Baudolino

Rating:
Summary: A Medieval Gesta
Review: I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book, I liked wery much the first half, but the second half was somewhat dissapointing. Although the story is medieval, its style, aims are completely different from The name of the rose, its rather a "Gesta", not a crime story. What I really enjoyed in this book is Eco's ability to show the medieval way of thinking, in an extraordinarily interesting, complicated (and somewhat shameful) period of European history. Howewer in the second half of the book the connection with reality is more and more lost, some kind of solution is lacking, and I found the crime story that is also present on the sidelines somehow unnecessary. (This review is based on the Polish edition)

Rating:
Summary: Caught in the middle...
Review: It's hard to express my feelings for this book...in one hand, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but in the other it left me lacking. Let me try to explain.

First, I rated it three stars to represent this indecision that I am experiencing after reading Baudolino.

The book really took me back to my days as a fighting panda, fighting all the other pandas for the juiciest bamboo stalk. I'm sure you all know how that feels -- clawing and biting like there's no tomorrow because, in essence, if you don't reach that branch first, your existence as a Panda truly has no meaning. Now imagine that kind of stress, and multiply it thousandfold. Yes my friends, welcome to the world of the Fighting Panda.

Despite this nostalgic trip that the book took me on, I also wondered why does the book make me wrestle my anaconda? I mean, yes, it is definitely a though-provoking, and awe-inspiring book, but why does it deliver subtle connotations of wrapping my arms around a thick, muscled snake and just taming the beast?

I hope you all understand the quandry this book has left me in...

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful historic fantasy
Review: Rely on Umberto Eco for giving you a perfectly crafted and exquisitely erudite historical novel. You'll find yourself among the scholars in Medieval Paris,among the warriors in Italian Communal wars, and you'll see the first fall of Byzantium. You'll know the relative meaning of reality and truth, you'll find the Holy Grail and go to the quest to Prester John's realm; you'll solve maddening mystery puzzles whit the acumen worthy of Ellery Queen, and look at strange and fantastic peoples and cultures that Umberto Eco depicts in an ironic way that reminds me of the love of paradox of Italo Calvino and the refined accuracy of Jack Vance.You'll enjoy and savour it!

Rating:
Summary: A Liar is Liar is a Liar....
Review: Umberto Ecos „Baudolino" - a picaresque novel of the Middle Ages

In his fourth novel, Umberto Eco, the professor of semiotics from Bologna, has returned into the epoch that has become his second home since his world bestseller "The Name of The Rose": the Middle Ages. This time we find ourselves in the 12th century and the background of the plot is the conflict between Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa and the Upper Italian cities and the third crusade (led by Barbarossa), the plot taking place in Upper Italy as well as in Freising, Paris, Rome, Byzantium and the far and unknown Lands of the East.

Eco himself has called "Baudolino" a picaresque novel, and indeed the eponymous hero (that not accidentally does carry some character traits of Eco's) is a sly and clever liar, who is seduced by an amazing talent of storytelling to decisively influence the course of history - often against his will. The first story he makes up helps the son of a farmer from Alessandria (the city Eco was born in) to get adopted by Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa, and from that story on he achieves a further stroke of genius in nearly every chapter of the book. The cunning Baudolino („It is my pleasure to let things happen and to be the only one who knows that they are of my doing!") is present at every major historical event of his times and leaves his sly imprints on all of them.

A list of miracles of the Middle Ages that can be traced to Baudolino would be too exhaustive, just take for granted that in this novel more than one shot is taken at our knowledge on this era acquired in school, e.g. when Baudolino tells the "truth" about the relics of the Three Wise Magi in Cologne, about the canonization of Charlemagne, about the famous archpoet at the court of Barbarossa and the letter of Presbyter John (equivocally regarded as a forgery by historians), whose legendary empire on the far side of all known regions of the world Baudolino and his fellowship are trying to explore. But the two true treasures of these waxworks are Baudolino's version of the legend of the Holy Grail and - there can't be a novel by Eco without it - a mysterious case of murder. Barbarossa himself being the victim contrary to our recent assumption of him having drowned bathing in the river Saleph on the crusade simply puts the Emperor's crown on top of this perfect mystery.

