[gennickO]

This is one of my favorite books because I think of it as a huge riddle.

There are a few things "wrong" about the premise of the novel. Firstly Casaubon writes the whole books (it's obvious that he writes the book not just remembers and/or narrates it to himself) from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. - there's no way anybody could write 600 pages that fast. Most people are impressed by the multitude of references in the book, but forget the fact that Casaubon is -supposedly- remembering it all, somewhere in the first quarter of the book he mentions an obnoxiously long book title in Latin- there's no way anybody could remember that and that's precicely why Eco mentions it. Also things fall into place a bit too perfectly, somebody's always in the right place at the right time not only just in the Plan but in the story itself, people say that Casaubon is not a reliable narrator, I agree, but where does he start being unrelliable? Secret society who break into museum and can afford to sacrifice people? - I'm a bit skeptical about that. I'm not sure if I remember it well, but I think there's also an extra quote in the book- there were 120 quotations on Belbo's list, the book has 120 chapters and one chapter has two quotes at the begining. The question is which of the quotes was not on the list. I took the book back to the library a few days ago, so I can't check to make sure, but I think I'll reread it again sometime soon just to try to figure it out.

I read Six Walks in the Fictional Woods right before I reread Foucault's Pendulum and I really don't think Eco was just sloppy about this kind of things. It amuse me because I've talked to other people who read it and nobody else noticed the inconsitencies, they were all just impressed at how intellectual and philosophical the novel is.