[xioxox]

I disagree - I found reading it was like being hit over the head repeatedly by the same point. The point isn't very profound either. It's more like a database dump of what Eco researched over the last few years on conspiracy theories. Huge sections could have been skipped without affecting the plot or anything else. I think he missed the point of writing a novel, which is telling a story. It came across more of an exercise in style, rather than a novel. It's one of the few books where I wish I'd never started reading it. I enjoyed the Name of the Rose, but not the other two books I read of his.

[hobbes]

> Huge sections could have been skipped without affecting the plot or anything else.

The same could be said of Dostoyevsky. Those long, drawn out passages are often there to make a psychological impression upon the reader rather than adding anything to the plot line per se.

[cam_l]

I rather think the point is startlingly profound.

Though at times it did read like a database dump (albeit a fascinating one), the intricacy of the background of theories and history is all in service to the ridiculousness of the plot. Without it, the profound stupidity of the formulation of the meta-conspiracy would not have been believable.

[devindotcom]

I rather agree with you, though I did enjoy the book. But, as I've had occasion to say about other books, I felt I "enjoyed it under false pretences," i.e. that I was enjoying it because I thought these flights of fancy, various subgroups, characters, etc, would be wrapped together tidily like The Name of the Rose (although it too was something of an, admittedly purposeful, anticlimax).