A Befuddling Book

University of Bologna’s Professor Umberto Eco was famously author of best sellers “The Name of the Rose” and “Foucault’s Pendulum,” published in English, respectively, in 1983 and 1989. The drama of the first, for me, was a pull until the last page. On the other hand, the arcane mysteries of semiotics in “Foucault’s Pendulum,” beginning from the 12th century, and the too numerous arcane titles and words, led to my early aborted read about 25 years ago. I felt the call for an uninterrupted lifetime of study to get to Professor Eco’s baseline and to appreciate his humor. The book was thus book-ended to “The Rose” on a shelf and never opened again until this December. This time, for whatever reason, I vowed to actually see it through. I have finished it, but the semiotics and strange wo…