"Foucault's Pendulum:" Is it the thinking
man's Da Vinci Code?"
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest.
They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts,
and then each one's free to take it and run with it.
At the end, they'll see who's done the best job.
The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics.
Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists
on that Messiah business too much.
Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy.
Luke is elegant, no denying that.
And John takes the philosophy a little too far.
Actually though the books have an appeal.
They circulate, and when the four
realize what's happening,
it's too late."
Join us today as we examine the
all-consuming nature of obsession and paranoia
in Umberto Eco's novel,
"Foucault's Pendulum."
I'm your host, Bob.
Now please,
sit back and enjoy today's edition of
Lit Tips.
Whether you choose to believe them, give them the benefit of the doubt,
or write them off entirely, there is no denying that we are living in the most skeptical age in history.
The rise of social media has given far reaching
accessibility to ideas and theories that
in previous generations never would have
been seen by more than a handful of individuals.
For better or for worse
the floodgates have been opened for anyone,
anywhere to share their own
interpretation of what's "really" going on.
Whether it be in regards to government
cover-ups, covert military actions
election fraud, unwarranted surveillance,
aliens, lizard people... you get the idea.
Umberto Eco saw the rise of these
armchair experts in the 1980s and in
response he wrote "Foucault's Pendulum."
The work stands as one of the late 20th century's great satires
and one whose cultural relevance has only steadily increased since its publication.
"Foucault's Pendulum" broadly satires the world of extreme skeptics,
but also, more
specifically, that of vanity publishers.
These are publishing houses to which aspiring writers pay to have their work printed,
as opposed to accepting bids as
is the case with mainstream publishers.
Such organizations by design inherently
attract members of fringe communities
including skeptics, types who believe
that their manuscripts contain the "true story"
the public has been waiting to hear.
The novel's narrator is Casaubon, who
at the time he is introduced is a
graduate student working on a thesis
examining the lore of the Knights Templar.
In the course of his research he
meets Jacopo Belbo, an editor
who soon introduces him to his associate, Diotallevi.
The three become fast friends based on
their mutual interests in history and,
more importantly, their shared
understanding of the innate
ridiculousness of many historical theories.
For example, Casaubon studies the Knights Templar from a perspective of cultural and historical interest
and not as a means of uncovering them as the
puppet masters pulling the strings
behind some of history's key events.
The same can't be said of characters like Colonel Ardenti
who submits a
manuscript to Belbo's publishing house.
Ardenti believes that he has cracked an
ancient code that lays out the Knights Templars'
dubious plans to exact full
control over all civilization.
Furthermore, he reveals that the Knights are also the
protectors of the famed Holy Grail which
in actuality is a source of radioactive
energy.
Belbo's employer, Mr. Garamond, hires
Casaubon and Diotallevi to help Belbo
establish a series of occult works that
will attract more writers to the vanity press.
The three tirelessly research
every source they can find that deals
with obscure plots, noting down endless
speculations and hypotheses that draw
all manner of flimsy lines and parallels
between historic events.
Their research, along with the manuscripts of Ardenti
and his peers,
whom Casaubon and the others dub the "Diabolicals,"
eventually inspires them to invent a plot of their own concurrently.
They set out to create
the ultimate "secret society" plot,
one that will out-class and out-crazy any
competing theories.
Just a few examples of the secret societies they draw from in their research are
the Freemasons, the Gnostics, the Cult of Cthulhu the Jesuits, the Rosicrucians,
and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The latter are cited by a character who explains,
"I read about them in a detective story, too, but they may not exist anymore."
"The Plan," as they come to call it, grows and morphs
into a complex web of falsehoods
spanning centuries and continents,
explaining that the Knights Templar
possessed knowledge of how to control
the Earth's telluric currents which in
turn gives them the ability to alter the
planet's weather.
Casaubon and the others quickly become so caught up in their game that they fail to realize the
effect it is having on their own psyches.
They increasingly use the Plan less as an amusement
than as an escape from
their own personal troubles.
Belbo experiences this more strongly than the other two,
becoming completely consumed by the project.
Like the apostles
referenced in the opening quote of this
video, by the time they've all realised
that they've gotten in over their heads
they've already lost any control that
they may have had over the monster that
they have created.
Eco gives Casaubon an opportunity for an out
well before his game goes
completely off the rails.
At a crucial point in the novel, Casaubon's girlfriend,
Lia, reviews the manuscript for the Plan
and immediately realizes how deep into
the game Casaubon has fallen.
She recognizes, as he apparently does not
himself, that by immersing himself deeper
and deeper into the world of speculation
and heresy that at some point Casaubon
has lost sight of the project, that he
has strayed away from the satirical
nature of the Plan's initial design and
gotten dangerously close to joining the
ranks of the skeptics whom he has set out to
mock and ridicule.
