Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Knivesout no more
Umberto Eco's newest novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is his most problematic fiction yet. It's the tale of an amnesiac trying to find the key to his memories of his own life. We're not in Philip K Dick territory here, though. The protagonist, Giambatista Bodoni, an elderly Milanese antiquarian bookseller, known as Yambo, wakes up from a coma induced by some sort of neurological episode to find his autobiographical memory is wiped out, or at least concealed from him. He remembers nearly everything he has ever read, but has no memory of who he is or what he has done, thought and felt in the 6 decades of his life.
The opening chapters are quite gripping, as they portray Yambo re-experiencing the familiar settings of his everyday life as if for the first time. He meets his wife, a childhood friend, his young assistant, his daughters and grandchildren. All these people are strangers to him, although it is obvious that they know the pre-amnesiac Yambo very well. He is a stranger in his own life - a fascinating condition, brilliantly conveyed by Umberto Eco in these chapters. Yambo doesn't remember people, but he does seem to have the same personality and tastes as ever, sitting in his favourite chair in his old manner, savouring his favourite food and drink with the same relish, and leavening his conversation with the old, characteristic literary quotations and references. But he still can't remember who he was.
It is decided that Yambo should go stay in his late grandfather's home in the hills, in a village called Solara. This is a place where Yambo spent much of his boyhood, and perhaps these childhood scenes will jog his memories. In the house in Solara, he discovers a cache of all the books, comics and records that he devoured as a boy, from his earliest days to his teenage years. What follows is a fascinating survey of these works, and how they shaped the young Yambo's perceptions and thoughts. This is the most self-indulgent section of the novel - Yambo's lifetime nicely parallels Eco's own, and there is a sense that the author is wallowing in the memories of his own reading experiences as a young boy. For anyone who has spent much of their life voraciously consuming books, comics and music (me, for instance), it's an absolutely fascinating experience. I haven't read all the same things Yambo/Eco has, but the things I've read have shaped me in a hundred small and essential ways that parallel the experience narrated in this chapter.
All well and good, Yambo now understands himself better. But all this obsessive excavation of his past's relics brings him no closer to reclaiming his own memories. Eco pulls out the stops and throws in a traumatic revelation about a girl Yambo had a hopeless crush on in high school, and another surprsing discovery, to precipitate another brainwave. This time Yambo, presumably in a coma, experiences an obsessive, unstoppable total-recall of his childhood. There's a lot of interesting stuff here, as Yambo recalls his role helping fugitives from Mussolini's fascist regime, his conversations with a local partisan, and more. Finally, he reaches a fugue state where all the figures of his imagination - Dumas' Musketeers, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, and more parade down a magical stairway in a final sequence that winds up the entire story.
It's Eco's oddest novel, even stranger than The Island Of The Day Before. It's his most autobiographical work, for sure, although perhaps it is as much a biography of his generation as it is a slantwise autobiography. This makes it equally self-indulgent (unless you're willing to go along for the ride) and revelatory. Italians of Eco's generation, like their German contemporaries, have to deal with one central fact of their past - the regime that ruled their nation during the Second World War and the years leading up to it. The book is as much an inexorable journey towards coming to terms with Italy's Fascist past as it is a voyage in search of lost memory. Yambo's discovery of his grandfather's anti-Fascist opinions and activities, and his own adventure in this respect feel a bit like wishful thinking, a too-pat way to absolve Yambo and his forebears from any taint of collaboration with the Fascist regime. In a way, that's probably as revealing as anything else in the book.
The apocalyptic ending sequence was a little too much for me. The imagery was inflamed and surreal, but except as a narration of a dying man's final fugue, it didn't really seem to mean much. Then again, there's a certain exhaustion that set in by the time I reached the end of this book, and that section may deserve a re-read.
All in all, this may be Eco's most ambitious and uneven book. Ambitious, because he tackles fundamental questions of identity and memory, as well issues that must be dear to his semiotician's heart - the ways in which our identity and memories are influenced, shaped and peopled by the barrage of popular culture. It's uneven because each of the three - maybe four - distinct sections in the book work on a different level, and are of differing intrinsic interest to the individual reader. Ultimately, it's a challenging, inightful book and one that shows a great deal of bravery. Eco is willing to risk alienating, confusing or occasionally boring us in the pursuit of his theme and his story. I think that his bravery alone deserves applause. It's a good thing that huge chunks of the novel at hand are genuinely gripping and thought-provoking.
