Anyone who reads Interesting Thing of the Day regularly has probably noticed that Umberto Eco is one of my favorite authors. Last night I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Dr. Eco—OK, it was more of a live interview with Michael Krasny, from local NPR affiliate station KQED. Eco talked for about an hour and a half, then answered questions from the audience and signed autographs. I picked up a copy of his latest novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, and also got an autographed copy of Foucault’s Pendulum, one of my favorite novels of all time.
The thing that struck me most about Eco was that he’s not only incredibly smart, he’s really funny. The audience laughed a lot—though admittedly, there were a lot of “in” jokes that only made sense to those with substantial literary chops. And the talk was inspiring, too. As someone who’s immersed in the somewhat tedious work of writing one technical book and article after another, I found it fascinating to hear about his process of constructing novels, which sounds like great fun. In fact, to hear it put the way he described it, it sounds like something I could enjoy.
I’ll add that to my list, right after I get caught up reading all of Eco’s books. So, maybe 2009 or so.