly pile on a chair-seat on the backside of the table where I found the CD - it was out of the envelope from the photo developing store therefore not easily spotted.

And so I can see when you are looking for something, and Yambo is looking for something even more important - because I could always take my camera and go back out there and take more pictures where as Yambo is dependent on fitting himself back together only, after he captures his personal memory - and so the idea of sifting through everything and getting caught up along the way began to resonate - when you are looking without a clear memory where, what you are looking for is located, you just go and go and go like the pink bunny advertisement.

I now have over two months of paper work sorted for next years income tax as well as a pile of literature that I can knock out in an evening since it is now in an organized pile - at least some of the research Yambo did in that attic was in boxes already labeled.

The idea that it was all in his head could be - after all this horrendous scene at the Gorge was his memory at work - that would further explain the fog - but then to me the fog was simply the old cliché that we live in a fog since we do not have a complete view or understanding of our place in the universe.

The fog at the Gorge suggested to me that we act without knowing what will happen along the way that will call upon us to use judgment and skills - like driving down the highway - we never know what another vehicle will do nor what the weather will do - we trust our skill and judgment to stay safe but we are each in our own bubble without a clear knowledge of what is beyond the bubble -

Joan P--What a good idea--A movie. I wonder if one will be made. The problem that I see, movie-wise, is the rather small plot. Of course the book could be centered on the waking up in the hospital through Yambo going to Solara and then. . . .this is where we run into a problem with all those boxes.

Are we simply going to let the camera pan or jump from one image to another and how will we get Yambo's reaction to what he finds (voice over--not used much now, exception: Million Dollar Baby) and then what? A short scene with the visit of his wife and grandsons and maybe a scene or two with the old retainer, Amalia, and then finding the folio (thanks for the info. from the Folger) and then the second "incident."

Ok, the Gorge section can be fully fleshed out with actors and movement and adventure and horror and the Germans being taken off to have their throats cut. And then the suicide of Gragnola. But wait till you read the last section--that one is truly cinematic.

My problem is a lot will have to be changed and emphasized way beyond its size in the book in order to make a successful film. Worth a shot though.

Maryal

There is a madman in the novel I'm reading who writes on the sloped attic walls of his house that FLAME IS LIFE. He's a pyromaniac and eventually burns the house down. Has anyone suggested that metaphore amd could it apply here? Claire

Barbara's comment is on target about Eco in general:

"You are so right Deem - these characters are not well developed - what is developed is the cultural history of the times... " Barbara

This, to me, is what is so unique and interesting about Eco, he is a master at understanding the cultural history of the times. Whatever time the book is about it is written to fit in well with today's culture, the thoroughly modern trend of illustrated books for example.

Kleo

I've finally caught up on this week's section, and have been reading and rereading your posts which are fantastic and offer so much insight. They've sure helped me.

Ginny, I don't think there was any intent on Eco's part to be disrespectful by showing the pictures of the Jews in the concentration camps. And the sentence on page 330 where Yambo says "By war's end I had learned a great deal, not only how babies are born, . . . . but also how Jews die." says so much. Its tells of the children who, on their passage to young adulthood, learned as well about evil and man's inhumanity to man.

As for the Gorge, I agree with Marni that it is pivotal to the book. I don't want to repeat what many of you have already said, but I also agree that this is a coming-of-age novel, it's about a boy, more than the man, and your movie, Deems and JoanP would have to focus on the boy, with perhaps a voice-over at beginning and end, by the man. The Gorge scene would be the climax. Judy says this book is about a man: a country: and an era. I'll go along with that, but would replace man with boy.

Re: "FLAME IS LIFE."

This fits with the whole Queen Loana thing - that she can use her mysterious flame to bring her mummified lover back to life or immortality. Flame is life. Fits right in! I love it!

Marni

pedln, thanks for quoting this sentence, "By war's end I had learned a great deal, not only how babies are born, . . . . but also how Jews die."

Exactly. Yambo's coming of age was during the war years; he lost his innocence by learning about LOVE and DEATH. And, of course, horror.

Eco has set his book in the early 90s in order to make Yambo the right age to remember the war years. Actually Eco is younger than he makes Yambo. I think he's around 60. Must look that up.

Maryal

Wrong again. Eco was born January 5, 1932, so Yambo is about the same age. I saw Eco about six weeks ago (he was reading here in the area) and he sure LOOKS considerably younger! Certainly younger than I look and he's eight years older. Depressing.

HEGESO, # 380. Quite true, there are "illustrations" in several of Sebald's books in the form of ticket stubs, photos of people from another era, calendar pages, restaurants receipts, postcards Europeans used to send from their vacations, etc.; all in blck and white.

Sebald came to the attention of American readers only with his third novel, The Emigrants . The translation into English of his first novel, Schwindel. Gefühle = Vertigo in English, was years in the making.

For Austerlitz he received the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. He died in 2001 at age 57 in a car crash in his adopted homeland, Great Britain. All his novels reflect an elegiac view of life.

_________

JUDY, there is nothing wrong with voicing a different opinion. We are not striving for consensus. We read differently, we are drawn to, or repelled by, different aspects or details of a given story, and we have the right to say so without fear of reprisal.

The Gorge episode was a signal event for the adolescent Yambo and a lasting memory, finally uncovered. What to make of the character of Gragnola is harder to determine because the reader sees him through Yambo's adoring eyes.

I'd like to bring up one point that hasn't been mentioned, i.e. the curious "practice" of antiquarian book dealers when approached by a widow who is forced to liquidate her estate but often unaware of the value her rare books and/or folios represent. But an experienced dealer can spot them at once and Yambo knew just what to do under such circumstances and make the most of his financial gain (outlined on pp. 56,57, part of 58).

On pg. 311 in par. 3, Yambo says,

"I would be a fool to waste whatever time has been granted me in pondering such questions. Someone, or perhaps chance, has given me the opportunity to remember who I am. I must take it. If I turn out to have something to be penitent for, I will do penance. But in order to repent, I must first remember what it is I have done. As for the sleaziness I know about, Paola, or the widows I cheated, will have forgiven me already. And in the end, after all, if hell exists, it is empty." emphasis mine

Eco as born in 1932. The Italian reviews I read all remarked on the autobiographical nature of this novel.
We don't know what happened to Lila Saba, what she died of or where. She disappeared, lost in the pervading fog.

My question of whether the illustrations are necessary is NOT an indication that I think they are. I wanted to know what others think. After all, few "conventional" novels are illustrated.

The question of identity is, I believe, one of the themes of ths book.

There's a word missing from the first sentence in the penultimate paragraph of my # 396.

"My question of whether the illustrations are necessary is NOT an indication that I think they are not."
In fact, here they are welcome visual aids in an interminable flood of words.