But the murder mystery remains on the sidelines of the story and we meet the blind wise man Paphnutios, who solves it in the end, only on the 20 final pages of the book. "Baudolino" is rooted in the tradition of the picaresque novel and therefore dedicated to pure storytelling and the desire to tell endless tales. With these Eco keeps the reader entertained for long stretches of the rather voluminous novel, but the descriptions of faraway countries, unknown fairy tale creatures, human and manlike peoples and philosophical disputes on the form of the earth (tabernacle, disc or even sphere?) are too detailed and full of adjectives that left me behind feeling a certain lack of substance. But Eco achieves to countermand these parts with passages entrancing the reader with their subtle humor and the characters which are kept at a distance by Eco's style of storytelling are suddenly dear to you and you feel with them, for example during Baudolino's three unhappy love affairs that make him experience the most serious tragedies in the rare moments of absolute sincerity or at the death of Baudolino's fathers Gagliaudo and Friedrich Barbarossa.

In the end Niketas Choniates, historian and chancellor of the basileus of Byzantium, who is told the whole chaotic story by Baudolino, who saves his life ("I think that when you tell a story you must always have somebody to tell it to, only then can you tell it to yourself."), has such grave doubts in the credibility of Baudolino, that he does not write the story down. Only Eco the author lets himself be unmasked as even less trustworthy by the wise Paphnutios who says: "Sooner or later somebody will tell this story, who is even more of a liar than Baudolino!" With this state of the art trick that is vintage Eco he has once more (like in some of his earlier works) achieved it to keep us completely in the dark about the trustworthiness of his sources.

But as Baudolino himself says: "Yes, I know it is not the truth, but in a great story you can change little truths to make the bigger truth reveal itself." This literary sleight of hand alone, by which the exposure of "Baudolino" as the story of a liar about a liar is put into perspective again, makes this novel that easily outweighs the typical products of the booming mass market of historical novels a pleasure to read.

Rating:
Summary: The cows are coming home
Review: As soon as I had read this book, I felt transposed to Eco's native plain of the river Po, and suddenly I heard a voice in my head rhyming:

When the cows come home,
I come home, too,
To the stable,
Because the house,
Is full of cows,
And the stable is empty.

Rating:
Summary: Not Like Foucalt's Pendulum or the Name of the Rose
Review: After his second novel, the Foucalt's pendulum, Eco said,arrogantly in an interview, that even he writes a trash it will become bestseller. His third novel "the island of the day before" was not as impresseive as the previous two. And Baudilino I think is a failure, though not a trash.
The name of the rose had rich material of Medieval Philosophy. It was a fantastic medieval detective novel disguised in Sharlock Holmes stories. The prohibition of Aristoteles' materialistic writings in those days was fully integrated to the novel and it was one hundred percent pertinent to the story. Foucalt's pendulum was a fantastic novel with generous knowledge about the Templars' Knights with a surprising twist at the end like the name of the rose.
But Baudilino is such a poor novel compared to these. The historical material in the book is not integrated and not really pertinent, most of the time it sticks out and artificial. He tries to connect them but the connection is not genuine. Unlike the first two novels he published, even the third one, it is a slow-paced reading without a thrill. It is a little boring.
Worst of all, there are a few historical mistakes: First I remember, Greek Nikotas (whatever his name was) tells Baudilino about the Chinese silk industry as if it is a miraculuous thing. But Greeks already had the silk industry in those years (if my memory is accurate). The city of Brusa in Byzatium especially was rich of silk industry. Second, in more than three occasions, Eco confuses the Sultanate of Seljuks in Iconium in Antolia with Seleucids which was in Anatolia long time before Seljuks-and had nothing to do with Turks and Islam-. Unfortunately, reading this book was a waste of time for me.

Rating:
Summary: Picaresque novel about the Middle Ages in modern comic style
Review: Maybe you have to be in the right mood to read Baudolino, since it is not a short novel and you must be willing to accept some tall tales. Because Baudolino is a story within a story within a story that has several offshoots and sub-plots to thicken the brew. Very much in the tradition of "Lazarillo de Tormes" or "El Buscón", Spanish novels from the Siglo de Oro that most English-speaking readers are not familiar with, but which Umberto Eco surely is, Baudolino is initally just a very talented smart-aleck trying to trick his way through a trip around the world. Perhaps what makes it so much different from the novels I mention above is that the line between what is imagined or invented and what is real starts to fade more and more as the novel moves across the Old Continent and into lands to the East. You may or may not like Baudolino because of his literary mocking of you, the reader, but he certainly weaves a tale worth reading.


