This little book should be read by classicists, historians of medieval literature, specialists in Romance language lit, and American lit and Brit Lit; novelists, poets, careful readers, admirers of genius translation. In addition to commentary and self-criticism, it is a handbook on ways to write a solid novel.....
[Please note, the first part of this is about The Name of the Rose....]
To begin with, I had spent a whole summer (after 4 semesters of Italian) reading Il Nome della Rosa in Italian. My dictionary was as fat as the novel. I had a spiral notebook specifically for vocabulary and my own comments and questions. I worked HARD to get through it, but I knew that the fall semester's course on the book would be crowded with full-time job, husband and 3 children, so I had to get through it a first time with no outside pressure.
It was magical, and 6 or 8 months later I persuaded the reading group I was in (4 couples, four faculty at two respected universities and their spouses) to read the English version. One professor of Spanish Literature and I were the only ones who actually loved the book (YES, I'm getting there...) the others poo-poohed it, but my friend and I felt vindicated by John Updike's fulsome full page positive essay on the book, found in the New Yorker of September 198??).
Comes January 2020, and by fortunate chance I find Postscript to The Name of the Rose in the public library. Published ~1983, translated by the pre-eminent translator of the original, William Weaver, this is a series of short, really short, essays and commentary on various aspects of TNOTR, on people's questions to Eco, on how he wrote the book and why he did it that way. (My most prized WORD from the book; TOPOS and its plural TOPOI. Look it up!!)
This little book is sheer poetry as well as sheer genius: a heavenly combination of Eco and Weaver, it reads like poetry. It feels personal: they are speaking to ME! The library copy is currently ragged with pieces of torn paper towel, paper napkin, old bills, marking felicitous, spirit-tingling, brain-warming phrases and even paragraphs, that I don't want to forget.
This book should be read (and will be relished) by classicists, historians of medieval literature, specialists in Romance language lit, and American lit and Brit Lit; novelists, poets, careful readers, admirers of genius translation. In addition to commentary and self-criticism, it is a handbook on ways to write a solid novel..... I'm going to buy a copy to keep, to underline, to read and re-read.