I've been reading the book 1421 about a Chinese armada sailing around the world and charting new territory from 1421 to 1423. The book is filled with illustrations. It got me realizing that many non-fiction books today are filled with illustrations. Almost all of the new biographies I read this past year included many photos, paintings, and other illustrations. They didn't used to. Maybe it is true that it is cheaper today to produce books with illustrations. Perhaps in the near future we'll be seeing more fiction including illustrations the way our Eco book does.

Marni

I just watched the movie "Hope and Glory," a wonderful British film about World War II in England during the blitz from a young boy's point of view. What a good movie. Not such a dark story as our Eco.

Marni

Had to grit my teeth because by the time I had finished a long post, ASOL blithely informed me that I was already disconnected. Changes will be made.

And here is the reconstructed post. Here we are, our last week, trying to make collective sense of this challenging book, with many questions still unanswered.

My problem throughout has been mustering interest, personal involvement, and a modicum of caring for poor Yambo and his quandary. The focus of the story is on Yambo and his search for his memory ... but the reader is constantly pulled aside and distracted by the flood of "paper memory", which isn't all that helpful. Part Two is grossly inflated with, frankly, too many illustrated references, when the reader would rather know what happens to Yambo and his search.

After 449 pages, what have we gleaned about the ESSENCE of the story, ts MEANING, the author's intention?

No doubt the premise in Part One as intriguing - after all, any of us could be in a similar predicament), but beyond the premise, IS thre a plot? I will go out on my precarious limb and say that Yambo IS the plot. What do you think?

In a recent post I said that I was beginning at long lastto feel some compassion for the astonishingly self-absorbed Yambo. It was when he mentioned the war years and their effect, the hunger, cold and uselessness of ration cards where there simpy WAS no food. And the horrors of the bombing.

But the boy's voice is flat, devoid of emotion, and that, I believe, GINNY, goes also for the pictures of the camps -
I don't believe Eco meant to be disrespectful, rather wanting to show decades later the dichotomy between enticing ads in the daily papers for Borsalino hats in this case, juxtaposed with the grim reality of the camps, whose existence was not public knowledge at that time.

It is clear from the book that no one n Yambo's family was fascist-leaning (anyting but !!!), nor were they antisemitic.

As for my intial feeling of compassion for Yambo - it vanished when I fully realized his monumental self-absorption, which is plainly acknowledged (!!!) in the book by Yambo hmself as "ferocious egotism" pg. 421.

Now I hope THIS post will go through. I'm not done bt will cede the floor for your reactions.

BTW the last questions in the header beginning with #2 are my contributions to the discussion.

Hi All,

I have tried and tried again but there is no way I will finish this book. I am just now starting at the 'gorge' and will never catch up anyway.

Life is so unpredictable and time is so precious I don't really want to continue to feel as though finishing this book is a 'duty' or that I'm doing some kind of 'penance' when I even go to pick it up.

I'm looking forward to Latin and Greek 101 in September and am going to attempt to read Middlemarch although a librarian friend of mine said it is another depressing book (she also thought Eco's and Maugham's were depressing...I didn't feel that way about Moon and Sixpence) but can't jog through jello with another book as I tried to do with this Eco! (smile)

So now I go to re-prep myself to be ready for my languages, always my favorite thing. All of your comments have been great; I just don't like the book.

Alliemae

Dear Ginny,

This is re: Paolas remark about childrens sense of reality. She is quoting a theory that is extremely accepted in Europe and the U.S.among Psychologists. This is Jean Piagets theory of childhood development . He beleived(and proved) that childrens sense of reality i.e the ability to differentiate between imagined and reality kicks in approximately age 7 (could be anywhere from 6 to . For this reason the teaching of History and Geography was (perhaps still is) taught only from third grade.

The last part of the book brought me back to T.S.Eliot who Eco consis- tently quotes "In the end is the beginning". On page 399 Yambo says"I could write, too,could add my own monsters to those that scuttle with their ragged clawa across the silent sea" In the "Lovesong of J.Alfred Prufrock" Eliot writes :

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floor of silent seas".

If you wil return to Eliots poem you will find almost all the themes of the book. But mainly ,like Prufrock, he is saying "I grow old....I grow old.....And remember the other famous Eliot line"Not with a bang but a Whimper". Yambo is summing up his life and finds himself wanting.

Eco writes about the young Yambo page 385: "The city is nothing but space and sunlight, a track for my bike with its pitted tires, and the book in the station is the only guarantee that, through fiction , I will be able to return to some less desparate reality."How sad.

The book was an intellectual challenge and sometimes the character Yambo seemed real and sometimes he didn't but those around him always seemed made of flesh and blood. So I imagine Eco wanted us to connect with the past and memories of it that seem sometimes very real and sometime foggy.

This is the longest post I ever made so for now I will say goodbye and see you in Miiddle March.

Judy

I don't know how smiley facy appeared. In the original I pressed the number eight. So strange things occur even in the tech world of computers.

Judy

At a soccer match, Yambo suddenly realizes he doesn’t believe in God p. 393. “I must have had it in my head, from that day on, that going to a match meant losing my soul.”

Can anyone explain this to me - What was it about the soccer match that made him realize he no longer believed in God?

Marni

Re: "3. How did the ending strike you?"

I thought the ending was intriguing, weird, and fitting. Yambo never recovers from his second "incident." (Maybe he never recovered from the first.) He is so frustrated by his inability to see Lila's face even though he can remember everything else in his life. He feels he must see her face. For 40 years Yambo has been searching for her face. Now, still, it is his final obsession.

He calls upon Queen Loana to help him in his quest. She can bring the dead back to life with her mysterious flame.

In sort of a stage performance, Yambo sees a montage of his childhood book characters come to life. And finally, finally, Lila begins to walk down the stairs towards him. "She descends lovely as the sun." Yambo searches for her face. He knows when he sees her that he will ask her the right question this time - not like he flubbed it when he was a youth. He will have his opportunity to make things right....and she will love him??

At the moment he sees Lila's face, he feels a cold gust. “I look up. Why is the sun turning black?” p.449

I think this is the moment that Yambo dies. The sun was life. Now, it has turned black. Queen Loana's mysterious flame has been extinguished.

I think Yambo's death scene relates to the death of Jack London’s Martin Eden, mentioned earlier - the last sentence: “Martin Eden, at the height of his fame, kills himself by slipping out through the porthole of his steamer cabin into the Pacific, and as he feels the water slowly filling his lungs, ....he gains, in a final glimmer of lucidity, some understanding, maybe of the meaning of life, but ‘at the instant he knew, he ceased to know....Should one really demand a final revelation, if as soon as one has it one sinks into darkness?'”p.129

Marni

Ok Marnie - up to the profound statement - this is my take on it - the soccer game was the allegory the symbol of his experience with humanity...