She says to him,
"You live on the surface you sometimes seem
profound but it's only because you piece
a lot of surfaces together to create the
impression of depth, solidity.
That solidity would collapse if you try to
stand it up."
Casaubon for a brief period steps
back from the Plan,
but when Diotallevi falls ill, blaming the malady on the
group's discovery of knowledge best left unknown,
he finds himself dragged right
back into it.
Things spiral further of control after they send their
manuscript to a wealthy associate, Aglie.
Aglie is a man deeply immersed in the
study of the occult, and there is no
theory to which he doesn't believe there
is at least some credence.
It is heavily implied that he's involved in a group
that knows considerably more about how
the world runs, but the exact nature of
the group is left unclear.
Aglie isn't informed of the satirical nature of the
document, as Casaubon and the others want
to hear his thoughts on it before
letting him in on the joke.
They're shocked by his response and his further
demands to reveal what else they have been hiding.
Casaubon, Belbo, and Diotallevi now find themselves plagued by
paranoia that they are being watched and
followed everywhere they go.
The game is over and their paranoia is now justified.
Aglie and his aristocratic associates don't know or care
how this group of
publishers found the truth they've sought for so long.
They only care about
getting it from them and then ensuring
they don't breathe a word to anyone else.
"Foucault's Pendulum" raises questions about hidden plots
that most thematically similar works don't go anywhere near.
It is less concerned about
any specific plots themselves
than the allure of hidden plots.
Eco posits that
these theories exist as a way of
explaining mysterious phenomena in an
outlandish way as a coping mechanism for
an individual's inability to understand
them due to lack of intelligence or otherwise.
For instance, it's much easier
to write off, say, a coup in some
far-flung country as just another chess
move made by the shadowy all-powerful
cabal of figures who control the world
from smoke-filled rooms, rather than
putting in the time to research and
familiarize oneself with the infinitely
complex geopolitical factors that would
lead to such an event in the first place
With this in mind it becomes clear that
the underlying themes Eco wishes
to stress in "Foucault's Pendulum" are
obsession and paranoia.
A comparable work, one that might not appear as such upon first glance
is David Fincher's 2007 film "Zodiac."
On the surface, and indeed for the
bulk of its first half, the film plays as
a period piece recreating the unsettling
spree of killings in the 1960s and 70s.
As the film progresses, it takes an
interesting turn that sets it apart from
other works in the serial killer
sub-genre.
The murders stop, the police come to one dead end after another,
and gradually both the killings and the
public's fear of the Zodiac killer fades
into a distant memory.
The protagonist, cartoonist Robert Graysmith, finds
himself increasingly isolated from his
peers as he cannot bring himself to let
the case go.
At the height of the murders,
everyone was just as obsessed as he was
and he was commended for his ability to
draw believable conclusions between the
killings.
But as time passes and the Zodiac is replaced in the media frenzy
by the new issues of the day,
Graysmith can't bring himself to move on. He
devotes his life to identifying the
killer to the severe detriment of both
his professional and personal lives.
Like Casaubon, Graysmith puts himself in
serious danger
by refusing to leave well enough alone.
There comes a point where
he has to ask himself,
"Is this worth it?"
He has no personal stake in the project.
He isn't working to solve the death of a
loved one, and while his pursuit does
have a noble aspect to it, the film
underlines over and over the seeming
futility of his entire project.
To paraphrase hardcore history host Dan
Carlin, the best way to discredit anyone
looking to expose an actual plot is to
plant false leads that will be
latched onto by clearly unstable people.
The argument for whether or not certain events in our world "are" the product of
actual machinations or not is beyond the scope of this video.
The main point to derive from Carlin here is that
it is enough for people to simply
believe in misinformation for it to
become retroactively real in their
minds.
In the novel, Ardenti and his fellow writers
as well as Aglie and his
associates represent exactly these kind of individuals.
Despite coming from
vastly different social backgrounds, they
share a common desire to believe what
they've read about, exhaustively researched,
and developed their entire
personas around is real, and not just a
compendium of lies and
misinterpretations.
They refuse to consider they may have been had by a
centuries-old prank; a proto version of the Plan.
"Foucault's Pendulum" has been dubbed
by some fans as
"the thinking man's Da Vinci Code."
Questioned about this directly, Eco sidestepped commenting on this
distinction and instead offered his
musings on Dan Brown's book:
"I was obliged to read The Da Vinci Code
because everybody was asking me about it.
My answer is that Dan Brown is one of
the characters in my novel "Foucault's Pendulum,"
which is about people who start
believing in occult stuff.
In "Foucault's Pendulum," I wrote the grotesque
representation of these kind of people.
I invented him.
He shares my characters'
fascinations, the world plot of Rosicrucians,
Masons and Jesuits. The
role of the Knights Templar.
The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected.
I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist."
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