On Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose"

It's been far too long since I last wrote and while I can blame some of the delay on the impending energy crisis, the country's self-inflicted war wounds, and whether a head of state's recent public appearances are actually AI (???), there's actually a far more selfish and benign reason: I tried to read a book and it fucking sucked.

Legitimately what is Umberto Eco's deal? In his "Post-Script" to his bestseller "The Name of the Rose," he explained:

"My friends and editors suggested I abbreviate the first hundred pages, which they found very difficult and demanding. Without thinking twice, I refused, because, as I insisted, if somebody wanted to enter the abbey and live there for seven days, he had to accept the abbey’s own pace. If he could not, he would never manage to read the whole book. Therefore those first hundred pages are like a penance or initiation, and if someone does not like them, so much the worse for him. He can stay at the foot of the mountain."

Brother, what?

The most frustrating part about Eco's statement here is that his writing isn't difficult because of any labyrinthine brilliance—it's difficult because it's boring. List after list after list, Eco has his characters (who are legitimately fun and bizarre) look at things and list what they see. Look at this door, isn't it neat, wouldn't you care to see carvings of feet? Wouldn't you know, here's a frieze, a frieze that has... every fucking animal ever conceived and some you haven't like a shark with the body of a lamb and a lion but like it's backwards and here's an evil star exploding over a little hill behind which lurks an inverted zebra and a stripe-swapped tiger clawing at some kinda whale-bird clacking its enormous leathered beak against a feathered snake wriggling its way across the entire frame of the door like can you believe how fucked this door is?

Shut the fuck up this isn't hard to digest it's hard to taste.