The soccer game only has meaning after we read and truly understand his trauma - he no longer holds his parents hands - not only is he older but he has experienced a traumatic secret that propelled him into the gray ambiguity of adulthood - Like an compulsive addict trying to hide his pain and confusion, he races on his bike, then buries himself in fantasy fiction, that turns to sex, then to religion, the only things missing are drink and drugs - trying to push down the human howl that he cannot allow past his lips --

His courageous friend is slaughtered - he feels guilt without knowing why - survivors guilt more than likely but we know all guilt is anger within - who does he tell off - and from all he reads and hears no one would be properly devastated if he did tell them off - he has no release for his anger and therefore it turns to guilt.

He sees all the rational for Blacks being the horror to civilized behavior till he met the Black soldiers who brought him peace and treats turning that bit of propaganda on its ear - all of a sudden the Cossacks, who he saved, are now supposed to be the enemy -

Does this mean it starts all over and another boy will find himself helping the enemy who turned "good" while his friend not only takes the life of men - granted the enemy - but he saw them, helped them climb, they were human like he was, not a number - and then that friend will be taken by his own people who feel that everyone should live as they think best and his friend will slaughter himself after which the people of the area will dump him on the side of the road like so much road kill.

No one else is showing signs of being devastated by the unfairness - the expectations for human decency taught in school and church seem unrealistic - he feels paralyzed by the dichotomy of people dancing and singing and watching movies without addressing the small and large horrors of his known world, civilization gone mad.

He feels abandoned and isolated - like all trauma victims Yambo was utterly helpless to change the events at the Gorge as well, he was helpless to change the aftermath the death of Gragnola -- he wants some kind of justice or at least an announcement that everyone had secretly entered the lands of Nuovissimo Melzi.

Being dishonest in any role affects every role and Yambo is a mess of fear, lack of trust, shame which allows him to have unrealistic expectations, inadequacy feeling he has no opportunity to correct the wrongs.

He had no idea what his convictions are any longer when he compares his experience to what he observes around him. Like the referee at the soccer game he wants to blow his whistle and yell foul - or at least God should somehow yell foul...

He notices when the referee does blow his whistle loud so the game stops and everyone 'ought' to be focused on the referee and his pronouncement, rather the players are bored and milling around aimlessly - there is no major announcement that the bad deed was beyond acceptability - everything simply stalls as if this messy game is all there is - there is no grand right or wrong -

He learned from the Gorge experience that bad things happen to good people and no one really cares - in fact it is an intrusion, to their playing the game of life, to be stopped and the bad thing brought into the spotlight - no one cares to hear about the injustices. A few figure heads are hung but the people he touched and knew are dead in very unceremonious ways.

He also has been drowned in guilt over sex so that guilt for him is a two edged sword - it is his personal experience with danger, friendship, deciding right from wrong and death as well as, the guilt of "my first ejaculation: more forbidden, I think, than cutting a German's throat. I have sinned again - that night in the Gorge I was the mute witness to the mystery of death..."

Later he says "To be intensely educated about the horror of sin and then to be conquered by it." and on page 397 he says, "I withdraw into a world all my own. I cultivate music, always glued to the radio in the afternoon hours, or the early morning, and sometimes they play a symphony in the evening...I am an exceptional creature exiled among philistines, I sequester myself ever more proudly in my solitude."

In music there is order, in life there is messy milling around regardless the horror, regardless if a referee whistles to announce the wrong...

in that it was global, didn't drell on detail so that I didn't miss not having the book YET. anyhow I copied yours and Marnis for reference when it finally comes and I finally give it my attention. Thanks so much both of you. . . .Claire

Marnie, #406. Yes, yes, yes! The ending is his dying visions. It reminded me of the grand finale of a circus performance, when all the artistes and clowns, all the animals come out in a confusion--and no one stays behind.

I loved the end too. And I agree with both marnie and Barb, parts of each post really hit me.

I agree that Yambo is dying, right in the very process of it and Marnie has quoted the appropriate passage that Yambo remembers early in the novel, (p. 129):

"Jack London's Martin Eden caught my eye, and I turned mechanically to the last sentence, as if my fingers knew what they would find there. Martin Eden, at the height of his fame, kills himself by slipping out through the porthole of his steamer cabin into the Pacific, and as he feels the water slowly filling his lungs, he gains, in a final glimmer of lucidity, some understanding, maybe of the meaning of life, but 'at the instant he knew, he ceased to know'."

The glimpse, the understanding, perhaps the very shape of Lila comes to Yambo finally but then "he cannot see to see" (Dickinson imported from the Poetry thread). Whatever he has grasped is something for him alone and that only very briefly, just before the curtain falls and the sun is dark.

The language of that final operatic section with all the figures descending the staircase is reminiscent of Revelation. The language makes me want to go and reread Revelation to find all the borrowings. Eco even has a throne and around the throne four Creatures (425) and a final battle between good and evil (Armageddon).

That last part just begs to be read aloud and I heard Eco read it, in Italian (the rest of the reading was in English) and he accelerated and got absolutely lost in it. He had such fun reading it. I don't know one word of Italian and I was moved.

Maryal

Very true, HEGESO.

It is disappointing to me, however, that Eco has not succeeded in creating a synthesis between the first chapter and the grossly inflated second chapter.

Instead, what he gives us in the third chapter is a grandiose pyrotechnical, apocalyptic extravaganza that ends with Yambo's death without his having laid eyes on the beloved Lila Saba.

It is interesting, though, that among the procession of people descending the white stairs is none other than Don Bosco, author of "The Provident Young Man", which may be proof of the fact that Yambo was ambivalent in his feelings about and his relationship to the Church until the very last.

Slogging through this l o n g book with all those personal and intimate confidences, I found myself wondering whether Yambo perhaps blamed his spiritual advisor at school, Don Renato, for having counseled chastity and self-negation.

Did any of you see the references to "la casa rossa", the local house of prostitution?

To me, the characters in the book, especially the women, do NOT jump off the page, they are like satellites to Yambo in their predesigned roles. KEVIN, some posts earlier, brought out Paola's maternal role. Very true. We have not reflected on that aspect. That is very important in Italian families. La mamma always nurtures and reigns, no matter how many swelte nubile young women are readyand willing for the husband's taking.

There isn't even one tender- emotionally tender- scene between Paola and Yambo. We do learn where and when they met, but there's no clue as to WHAT attracted him to her. They married because Paola became pregnant with Carla. (Yes, there was one, ONE, sexual scene after Yambo's return from the clinic and Paola "seduces" her "virgin" husband.)

What DO we learn about the other characters, personally? Their development, their lives? Nothing. Since this is a first-person marration, we learn ONLy what Yambo tells us about them and how they touch(ed) his life. For example, we never hear anything more about Amalia after the episode in the gorge with Gragnola.

Also, it should be made clear that Gragnola was not killed, he committed suicide after the fact, and at that time Yambo was still a boy of 14 or 15, not yet a man. He was 16 when he fell in love with Lila Saba at first sight, and we can see the author's reaching for a comparison with Dante and Dante's beloved, Beatrice.
There are other references to Dante's Divine Comedy, as well as to other Italian men of letters, one of them Luigi Pirandello, and specifically his play "Six Characters in Search of an Author" = ("Sei caratteri in cerca di un autore), which deals with identity.

