There was a time when I came away from an engagement with Eco feeling refreshed and fortified, grateful for the time I had invested in reading works such as NAME OF THE ROSE and FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM. Then came the journey down the literary vortex of torpor, THE ISLAND OF THE DAY BEFORE and now BAUDOLINO, and all I can say is "Oh how the mighty have fallen!"

I guess, in all fairness, Eco just raised his personal bar a bit too high with FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM. It is that rare commodity in literature, a hybrid combining pace and great story with enough philosophical digression thrown in to lend it heft.

The problem with Eco's last two books can be traced to one serious defect. The narrators in both books are tiresome; but particularly Baudolino, a pompous, unfunny, self-centered bore. I'm sure that as Eco was modelling him, he had in mind some clever, roguish, humorous figure who just happened to be present at some of the more important historical events in late Byzantine history. The problem is, no literary creation this self-inflated can come across as anything other than someone one would prefer not to be around. He's a lousy reconteur. The stories he tells are generally of the shaggy dog variety. The characters he introduces are uninterseting. His little attempts at moralizing are tedious.

At least you readers who decide to buy this book are luckier than I in one respect. You have the opportunity to buy the paperback version, whereas I shelled out the hardcover bucks, as I was so excited by the notion that this was going to be a return to form for former champion Eco. Unfortunately, it's about like watching Tyson fight these days. He "used to be" a contenda. 3 stars only because reading thrird rate Eco is still better than reading first rate John Grisham.

BEK


A Travelogue Through the Middle Ages   January 16, 2003
 58 out of 62 found this review helpful

I adored Eco's THE NAME OF THE ROSE and FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM - and hated THE ISLAND OF THE DAY BEFORE. Umberto Eco's newest novel, BAUDOLINO, lies somewhere in between. In it, Eco returns to familiar territory: the Middle Ages and the theological philosophies that shaped the times. He begins his story during the Fourth Crusade when Constantinople is under attack. A Greek priest Niketas is rescued by a mysterious man named Baudolino who amazingly knows the languages of both attackers and defenders. While the two are in hiding, Baudolino tells Niketas his life story, from his peasant beginnings to his adoption by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick to his quest to discover the kingdom of the legendary priest Prestor John. Baudolino is a self-professed liar, so his story unfolds with the authority of his voice but also with underlying uncertainty. Baudolino believes with passion many of his own lies, lending yet another layer to his tale.

Parts of this novel are brilliant, but Eco does not seem to know what he wants this novel to be. For example, he spends a portion of the book documenting the rise of the Italian city-states, finally focusing on one city and its inhabitants with convincing detail and conflict, only to discard it - just when the situation gets interesting - in favor of a lackluster quest to return the Holy Grail to Prestor John's kingdom. The books covers events that occurred throughout Europe, and somehow (is it his liar's tongue?) Baudolino is always there with his hand stirring up history. Eco devotes huge sections to war, mythological beings, and long treatises on the theological questions of the times. He seems to want to cram everything he knows about the Middle Ages into this novel: myths, misconceptions, historical figures, theological debates, politics. Unfortunately, by not building his story around one or two of these elements, he has ended up with a scattered novel that can be compelling one minute and excruciatingly dull the next. The motivations of the characters are often weak, although sometimes the characters spring up with unexpected vividness, only to fade away once again. I wish Eco had spent more time with the human moments of the Middle Ages to give this era life.

Despite the unmoored aspect to BAUDOLINO, Eco is at his humorous best when inventing, with details that made me laugh, the origin of several Middle Ages "discoveries": the shroud of Turin, the widely circulated letters of Prestor John, the conflicting relics that appeared in various early churches, to name only a few. Several real figures of the times - Zosimos the alchemist, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick and his son, and Niketas himself - have human foibles that make them rise off the page. Baudolino's relationship with both his real and his adoptive fathers are poignant in two separate scenes, and his love for his stepmother is convincingly told.

This is a sinuously told tale with no constant conflict or other driving force, but one which will please readers who love philosophy, intellectual history, and theological debates. I recommend this for patient readers who have a bonafide interest in Eco's work as well as in medieval times. You will be wholly dissatisfied if you are looking for the mystery or conspiracy of Eco's previously successful novels.


FLUID PROSE AND PROVOCATIVE THOUGHTS   October 23, 2002
 47 out of 62 found this review helpful

Renaissance man Umberto Eco continues to enthrall with a return to the era he so masterfully painted in "The Name Of The Rose." An intrepid, nonparallel story teller he again visits the Middle Ages with Baudolino, a marvelous blend of history and imagination.

It is April 1204 and a northern Italian peasant, Baudolino, is in Constantinople, the resplendent capital of the Byzantine Empire. The city staggers under the relentless onslaught of the knights of the Fourth Crusade who pillage and burn. Oblivious to his own safety Baudolino rescues an important personage, a historian from sure death at the hands of the marauding warriors. This is the person to whom Baudolino recounts his life story - a colorful narrative laced with fantasy and adventure.

Although of humble birth, we learn that Baudolino is rich in two areas: the art of inspired prevarication and an aptitude for learning languages. When still a youngster he was adopted by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa who later sent the boy to the university in Paris. Affable and quick, Baudolino soon made friends in France with those who shared his somewhat reckless taste for adventure.

Together a group of them journey to the east and embark upon a search for a mythical priest-king, Prester John. It is believed that Prester John's domain is a fabled land inhabited by eunuchs, unicorns, beautiful maidens, and bizarre beings with misplaced orifices.

As is his wont the unsurpassed Eco weaves his story with ruminations of weighty matters such as theology, politics, government, and history. He does this with fluid prose and provocative thoughts that inevitably draw readers into the author's unique land of enchantment, a magical place that one is reluctant to leave.

- Gail Cooke


A Liar is Liar is a Liar....   December 12, 2001
 46 out of 54 found this review helpful

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.


Earthy and erudite   October 29, 2002
 32 out of 36 found this review helpful

Humorous and obscure, earthy and erudite, Eco's tale of a 12th century Italian peasant whose rise through the court of the Prussian Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, gives him a hand in most of the significant history of the time, delivers the intricate arguments, raucous personalities and mindbending paradoxes readers have come to expect.

The story opens during the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Having saved the historian Niketas, Baudolino proceeds to tell him his story; a grand epic which stars Baudolino as poet, statesman, reluctant soldier, spy, lover, holy man, philosopher, and pilgrim to the mythical realm of Prester John. It encompasses the Crusades, the search for the holy grail, the mysteries of the East, the circular wrangling between pope and potentate, the petty, fluid and bloody rivalries of Italian cities and the state of science at the time.

But there's one caveat. The young Baudolino originally caught his patron's eye because of his two greatest talents - languages and lies. So what to believe?

The choice is yours and the journey is stimulating, although the drug-enhanced Paris student arguments on the great questions of the day begin to read like student arguments of any era, despite the wit. Baudolino is engaging, but as an untrustworthy narrator he maintains a certain distance from the reader. Eco's fans, dictionary in hand, will enjoy the play, but those who got bogged down in "The Name of the Rose" should skip this one.