Foucault’s Pendulum

“There is not a morale to the story…although if there had to be, I suppose that sometimes you have to die to prove your point.” – Belbo

This book is definitely not for everyone, the author knows more than anyone has the right to, and he demonstrates it through this “encyclopedic” narrative.

I’ll be the first to admit that the story is ridiculously difficult to follow due to the sheer amount of information presented. There are often lengthy chapters that focus not so much on events, but on the novel conversations of characters to internal reflections that range from idle conversations to exhaustive explanations of people, places, and things. According to some reviews I read, Eco’s preceding novel, The Name of the Rose, read in the same way. I guess that is just what you get when a professor writes a novel. However, I was not thwarted, and did pull together some idea what the book was about.

Basically, the book is about a few guys that work for a small publishing firm that establish what they call “the Plan” that is a fabrication that draws connections between various conspiracy theories that have been passed around through the ages. The Plan is essentially about the still living, but fragmented conspiracy of derivatives of the Templar’s who seek to not only rule the world, but to control it through mythical “telluric” currents.

The entire book is narrated from the perspective of Causaubon, he starts as a student writing his thesis on the Knights Templar. I am not sure if they ever mentioned what kind of degree he was getting. After a stint of teaching in Brazil, it returns to Italy and sets of a kind of “information detective” business where people will ask for information on XYZ and he will find it for them. This leads to his formally working for Garamond Press (as a consultant) where he spends more times with his acquaintances, Jacopo Belbo, and Diotallevi.

Though, Causaubon’s initial job was to gather illustrations for The History of Metals, he ends up getting caught up in the Garamond’s new line of hermetic texts. Basically, the head man, Garamond, decides that the occult market is ripe for the picking, and so begins pulling in SFA’s that are “lovingly” referred to as “diabolical.”

In a type of game, to entertain themselves, Causaubon, Belbo, and Diotallevi decided to feed various aspects of manuscripts from the diabolicals and feed them into the computer and generate random combinations thereof. However, this is just the beginning, more of an inspiration for the “the plan.” Essentially, they string together just about every conspiracy into one giant conspiracy that would reveal the greatest secret of history. It includes everyone from the Templars to the Nazis who are all in search of the “telluric” currents.

Eco does a great job drawing out all the connections using all the traditional tools of the hermetics, such as numerology, symbolism, and so on and so forth. If you did not know any better you might even actually be drawn into the plan, despite the fact that it is established to be fictional. It could easily be used to fool uneducated readers not wholly unlike the Da Vinci Code does. And, in many ways, this is one of the central warnings of the book.

As I am sure many of you know, the whole Da Vinci Code phenomena is quite alarming, as so many people are so easily questioning their faith based on a fictional story presented by an author that really is not very good. Ironically, this faith in fiction is leading to fantastic wealth for the author, Brown. Unfortunately, for the characters within Foucault’s Pendulum were not so lucky. Belbo, in bid for power, told the wrong person about the plan, but told it to them as if it were the truth. He disclosed everything but the very last piece of information. Without it, there would be no way to prove or disprove the reality of the plan. So convincing was he, that he convinced the hermetic that it was in fact true, later resulting in Belbo’s downfall.

The hermetic group formed by the man Belbo told called themselves the, Tres, which was a made up name for the group within the plan. The problem was that when this group tried to fulfill the plan, they ended up torturing and ultimately killing Belbo in efforts to acquire the missing piece of information to find the telluric currents. However, since this information did not exist, there is no way Belbo could have told them even if he wanted to. Diotallevi was “spared” this fate since he died of cancer near the same time. Though, I do not think that is really a better outcome. The end of the book alludes to the fact that Causaubon will likely endure the same fate as Belbo since it is known that he was an associate of Belbo’s and likely knows the information.

I was pretty amused how the book demonstrated many of the central tenets of objectivism in a kind of round about way:

• People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to be true or feat to be true.
• The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.
• Passion rules reason.
• Mind what people do, not only what they say, for their deeds will betray a lie.

Of course there are several other themes that rings true throughout the novel. But, I just found these particularly interesting since I have always had kind of a side-long interest in objectivism. It is too bad that it was not correctly discovered by a man, so that it did not become corrupted by the self serving intentions of Ann. But, I digress…

All things considered, I highly recommend the book. I would have to say that it has claimed the title of my favorite book, at least at this point. Although it is a difficult read, it is a good one. Anyone that has put themselves through the dullard ordeal that is the Da Vinci Code should check out Foucault’s Pendulum to see how a real intellectual does it.

I could go on and on ad nauseam about this title, but in order to take pity on my poor readers, I’m going to call it a day.