There are many, many thoughts and concepts to reflect on, and we can pursue them privately, if we were so inclined. But on the whole, I personally find the character of Yambo, a garrulous egotist, unappealing (to put it mildly).

Would those of you who, unlike me, CAN access the interview with Diane Rehm please share what Eco answered to what questions?

ALLIEMAE, I fully understand what you are saying; thank you for being candid. I read the book cover to cover, in fits and starts, reluctantly. Twice. I did so even though it had NOT been my first choice when we voted in Read Around the World, because I felt duty-bound = 'noblesse oblige' as the French say.

GINNY says: "Why did his sun turn black? Not physically, I understood he died, (is that what you thought) but WHY?"

At one level, because the sun was "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana", the flame of eternal life. And, as he told us earlier, when it is used to revive someone, as he used it to revive Lila, then it goes out.

But to keep the analogy with both the story of the flame and the Jack London story, shouldn't he see Lila at the instant that the flame of life goes out?

On the cartoon characters: I felt all along, and especially at the ending, that the cartoon characters meant something very different to Eco than they did to me. I need to listen to the Diane Rheim interview again where he explains what the cartoons meant to him as a boy. As I remember, he is living in this fog of propaganda that the fascists are putting out. And the American cartoon characters seem to be the only people that are telling him the truth -- that are in touch with reality.

This is something that is very difficult for me to relate to: to me, the ending just seemed bizarre. But I can see, if Eco had read it to me, and I had heard the genuine feeling that it evoked in him, I might understand it much better.

Judy: I agree that seeing how much he took from Eliot was brilliant. Even after the "claws" quote, I didn't catch it.

Man oh man....This is a HEAVY discussion!!!!

Barbara: Thanks for your deep thoughts about the soccer match and Yambo's loss of faith. WOW!!

I am just loving everyone's postings!

Marni

Thanks marnie -

Another thought - I wonder - since there is so much cartoon and comic book references - as Ginny points out, he looks but he never does see the face of his ideal women "Lila, who was NOT a cartoon character" -

I wonder if that is what he is saying - life is banal and not filled with glorious moments of beauty, courage, adventure as his French feuilletons but more like the English stories of Sherlock Holmes.

Eco says on p152 "He too, like me, motionless and isolated from the world, deciphering pure signs. He always succeeded in making the repressed resurface. Would I be able to? At least I had a model."

As Eliot says in Prufrock --

Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do

I think his enjoyment of the fantasy adventure stories - that depicts life with ferocious hurricanes raging over Mompracem, thick layers of Persian carpets blazing with gold, men; tall and slim of stature, powerfully built, with vigorous, masculine, proud features, and a strange beauty, gave Yambo, as many of us have the concept, that life should be filled with heroic moments - moments that make us feel elevated to be human and not attendants to a prince, a lord.

Yambo's moment of a heightened life was the experience at the Gorge followed by the slaughter of his friend - as I shared before, when his own, the Italian people, who believed that everyone should live as they think best, captured Gragnola, who rather than spill his information slaughtered himself, after which these people from the area [not the Nazis, who were the enemy] but fellow Italians dumped Gragnola, who had slaughtered himself by cutting his neck like a sacrificial lamb, then he is dumped on the side of the road like so much road kill. -

Yambo's other moments of a heightened life was his obsession with Lila - his search for her face was like a man possessed with desire to see a vision - the two sides of his guilt sword - the night at the Gorge and the sins of sex surrounding his obsession with Lila.

Where as his life was an experience of isolation behind his books - he recognizes he
"should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas"

The key word I think is, "scuttling" where as Yambo says, "That is how we do it in normal life, too: we could suppose we have been deceived by some evil genius, but in order to be able to move forward we behave as if everything we see is real. If we let ourselves go, if we doubt that a world exists around us, we will stop acting, and within illusion produced by the evil genius we will fall down the stairs of die of hunger."

When he could not put the pieces together of what he was taught and how folks act in real life - wounded that no one pays attention when the referee whistles foul - from than on, after he said there was no God, [God is faith, love, hope] he doubted the world existed, or at least a world that he could fathom and so he stopped acting and as Traude, you point out in an earlier post, he shows no feelings, he is almost devoid of feelings.

We know the kind of memory loss he has is the part of personal memory that is tied to feelings - and it looks like he made that choice back as a young man at the soccer match - he has been emotionally dead since that time - he replaced feelings with an obsession with Lila, just as others wounded replace their feelings with other obsessions.

An obsession allows you feel a heightened sense of life - there is nothing banal about life when you are in the throws of an obsession - his vision of Lila, like a "Lazarus, come from the dead" was going to provide him with the answer to, was life worth while even if only "scuttling across the floor" - Is there the noble and beautiful that blows the whistle and says foul, which would put the world back on kilter, make life seem less banal and more like a comic book adventure with its exaggerated drama of good versus evil.

Traude, thank you for your note. After reading all those glowing posts I wonder why I couldn't get into the book...oh well...maybe another time, another place...

It was a really difficult decision for me. In my age cohort we were trained to , "Once a job you have begun, never leave it till it's done" It was my younger daughter who reminded me that this was not meant to be a job. Of course if I were a book leader I'm sure I would have felt the same as Traude.

To All...I'm glad those of you who loved the book did. I so wanted to love it too...especially after the Eco interview on radio. We..it's on to my languages...take care Everyone...I enjoyed reading with you.

Alliemae

ALLIEMAE, thank you.
I'll respond to the latest posts in the afternoon after my appointments.

Alliemae if I were you I would be congratulating myself - seems to me what you have done is be selective about the metaphors that best exemplify and create further similarities for the ideas life has provided you -

When you think on it - all a story is, is a metaphor for ideas - and like food some of us ate sweet potato pie, okra and pickled green tomatoes where as some of us ate Clam Chowder, maple syrup, and apple cider. At this stage in our lives when a food is elective we should choose the food we love or at least recognize and then go to work and digest it, pulling the nutrients out and absorbing it into our system to add to what is already there.

If a book touches on ideas or presents ideas in a way that is not similar to our life experience or our taste in life we are either bored by the book or do not even want to finish the book -

Reminds me of some West African foods that I have never eaten and if I taste them I have no reference point - at this stage in my life with all the foods to choose from I would pass up say a soup made with pumpkin seeds, bits of beef, shrimp, tomatoes, spinach and habanero peppers called Egusi Soup from Cameroon.

And so Books & Lit have many books to choose from and you are so wise that you know what metaphors are going to add more or clarify your already burgeoning life experiences. Rah, Rah to you...

Re: "...he looks but he never does see the face of his ideal women "Lila, who was NOT a cartoon character"...

Yambo said on p.420, “If I could see Lila’s face, I would be convinced that she existed.” At the very end of the book on p.449, as Lila is walking towards Yambo and he is expectantly waiting to see her face, he suddenly feels a cold gust and says, "I look up. Why is the sun turning black?”