I haven't mentioned the illustrations in the book. They are an integral part of the unfolding narrative, and of this book's attraction. I leave you to discover them for yourself, if you do decide to read the book.
The opening chapters are quite gripping, as they portray Yambo re-experiencing the familiar settings of his everyday life as if for the first time. He meets his wife, a childhood friend, his young assistant, his daughters and grandchildren. All these people are strangers to him, although it is obvious that they know the pre-amnesiac Yambo very well. He is a stranger in his own life - a fascinating condition, brilliantly conveyed by Umberto Eco in these chapters. Yambo doesn't remember people, but he does seem to have the same personality and tastes as ever, sitting in his favourite chair in his old manner, savouring his favourite food and drink with the same relish, and leavening his conversation with the old, characteristic literary quotations and references. But he still can't remember who he was.
It is decided that Yambo should go stay in his late grandfather's home in the hills, in a village called Solara. This is a place where Yambo spent much of his boyhood, and perhaps these childhood scenes will jog his memories. In the house in Solara, he discovers a cache of all the books, comics and records that he devoured as a boy, from his earliest days to his teenage years. What follows is a fascinating survey of these works, and how they shaped the young Yambo's perceptions and thoughts. This is the most self-indulgent section of the novel - Yambo's lifetime nicely parallels Eco's own, and there is a sense that the author is wallowing in the memories of his own reading experiences as a young boy. For anyone who has spent much of their life voraciously consuming books, comics and music (me, for instance), it's an absolutely fascinating experience. I haven't read all the same things Yambo/Eco has, but the things I've read have shaped me in a hundred small and essential ways that parallel the experience narrated in this chapter.
All well and good, Yambo now understands himself better. But all this obsessive excavation of his past's relics brings him no closer to reclaiming his own memories. Eco pulls out the stops and throws in a traumatic revelation about a girl Yambo had a hopeless crush on in high school, and another surprsing discovery, to precipitate another brainwave. This time Yambo, presumably in a coma, experiences an obsessive, unstoppable total-recall of his childhood. There's a lot of interesting stuff here, as Yambo recalls his role helping fugitives from Mussolini's fascist regime, his conversations with a local partisan, and more. Finally, he reaches a fugue state where all the figures of his imagination - Dumas' Musketeers, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, and more parade down a magical stairway in a final sequence that winds up the entire story.
It's Eco's oddest novel, even stranger than The Island Of The Day Before. It's his most autobiographical work, for sure, although perhaps it is as much a biography of his generation as it is a slantwise autobiography. This makes it equally self-indulgent (unless you're willing to go along for the ride) and revelatory. Italians of Eco's generation, like their German contemporaries, have to deal with one central fact of their past - the regime that ruled their nation during the Second World War and the years leading up to it. The book is as much an inexorable journey towards coming to terms with Italy's Fascist past as it is a voyage in search of lost memory. Yambo's discovery of his grandfather's anti-Fascist opinions and activities, and his own adventure in this respect feel a bit like wishful thinking, a too-pat way to absolve Yambo and his forebears from any taint of collaboration with the Fascist regime. In a way, that's probably as revealing as anything else in the book.
The apocalyptic ending sequence was a little too much for me. The imagery was inflamed and surreal, but except as a narration of a dying man's final fugue, it didn't really seem to mean much. Then again, there's a certain exhaustion that set in by the time I reached the end of this book, and that section may deserve a re-read.
All in all, this may be Eco's most ambitious and uneven book. Ambitious, because he tackles fundamental questions of identity and memory, as well issues that must be dear to his semiotician's heart - the ways in which our identity and memories are influenced, shaped and peopled by the barrage of popular culture. It's uneven because each of the three - maybe four - distinct sections in the book work on a different level, and are of differing intrinsic interest to the individual reader. Ultimately, it's a challenging, inightful book and one that shows a great deal of bravery. Eco is willing to risk alienating, confusing or occasionally boring us in the pursuit of his theme and his story. I think that his bravery alone deserves applause. It's a good thing that huge chunks of the novel at hand are genuinely gripping and thought-provoking.
I haven't mentioned the illustrations in the book. They are an integral part of the unfolding narrative, and of this book's attraction. I leave you to discover them for yourself, if you do decide to read the book.
