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Umberto Eco writes seriously complex books, including the celebrated novels The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. His latest is nonfiction, entitled Confessions of a Young Novelist. The small book is comprised of talks that were delivered as The Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature, at Emory University.
Eco, who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Bologna, writes here in a conversational style with an unexpectedly wry sense of humor. Clearly, Eco is brilliant and intuitive. He also has an amazing memory and is capable of describing his own creative process in rare detail.
In the first essay of the book, Eco explains why he calls himself a young novelist though he was born in 1932: his first novel was published "a mere twenty-eight years ago," and therefore, he considers himself "a very young and certainly promising novelist, who has so far published only five novels and will publish many more in the next fifty years." As I mentioned, the man has a sense of humor.
The lengthiest section is called "Some Remarks on Fictional Characters." In it, Eco explores why certain fictional characters, such as Anna Karenina and Hamlet, seem actually to exist. Such well written characters have the power to emotionally involve us far more than some far-away crisis we read about in the newspaper. "In fact," writes Eco, "I know Leopold Bloom better than I know my own father."
THE PROCESS
During the years he is preparing to write a new novel, Eco does these things:
I collect documents; I visit places and draw maps; I note the layouts of buildings, or perhaps a ship, as in the case of the Island of the Day Before; and I sketch the faces of characters. ... I spend those preparatory years in a sort of enchanged castle - of, if you prefer, in a state of autistic withdrawal. Nobody knows what I am doing, not even the members of my family. I give the impression of doing a lot of different things, but I am always focused on capturing ideas, images, words for my story. If, while writing on the Middle Ages, I see a car passing on the street and am perhaps impressed by its color, I record the experience in my notebook, or simply in my mind, and that color will later play a role in the description of, say, a miniature.
Eco believes all artists impose constraints on themselves, including a painter who chooses oils rather than tempera. Eco, once he has chosen the timing or historical period of a story, finds himself creatively limited in what his characters can do. A timing issue may necessitate a character going through a series of accidents so that he doesn't begin his major adventure prematurely. Such constraints are positive and necessary for creativity.
Are Eco's novels too difficult? Even this book may challenge the reader's vocabulary. Eco explains how he uses what he calls "double coding." Allusions are made that not every reader will get, but that doesn't interfere with the first level of the story. In that way, he writes:
The author establishes a sort of silent complicity with the sophisticated reader. ... I think that double coding is not an aristocratic tic, but a way of showing respect for the intelligence and goodwill of the reader.
Umberto Eco's website features links to interviews and more.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.