We could take this two ways:

1. He doesn't see her face. The mysterious flame is extinguished and he dies not even convinced that Lila existed. And if that is the case, what else did not exist?

2. He sees her face at the moment of death. Like Martin Eden at the moment of his death, "he gains, in a final glimmer of lucidity, some understanding, maybe of the meaning of life, but at the instant he knew, he ceased to know..."

I was thinking #2. He can't describe seeing her face because he dies in that exact instant. But, I'm not sure. What do you think happened?

Marni

Joan K writes, "On the cartoon characters: I felt all along, and especially at the ending, that the cartoon characters meant something very different to Eco than they did to me. I need to listen to the Diane Rheim interview again where he explains what the cartoons meant to him as a boy. As I remember, he is living in this fog of propaganda that the fascists are putting out. And the American cartoon characters seem to be the only people that are telling him the truth -- that are in touch with reality. "

Thank you, Joan K, for that because it fits with my thinking and helps me to sharpen my idea.

Simple outline of what's going on with Yambo as I read the book:

Young Yambo is surrounded by propoganda and his beloved comic books which are full of adventure and derring-do.

He then becomes involved in the incident in the Gorge and knows that the two Germans have had their throats slit. He has become aware of Death.

He tries all manner of escapes from the burden of this knowledge, but finally falls upon LILA

He "falls in love" with Lila but can't bring himself to even speak to her except in the most minimal ways. He goes to her door and then pretends he is looking for someone else (this is the mistake he intends not to make when Lila descends the staircase in his vision--"Careful. This time I must not ask her 'Does Vanzetti live here? I must finally seize the Opportunity'").

Lila's father leaves town under a cloud; they move to somewhere in S. America. Yambo hears years later that she has died. But he's stuck with her face, trying to find it in every woman he has an affair with.

Eventually he winds up back with his previous "Paper life" as an antique books dealer and a very good one at that.

After his second stroke, Yambo's mind goes wild, remembering everything but not in chronological order.

In chronological order: young Yambo discovers Death, tries to escape from his knowledge, finally decides that Love will cure him, will be something to hold onto. Falls in love with Lila.

In a brief period of time, Yambo discovers both Death and Love.

All he truly remembers of Lila is her yellow jacket and her neck:

"To love a neck. And a yellow jacket. That yellow jacket in which she appeared one day at school, luminous in the spring sun--and about which I waxed poetic. From that day on, I could never see a woman in a yellow jacket without feeling a call, an unbearable nostalgia" (415).

He never saw much of her face even when she was in school with him; his images of her always seem to be of her going away.

Turns out Lila has another boyfriend, Vanni, who has a Vespa and Yambo again views her from the rear:

"She faded into the distance that morning on the Vespa, and for me the Vespa became even more a symbol of torment, or useless passion. And once again, her skirt, the oriflamme of her hair--but seen, as always, from the back "(414)

She was a symbol for Yambo, the ideal love, the ideal woman, but she kept going away from him until she finally, by dying, went away forever.

As does Yambo at the end.

WOW Deems!!!

Thanks for the compliment Ginny - and marni another winner - Yep, two 'what happened then' conclusions -

Oh how we would love for it all to make sense and at the end that flash of understanding would be our gift - but I am beginning to wonder if we are looking for the understanding in all the wrong places sort of thing...

What is reality? That is some of what this books is hitting up against in my head...We know there is mythic reality and sensory reality - the mythic perceptions versus the reality of the events that we see for what they are.

We give all sorts of meaning to myth and can easily become demoralized when faced with reality. Myth is filled with all sorts of absolutes - we must vanquish the darkness - good must triumph - myth sells papers, and boosts our belief in the noble and courageous.

Where as reality can be filled with blunders, senseless behavior, cruelty, idealism lost, morals corrupt, and gives little justification for the mayhem of life.

Reminds me of how Homer says it is the malice of the gods that lead both sides to destruction where as Shakespeare turns Achilles finding Hector into a scene of butchery with the helpless Hector begging Achilles not to strike him while he has no weapon. This is murder - he does not continue the myth but shows us sensory reality.

In light of this look at behavior are we seduced to a mythical God with taboos of right and wrong offering us justice as we believe justice should look as our guide so that upon death the great purpose of life will be illuminated or -- is recovering our cultural memory to lay out the sensory reality of our culture and survive in real hope - the hope in the unseen and unknown with the faith that we will struggle to strengthen however, in real hope, not our memory of what we think it should look like, we will come to a place of power through love.

Is Yambo's desire to see Lila's face the yearning for power through love or, is it the desire to find peace and understanding that had alluded him and was symbolized, like a myth, in Lila...hmmmm???

I guess all that to say in different words what marni has shared with two scenarios for the end...

hehehe is this an example of solution number 1 for an Eco's anitclimax ending Piano Man goes home

Barbara--The minute you figure out what reality is, please send me an email. Even if we can't quite pin it down, the question is a great one. What is reality. Do we share a "common" reality? How can we tell?

email on the way Deems

BARBARA, that's great writing, truly poetic.

Reality versus illusion is definitely a theme that deserves to be in the list at the end of the header.

Was Lila Saba real?
Well, was Yambo real, or his school friend Gianni?

Gianni tells the story (pg. 287 ff).

"In the third year of high school, we were still pimply boys in knickerbockers, the girls our age, sixteen or so, were already women. They wouldn't even look at us. They would rather flirt with the college students who came to wait for them by the gate. You saw her once and you were smitten. A Dante and Beatrice kind of thing ...".
(They were reading Dante Aleghieri's La Vita Nuova that year).

..."I'm telling you, you turned into a zombie. And since you were quite religious at that time, you went to see your spsiritual director, Don Renato, one of those priests who rode around on a moped wearing a beret, who everyone said was broad-minded. He even allowed you to read the books in the Index ... I wouldn't have had the guts to tell something like this to a priest, but you just had to tell someone." ... (emphasis mine) (pg. 288).

"What did Don Renato say?" asked the awakened Yambo.

"What do you expect a priest to say, even a broad-minded one? That your feeling was noble and beautiful and natural, but that you shouldn't spoil it by transforming it into a physical relationship, because it was important to remain pure until marriage, and therefore you should keep it secret in the depths of your heart."

The boy obeys, but he is in agony. He imagines himself to be Cyrano and Lila his Roxane. He finally works up the courage to go to Lila's house (pg. 411). "My opening was to be a masterpiece of wit and subtlety, irresistible - because I, since I loved her, could not imagine that she did not share my feelings ..."

But when she comes home from gym class ("after several centuries") and is surprised to see him there, all he can think of saying is, "Does Vanzetti live her?" "She said no. I said Thank you, excuse me, I was mistaken. And I left."

