Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of January 5th.
_______________________________________________________________________________
It is the fifth day of the year, leaving 360 days remaining in 2022.
Eco was many other things in his life, including a cultural, political, and social commentator. He was a translator, a medieval scholar, a semiotician (one who studies signs and their meanings), a professor, an author of children's books, and a newspaper columnist.
But he gained worldwide fame in the 1980s for his debut novel, In the Name of the Rose. The plot revolved around a murder in a medieval monestery in 1327.
It was a novel that proved to be difficult to read and interpret, mostly because it was dense with symbolic allusions to literary works, the Bible, and history.
Despite that, the novel was translated widely and sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. It won major literary awards in Italy, France, and the United States. It has been adapted for the theater, the movie and TV screens -- and into video games.
Eco's second novel, Foucault's Pendulum, is similarly dense and complicated, combining speculative fiction, conspiracy theories, and satire.
Eco lived in a Milan apartment and had a vacation house in rural Italy. He split his time -- and his library of some 50,000 books -- between the two residences.
He died in Milan in 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment