As I re-read key passages from THE MYSTERIOUS FLAME OF
QUEEN LOANA, I’m struck by the bigness and the
boldness of what essentially amounts to a literary
self-portrait.
I’m struck, too, by the somewhat surprising
accessibility of the novel and the emotional core of
the protagonist it so eloquently documents.
(I guess I’m easily frightened by vaguely defined
arenas of academia like “semiotics,” and because
Umberto Eco teaches semiotics, feared the worst: a
nightmare jumble of obscure symbols understandable
only to a select few, anti-social intellectuals
cloistered amidst ancient Latin texts in the
smoke-filled faculty clubs of European universities.)
Surprise! This novel, though certainly not Lit Lite,
proves to be a relatively breezy and thoroughly
engrossing read.
I couldn’t help but compare it, in my annoyingly
English major manner, to two recent and culturally
analogous events:
1) Martin Scorsese’s Bob Dylan bio on PBS
2) The Chuck Close show at the Walker.
The Dylan bio hammered home the point of Dylan’s
continual struggle with self-identity and his endless
efforts to reinvent himself both as a musician and a
public persona (performer), sometimes purposefully
blurring the line between fact and fiction.
Likewise, the Chuck Close show highlighted the
artist’s continual return to earlier images of
himself, and his continued efforts to manipulate and
reassemble those images.
“I cannot let myself go, I want to know who I am. One
thing is certain. The memories that surfaced at the
beginning of what I believe to be my coma are obscure,
foggy, and arranged in patchwork fashion with breaks,
uncertainties, missing pieces… that is how we do it
in normal life, too: we could suppose we have been
deceived by some evil genius, but in order to be able
to move forward we behave as if everything we see is
real.”
p. 419
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
by Umberto Eco
(NOTE: The Artist’s Bookshelf starts Thursday, Oct. 6, at 7 p.m.)
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