"Vanzetti (who the hell was he?) was the first name that, in the grip of panic, popped into my head. Later that night, I convinced myself that it was good that it had happened that way. It was the ultimate stratagem." (pg 412)

These last paragraphs are Yambo's own words of what he now remembers after his second incident (brought on when he dicovered the precious folio). But he remembers more: "a college boy, tall and blondish, who sometimes came to wait for her at the school gate. His name was Vanni - whether that was his first or last name I do not know - and one time when he had a Band-Aid on his neck he really did say to his friends, with a cheerfully corrupt air, that it was only a syphiloma."

And one day Vanni came on his Vespa and Lila climbed right on "and clung to him as if she were used to it ... and off they went." (pp. 413-14)

The comatose Yambo remembers that as the ultimate betrayal. But there is one last torment he must suffer, that has to do with the play Cyrano, and Lila's yellow jacket; it can be found on pp.415-16.

But Yambo never really forgot. On that fateful evening just before the first inciden, Gianni says (pg 292)
"You spent your life looking for Lila Saba. I used to say it was just an excuse to meet other women."
And there were plenty. Poor long-suffering Paola. No wonder she had a network of fine wrinkles about her eyes.

Yambo's thoughts are tinged in melancholy, and one could feel sorry for the man. He spent his entire life chasing an impossible dream, wandering from one woman to the next, and at the very end of all things he cannot see the beloved face!

(BTW there is an earlier reference to "syphiloma" elsewhere but I can't find it now.)

Traude--

You've said a lot of things in your posts that were just how I felt about the book or responded. I thought it was strange since we approach books in such different ways (you're committed to reading the entire book, I read for the journey and toss books that don't hook me) that your posts were the ones that most reflected my reading.

In the end, I loathe the book. I didn't enjoy discussing it. I won't finish it. Blech, Blech, Blech. Well, I may finish it as I generally like Eco.

Kleo

The earlier reference to the Syphiloma is on pg. 282 : it's in a poem Yambo finds in the attic. He despertely reaches for the memory still buried.And says, "To this Contained Creature, who was clearly real, I had devotedmy three most formative yeas." (pg. 283).

I agree with MARNI, Loana is NOT a cartoon figure and never was. She came from that chldren's book which, when Yambo actually finds it, he describes in great detail only to conclude
"In short, an incrediblby dumb story...You read any old story as a child, and you cultivate it in your memory, transform it, exalt it, sometimes elevating the blandest thing to the status of myth. In fact what seemed to have fertilized my slumbering memory was not the story itself, but the title. The expression themysterous flame had bewitched me, to say nothing of Loana's mellifluous name even though she herself was a capricious little fashion plae deessed as a bayadère I had spent all the years of my childhood - perhaps even me -cultivating not an image but a sound. Having forgottn the "historical" Loana, I had continued to pursue the oral aura of other mysterious flames. And years later, my memory in chambles, I had reactivated the flame's name to signal the reverberation of forgotten delights.

Thank you, KLEO. I call them as I see them, always with respect, of course.

Sorry, I tried to correct the typos in my last post but could no longer access it.

Among passages that IMHO are not absolutely necessary to the story is Yambo's excursion into Stevenson's "Treasure Island". (pp 161-63)

"To prove that I did not remember only passages from encyclopedias, I showed off the stories I had learned in recent days, and the children sidled up with wide eyes; they had never heard those tales before."

Again the overwhelming, compulsive need to dazzle at every opportunity, all the time.

why do writers submit if not to be published to gain an audience and DAZZLE. that's a lovely word that dazzle. II have it in . . . . in my attic . . . a good friend dying of cancer wrote a poem which her husband sent to me titled Dazzle and beginning with

surely I"m in dazzle now . . . . I don't remember the rest of the poem but I'll never forget HER.

Claire

Claire, but it is not so much "dazzle" here as bedazzle, and there's a subtle distinction, a different nuance in the meaning of these verbs. I have expressed this humble personal opinion in previous posts-- but never made the slightest effort to "convert" anyone. That is, quite simly, not my style.

But I am not alone: I've read Italian reviews and Italian readers' reactions to those reviews. While positive evaluations predominate, there were comments about the author's blinding display of superior knowledge; the Italian adjective is "saccente", as I've said. Several said they just "don't get it". Some gave it thumbs down.

(Most of the respondents seemed two generations removed from WW II, some had never heard of the Partisans nor much of Italy's participation in the war. e.g. the fierce fighting to subdue Greece, which failed- among other thinks thanks to the Partisans.
Two readers wrote they'd talk to their "nonno" = grandpa who had been in the war but never mentioned anything about it.)

Eco's erudition is undisputed and his knowledge in all kinds of fields stupefying. But IMHO there's just too much of it showing all the time.

As I said, we read differently, we feel differently about what we read, and we are entitled to our subjective opinions.

Thank you for posting.

I think the book is about order and chaos - we prefer order and mythologize it with beauty, courage, and other virtues - we will bury ourselves in orderly traditional views on paper - anything committed to paper is orderly -

I think he shows how we are fascinated with adventure but recoil from real life horror - we have all sorts of ways to avoid, rather than come to terms with the inconceivable in life that we cannot control -

In place of having a public dialogue about the inconceivable the story shows how we hide or, ignore the horrors trying to live the "free and easy good life" -- and we create a perfect creature or state in our minds that we can dwell on - [the yellow jacket could just as easily been the blue mantel of the Blessed Virgin Mary]-

We mythologize this perfect creature expecting this perfect creator to right all the wrongs or, at least acknowledge our pain over the wrongs, by loving us as we think love should look like although, we do not act on that love - we want it to act upon us...

As to Eco using so many references that to some seemed like over kill - I am not sure - I would have to return and mark the references into lists - my impression is that for every adventure story there was a dull story and for every horrific life happening there was a comic book that intended to make us laugh - I think it only proved how easy it was for us to get hooked into our memory of memorabilia which is order on paper -

I also think part of our own boredom was because some of the memorabilia was new to us therefore it seemed like overkill - but then that does not explain the Italian reaction - although from what you are sharing the memorabilia was not in current fashion and could have been as new to the younger reader as it was to us - again, without going back and actually listing to see what could have been eliminated, I simply shrug my shoulders on that criticism since overall I thought the themes of the book were brilliant.

Reminded me of tonight's 6:00 news where reported was kindergarten age children who prefer not to play in the great outdoors because in nature the grass is not smooth and it is filled with sticks and pebbles - they prefer to play indoors on their computer or watching their TV - nature/sensory reality versus: books, TV, computer, the stuff of myth...

I think Eco is having Enormous Fun. And he's saying a few things along the way. But mostly I think he's reminiscing and enjoying the toy box of his youth. However, he can't avoid the horrors of the war either.

But, no, there's not much of a plot here. It's postmodern in that way--no plot, just a tour, a journey. And little character development. We don't know boo, for example, about Yambo's relationships with his parents. The mother hardly enters the book at all except via her prayerbook. Eco knows how to develop characters. But he isn't doing it here.

