Word: postscript
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...however, is not a pulp novelist but an intellectual by trade. A semiotics expert and James Joyce scholar at the University of Bologna, his Postscript to the Name of the Rose is largely a discussion of the thought he put into the first book...
Rather than offer us further adventures of his protagonists. Brother William of Baskerville and his loyal it confused sidekick Adso of Melk, Eco uses Postscript to show off all the work he did in writing The Name of the Rose. In a volume shorter than even its paltry 84 pages would suggest, Eco chats with us over the meaning of the book's title and more The book's theme raises enough coffee-table questions to run up a sizable bill at the Pamplona: "How much should an author identify with his characters?" "Can an historical novel be truly modern...
...that is, Far as a member of the academic community. Eco must have been taught that the popular appeal of a person's work is irrelevant to its ultimate importance. That's how an Egyptologist can justify his life's effort against that of a scriptwriter for Fridays. In Postscript, Eco tries to tell his colleagues that he hasn't pandered to the public, by offering explanations of why The Name of the Rose was such a hit with unsophisticated readers." Says Professor Eco: "I gave them back their fear and trembling in the face of sex, unknown languages, difficulties...
This sorr of condescending professor talk limits Postscript's appeal, and unfortunately so. Eco rather interesting questions about literature and the craft of writing in general, but it's no fun to watch an author be little must of his audience. If you read The Name of the Rose on your lunch break at the assembly line, you might find its Postscript a had insulting. But no matter, if you go to Harvard and level The Name of the Rose, you'll get a kick out of Postscript...
...majority opinion appropriately quotes an essay written by E.B. White in 1956. Had they read the postscript he attached to the essay in 1962 when it was run again, they might well have understood their folly. Shortly after the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a New York law allowing school prayer, White wrote...