Rating:
Summary: LMAO Funny
Review: Eco is astonishing! I read this in English translation, but his love of language is evident and delightful. His grasp of history is expert; really funny stuff and really sad stuff ... shows how tragedy spawns comedy.
The character Baudolino is endearing as the reader joins him on adventures from medieval trangressions to scientific endevour, to Pliny's book on the Natural World.
A rollicking book, bawdy, humorous, visual and full of enough symbolic stuff to keep any 'seeker of secret knowledge' turning the page.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent fantasy and historical fiction
Review: Umberto Eco is a professor of semiotics and a several-time bestselling author who appeals to me on a number of different levels. His novel Baudolino is at the same time a fantastic historical novel and a philosophical exploration into the nature and experience of historical truth. I won't pretend to be a competent reviewer of this immensely complicated piece of literature; I will stick to my own joyful experience in reading it.

On the surface, the novel is set in medieval Europe and centers on a poor Italian man named Baudolino, who is not yet an adult when the novel begins. The story is told by an unreliable narrator who is clearly concealing what most readers want to count on as facts in a historical account. The story is told in the context of Baudolino recounting his amazing and fantastical life's story to another man, Master Niketas.

Master Niketas, an eastern Greek, is a historian and a skeptic, priding himself on not believing most of the outlandish details of Baudolino's incredible story. We hear the story from Baudolino's mouth, but always in the background is Master Niketas' skeptical eye.

The basic narrative of Baudolino's life is ruled by two constant themes. First, Baudolino is amazingly adept at languages: he need only hear a few sentences of another language and he can soon begin to communicate in it. Second, Baudolino is a most astounding liar, even by his own admission. In fact, the basic tension throughout the book is held up by the fact that Baudolino himself can no longer remember which events actually took place and which he fabricated but then began to believe to have actually happened. He approaches Master Niketas in hopes of having some help in figuring out what actually happened.

Baudolino recounts his adventures that range across the whole of the medieval world. He first comes across the emperor without recognizing him. Baudolino had just been in the midst of an indiscretion with a young lady from the village when the emperor and his men step out of the mists and asks what he is doing in the wood. He promptly fabricates a story of how he was speaking with a saint who appeared to him in the wood. Taking this as a favorable sign, the emperor proceeds to question him about it, and unknowingly, Baudolino invents a false prophecy about the victory of the imperial army over a rebelling city nearby. The emperor immediately takes Baudolino into his service as an advisor, and the story takes off from there.

Baudolino goes on to invent the Holy Grail and a dozen other holy relics along the way, eventually inventing a whole magical kingdom supposedly ruled by the original Magi from the east. The further from his village Baudolino gets, the more outlandish his tale becomes, until (400 pages later) he is captured by cynocephali ("dog-headed" soldiers from India) and escapes by stealing their rocs and flying back to Constantinople at an altitude unattainable to angels. The adventure along the way is the real joy of this novel; the characters he meets, the philosophical discussions along the way, and the adventures in the midst of which he finds himself are a series of wonderful gems. Eco is a superb master of medieval history and his attention to detail and insight into the minds of the time is vivid and sweeping.

But the fascinating part of Baudolino is in the exploration of historical truth. On the surface, it appears that Eco is undermining any reliability of historical fact because of plausible deceptions made by those who would record it. But at a deeper level, he frequently makes known that the basic flow of history cannot have been fabricated because of its sheer inertia. Even lies told for reasons only important at the time lend their own truth to the larger picture. Objective fact and human perception form the basis of the mysteries explored in Baudolino. It is one of the few novels I have read that manages to please on every level: the writing is flawless, the detail exquisite, the plot engaging and fast-paced, the themes involved important, and the characters memorable and engaging. This is a novel that will remain on my shelf to be revisited again.

Rating:
Summary: Vintage Eco...Sometimes too much...sometimes not enough!
Review: First, let me say I enjoyed this book. Anyone interested in the Byzantine era would enjoy some of the details woven through the narrative.
However, as I encountered in Foucault's Pendululm, there were sections that were a bit over the top for me.
Nevertheless, it was a good page turner, and the character of Baudolino was well thought out in my opinion. Just his tale of how he got to be involved in the whole saga was well thought out...the elusive search for Prester John (and the associated twists and turns) was also very well done.