I have enjoyed the journey, errr romp (for me) and I have very much enjoyed reading everyone's comments. It's so interesting how differently we respond.

Which reminds me of a small exchange today in class. Somehow I brought up Million Dollar Baby which I saw the other night (DVD). Asked my plebes if they had seen it -- no one had in first period. Then I remembered it probably came out on DVD after they entered the Academy and they're not allowed movies during plebe summer.

Asked again in my fourth period class, also plebes. Two people had seen it. Because I don't like to ruin movies ahead of time, I asked the two who had if they liked it but interrupted whenever either started talking about the movie, explaining WHY. One of them said he didn't like it at all. Why? Because he thought it was going to be a boxing movie. And it turned out to be something else (here he started to say specific things about the movie but I caught him up). I laughed because I had put off seeing it because I thought it was a boxing movie. I liked it; he didn't. The other plebe liked it.

And so it goes.

Maryal

Yes Ginny - agree - flashes of wonderment through out the discussion - hurrah and thanks to both you and Traude - a huge book with ideas wrapped in fog that we can chew on for some time after we close the cover of this book - as you say we found lots to talk about...

A by the way story that you may enjoy as much as I have - as many of you know the deer come and go and spend many an hour in my backyard - for the past four years now I have had a doe fold in the backyard - this year there were two births - later than usual - so much road kill last year that there were only two of the older does and about 9 one year olds - there is an old buck and two younger bucks along with a new buck and that was a scene to observe.

First let me start with the new buck who was a yearling and this spring all of sudden all the does were rushing around chasing this one out of the yard - I looked and sure enough there were the small velvet spots sprouting - poor thing didn't know what to do with himself and spent two whole days and nights in the side yard trying to be accepted back with the group that was not allowing him in.

Then the one older doe had her fawn in a neighbors yard two streets away and I thought I was going to have a baron year - when low and behold one of the year old birthed a fawn - I didn't see the birth only her chewing the after birth - then two days later her mother, the other older doe also gives birth in the backyard - almost immediately the younger doe abandons her fawn to her mother and so grandma is nursing and caring for both her own fawn and her daughters fawn.

All went well for about a week and grandma gets hit by a vehicle and is in the yard nursing herself - the fawns had scattered, hiding in my front yard till late afternoon when they came to probably nurse and grandma sends them back to their hiding place - the next day the daughter finally comes and takes over but, within three days there is grandma back- limping, her hide is scared but taking on the responsibility for both fawns. Daughter disappeared and haven't seen her all summer.

But the funny was the war of the squatters - grandma had pretty much staked out my yard as home base - one day a doe with a fawn, just a bit larger therefore born earlier, arrives - first the doe lays near the side yard and the two fawns - I now call them the twins - are using their head in that aggressive move when they want to attack - after a day she and her fawn left - the twins and grandma are no longer camped out in the yard as they spend some time grazing the area-

Well - this was when the other doe took her chance - she made herself at home choosing to lay on the very spot that grandma usually chooses. From then on either the twins or grandma was ALWAYS in the backyard and the same with the new mother and daughter - when the mother was not there her fawn would try to nurse from grandma who would have none of that - only one day did grandma have it out and try to chase this new interloper away with no success - so all summer it has been the war of the squatters as they each lay facing the other direction but no one is giving up their territory.

During the summer I found they were drinking water from the AC condensate line so I now make sure I have an old copper pan and two concrete bird baths that sit on the ground filled with water. When I come out to fill them if they are in the yard they stand up and watch but no longer run - we usually have temps over 100 in summer but this summer the heat feels more uncomfortable since it is barely over 100 and filled with humidity.

I got the biggest kick out of the twins yesterday - the one laid down next to the copper pan and laid its chin on the rim so it could dip into the water at will - and the other one laid curled up next to the foundation where the water is behind the walls but also within a foot of the one bird bath filled with water - anything to stay cool - today it was like a race as the twins beat the sole fawn of the intruding doe - all five of them have been sprawled out under the shade of the trees trying to keep cool.

For me the deer are magical and if we come back that is what I would like to come back as - in a neighborhood though - don't feel like being in someone's freezer but would rather bring a smile to the faces of some townies...as it is there are the coyotes to run from and I've noticed the deer have learned to look both ways when the cross the street - it is just that some drivers just speed up when they see the deer - don't know what gets into some folks - I noticed others from other areas of town come to play in a softball tournament held each fall and they clap and scare the deer - ah so...nothing more magical than the moonlight catching the tips of the bucks horns - talk about your fantasy unicorn...

BARBARA: you are so lucky. We have deer that live in the woods a few hundred yards away. They come to our yard to feed -- only the doe and fawns -- I rarely see a buck. But we don't see them consistently enough to see the family dynamics.

It is great and what a treat - last November we had the clash of the bucks IN MY BACKYARD - the younger buck had wounded the older buck who would crouch way down to attack - the younger one would madly circle the yard and then finally because I left the gate opened it was circling the whole house between bouts with the older buck - the older one won but I am not sure what it wins because for about two or three weeks when I took my walk it would be dark and there were the bucks chasing down any doe they spied - I almost felt like I had to run home not to be knocked over in the commotion - so it looks like they are all active regardless who wins the battle...

Hegeso and Marni, I think I'm seeing the ending much as you are -- Yambo's dying, but a grand finale passing before him before he dies -- much like the finales on some of the Broadway musicales, or as Deems says, an opera -- very grandiose.

JoanK -- thanks for sharing part of the Diane Rheim interview, which I could not get, and the part the cartoons played for Eco. I found Yambo's musings about his boyhood and boyhood readings much more pertinent than his adult ramblings about his lost love.

I enjoyed the book, the romp down memory lane, but wonder about its appeal to other generations. Will it stand the test of time, or was it merely a playful gambit for Eco? My reading was probably quite superficial, but then, so was the adult Yambo. The movie will be a coming-of-age story with events leading up to the moments in the Gorge, followed by young Yambo's grief and guilt, which no doubt led him to grasp everything in his high school years with such passions -- the priests, their teachings, his music, his reading, his "Lila." There was much there to remind me of John Powers' "Last Catholic in AMerica" and "Do Black Patent Leather Shoes REally Reflect Up."

I'm grateful to those who pointed out in their posts the metaphors and literary allusions and to Traude, -- what would we have done without your language background and the explanations about Italian history.

and me still awaiting the book. The comments have been wonderful though and leave me with the impression that it was all A DREAM. . . . Claire

I wonder if Yambo saw the parade of book characters before his death because that youthful time of his past, when he enjoyed reading children's lit. and comic books, was the happiest time of his life - a sunny innocent time before the world of war and fog.

I was thinking, too, of “Signor Pipino, born an old man and died a bambino....born in a cabbage at sixty years of age, with a nice white beard, and over the course of his adventures he grows a little younger each day, till he becomes a boy again, then a nursling, and then is extinguished as he unleashes his first (or last ) scream.” P.99

Yambo, who is dying at about age 60 and has a beard, has reverted back to his childhood in a way until he is extinguished.

Marni

Hi Barbara...thanks so much for your beautiful and encouraging words.

Between you and Traude I feel a lot better. And I agree; as I said, time is PRECIOUS...

I'm sure I'll be bumping into ALL of you again, either in another book discussion or in a language group.

Best wishes to all of you...Alliemae

Will a book stand the test of the time? I think I have already expressed my opinion that the test of the time is not always the test of the books' quality. I am not going to criticize the taste of the public, but times change, and so do the interests of the readers. I am afraid I see that, for instance, Aldous Huxley didn't survive the change of tastes, although he would have amply deserved it. And so many others....

Dear Marni,

You have come upon one of my beleifs about this book: at deaths door Yambo returns to the part of childhood that brought him delight and freedom from the world of Fascism and the demands of his Catholicism. Only later in life did the authors Jack London (Martin Eden) and T.S. Eliot come into his life. The first of the three influences (Catholicism first, Facism second, Comic Books third) was so deep he could not escape the Icons and Pictures of that Faith. Especially when he was at deaths door.

All of you have hit important points but there is one that everyone missed. After the war ,or at the tail end of it, huge numbers of Nazi and Facist supporters fled to Brazil. (Remember the book and movie "The Boys from Brazil"?). Somewhere in his concious Yambo knows this yet his idealized love goes on. Did Lila really die or did her family take on a new identity and name to escape the Nazi Hunters who tried to route them out? Did this escape from reality join with the comic book world to let Lila and the world maintain some semblance of purity, innocence and lightness? But the sun becomes black and it is impossible to maintain the illusions so death is the only option.

Unlike most of you I found the ending totally sad. Yambos hope and illusions died and he with them. Like the story of Queen Loana he felt that his life was all a simple minded story without much meaning. Yet the story taught me much and streched my knowledge of a man in Italy who was sensitive to everything in his world.

How could we ask more of a bok than to create such a wonderful discussion.

Judy

HEGESO and JUDY, your posts have helped me find the words I have struggled to express as we end this extraordinary dicussion. Thank you.

Some of us had remarked on the relative thinness of the plot. But this book is, I believe, essentially a novel of ideas ; the plot could therefore be considered secondary.

The fact is that Eco was born in 1932 and exactly the age of Yambo awakening from his coma. It is likely that Eco experienced first hand at least some of the events he described in the book, and that some of the more intimate (sexual) personal experiences are in fact his own.

One of themes of the book is the existential Pirandellian question of who we are : hence Yambo's frantic search for every scrap of information that would reveal the role he had played and what his life was like before the incident.

Thus the book can be seen as a personal testimony of an era, and as such is an important part not only of Italian history but the history of the world.

As JUDY said, it is quite possible that Lila Saba and her family had to flee the Fascists, leaving behind everything they owned "in the hands of laywers" (!!), and that the father's "financial fraud" was nothing but a subterfuge and in effect a lie. I am sorry we left that aspect unexplored, but there were many others besides.

Now I'd like to express my gratitude, to GINNY especially, and to all who have participated in this lively discussion of a book we will not soon forget.

Many thanks many times over.

Thank you, Traude, and thank you, Ginny, for an extraordinary discussion. The time with you was well spent.

Maryal

Mal--

So sorry to hear you are recovering from a broken femur. It does not sound like a fun place to recover, either, as you have such a sharp mind. I look forward to reading your first post from Pennsylvania that tells us you and your computer are together and doing well.

Kleo

Mal--What a difficult place for you to be trapped. Kleo is right about your sharp mind. We miss you around here and hope that you will soon be settled in a better place. Come back soon.

Maryal

MAL: glad to see your fighting spirit is coming through (as I knew it would). Please give BUBBLE lots of hugs from me, and give yourself another lots. JoanK

Hi, I haven't posted here, but I've been following it avidly from the very first Post. I even had the book out of the Library twice in an effort to just find out what it really was about. It was very hard if you were born at the end of the War because there wasn't that recognition of all the Memoribilia, that feeling of belonging in the Era.

Through the Discussion I changed my mind everytime someone put forward a new theory. I loved that, like going in a dress shop and trying on a new look. Mostly I thought Yambo, probably being very aware of his Fate, was searching for his reason for existing. The mysterious flame of Queen Loana being his eternal life. Last night there was a special on TV about the Tsunami, and for the hundredth time I was drawn to those images like a moth to a flame. Haha.It really struck me that to any God and the Universe we are just SO incredibly insignificant and unimportant, and so disposable.

What fascinated me though was an article in the latest English Woman's Weekly about a lady who lost her memory from Meningitis. She said family and friends desperately tried to jog her memory with photos and anecdotes but "I could remember things I did years ago, but not recent things.It would be so hazy, like swimming underwater; it was all there beneath the surface but I couldn't get to it."

This was the fascinating bit though "I went back to the 80's because that was a time I felt happy and secure and life was beginning for me. Before the Coma I used to listen to a lot of African music and gentle ballads by Enya: suddenly I loved all this energetic rock music such as U2, which was the kind of stuff I used to listen to as a student." Carina says her looks and personality have also altered. "I used to be quite mousy and shy but I woke up a very feisty and confident person." I wondered if Yambo too felt this confusion and wanted to touch base with the real Yambo?

All this made perfect sense at 2:00 am but reading this Post back I don't think I'm getting that light bulb feeling anymore LOL, at least I'm not expressin it very well. The lady's feelings are interesting though "I feel like I've emerged from a chrysalis and that this was the person I was struggling to be all along."

Loved the Discussion! Jan(Aus.)

Wow YES...I wondered if Yambo too felt this confusion and wanted to touch base with the real Yambo that fits why he went through so much memorabilia from his early childhood - before the night at the Gorge - Terrific Jan - thanks for posting your thoughts - Ginny this has been a great discussion - I loved every minute...

Thank's Ginny and Barbara, I was really dazzled by the insight everyone brought to this Discussion. I especially enjoy it when there's so much diversity in the Posts, like a big melting pot of idea's. The total IQ in the Discussion must be off the Richter scale.There's nothing nicer than getting up in the morning Australian time, making coffee and reading all the posts from the night before. The enthusiasm of the Discussion Leaders and the Posters is so infectious. My conclusion had already been put forward, I just wanted to add the bit about the Eng. lady and lay Yambo to rest in my mind. RIP Yambo.

JAN, hello!

You have put the perfect coda on our discussion. Thank you for writing.
Traude

It's voting time between now and Wednesday at Read Around the World. There are eight very interesting international titles. If there's one you want to discuss in October, please come by and make your wishes known.

for my book but hoping to look back at these posts when it comes to enrich the reading experience. I'mlooking forward to it thanks to all of you. They do archive this don't they?. . . . I've learned the hard way not to select STANDARD shipping which is on land and takes four to fourteen days. It's not that much cheaper either. . . shoot!!!

Claire