<abstract>This article is more a compendium of notes I took while reading this book. It includes citations I found interesting or enlightening of particularly well-written. In some cases, I've pointed out which of these applies to which citation. In others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I've failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an interest in this book, then I'm happy for you.</abstract> <h>Notes</h> How do you know you're right? Why do conviction and depth of analysis seem to be inversely proportional? Diotallevi is a Hebrew scholar so he noted that the Hebrew characters in some of the "diabolical" tracts were incorrect or made no sense. But the people who wrote those tracts were absolutely convinced that they did and that they supported their own theories (whatever those may be). Who's right? Is Diotallevi clearly right because he's the scholar in a discipline that's accepted today or is he the deluded one and the misuser of Hebrew is the one who found the deeper truth? When they visit Aglié for the first time, he is rambling along in what must be assumed is an erudite fashion when he mentions that Diotellevi seems to be intrigued by the Hebrew characters on one of the books in his (Aglié's) library. Has Diotallevi found another bastardization of Hebrew? Is Aglié full of shit? Is he, like all the others he derides, simply weaving gossamer towers of reality that don't, in fact, exist? The book makes you realize how many people are misled by conspiracy, but makes you wonder which people those are, actually. Or is everyone misled into thinking that their worldview is coherent? Feedback from reality seems to be the only true arbiter in this case. <ol> Pity suckers deluded by false chains of reasoning Realize that you yourself might also be such a sucker Desperately examine everything you believe for provability, veracity, corroboratability Reassure yourself that all is good Resolve to be vigilant <i>Everyone</i> does this, to one degree or another Given that, is it still possible to disprove others? </ol> Yes. <h>Citations</h> <n>These were transcribed by hand from a paperback. Please excuse transcription errors.</n> <bq caption="Page 81">In those halcyon days I believed that the source of enigma was stupidity. Then the other evening in the periscope I decided that the most terrible enigmas are those that mask themselves as madness. But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.</bq> <bq caption="Page 123--124">'O basta là,' Belbo said. Only another child of Piedmont could have understood the spirit in which this expression of polite amazement was uttered. No equivalent in any other language or dialect (dis donc, are you kidding?) can convey the apathy, the fatalism with which it expresses the firm conviction that the person to whom it is addressed is, irreparably, the product of a bumbling creator.</bq> Kind of disagree here ... "get the <i>f$#@k</i> outta heah" also pretty much nails it. How the Bible came to be: <bq caption="Page 169">Now that you mention it, let's see. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one is free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll see who's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much; Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy; Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's too late. Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty. ...Toi, apocyphe lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère. It all goes to Peter's head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos. Soon the poor man is seeing things: Help, there are locusts all over my bed, make those trumpets stop, where's all this blood coming from? The others say he's drunk, or maybe it's arteriosclerosis. ...Who knows, maybe it really happened that way.</bq> On the nature of conspiracy theorists: <bq caption="Page 219">'Exactly,' Garamond said, missing the reference. 'It's a gold mine, all right. I realized that these people will gobble up anything that's hermetic, as you put it, anything that says the opposite of what they read in their books at school. [...]'</bq> <bq caption="Page 231">From the birth of Project Hermes until that day, I had enjoyed myself heedlessly at the expense of many people. Now, They were preparing to present the bill. I was as much of a bee as the ones we wanted to attract; and, like them, I was being quickly lured to a flower, though I didn't yet know what that flower was.</bq> A meta-conspiracy that leaves your mind in tatters as the onion skins fall away to reveal...nothing but paradox. <bq caption="Page 265 (Causaubon speaking)">My answer: There exists a secret society with branches throughout the world, and its plot is to spread the rumor that a universal plot exists. [...] I'm not joking. Come and read the manuscripts that turn up at Manutius. But if you want a more down-to-earth explanation, it's like the story of the man with a bad stammer who complains that the radio station wouldn't hire him as an announcer because he didn't carry a party card. We always have to blame our failures on somebody else, and dictatorships always need an external enemy to bind their followers together. <b>As the man said, for every complex problem there's a simple solution, and it's wrong.</b> (Emphasis added.)</bq> <bq caption="Page 314 (Belbo speaking)">You were right. Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another. The connection changes the perspective; it leads you to think that every detail of the world, ever voice, every word written or spoken has more than its literal meaning, that it tells us of a Secret. The rule is simple: Suspect, only suspect. You can read subtexts even in a traffic sign that says 'No littering.'</bq> <bq caption="Page 406 (Causabon)">The first duty of a good spy is to denounce as spies those whom he has infiltrated.</bq> On succumbing to adultery: <bq caption="Page 414 (Rodin speaking to a vision of beauty)">Vision, be mine; for just one instant crown with pleasure a life spent in the hard service of a jealous divinity, assuage with one lubricious embrace the eternity of flame to which your sight now plunges me. I beseech you, brush my face with your lips, you Antinea, you Mary Magdalene, you whom I have desired in the presence of saints dazed in ecstasy, whom I have coveted during my hypocritical worship of virginity. O Lady, fair art thou as the sun, white as the moon; lo I deny both God and the saints, and the Roman pontiff himself---no, more, I deny Loyola and the criminal vow that binds me to my Society. A kiss, one kiss, then let me die!</bq> <bq caption="Page 437 (Lia, after hearing of the Plan)">Imagine a Viennese prankster, to amuse his friends, invented the whole business of the id and Oedipus, and made up dreams he had never dreamed and little Hanses he had never met...And what happened? Millions of people were out there, all ready and waiting to become neurotic in earnest. And thousands more ready to make money treating them.</bq> <bq caption="Page 437 (Lia, after hearing of the Plan)">Your plan isn't poetic; it's grotesque. People don't get the idea of going back to burn Troy just because they read Homer. With Homer, the burning of Troy became something that it never was and never will be, and yet the <i>Iliad</i> endures, full of meaning, because it's all clear, limpid. Your Rosicrucian manifestoes are neither clear nor limpid; they're mud, hot air, and promises. This is why so many people have tried to make them come true, each finding in them what he wants to find. In Homer there's no secret, but your plan is full of secrets, full of contradictions. For that reason you could find thousands of insecure people read to identify with it. Throw the whole thing out. Homer wasn't faking, but you three [Causaubon, Belbo and Diotallevi] have been faking. Beware of faking: people will believe you. People believe those who sell lotions that make lost hair grow back. They sense instinctively that the salesman is putting together truths that don't go together, that he's not being logical, that he's not speaking in good faith. But they've been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them incoherence is the closest thing to God. The far-fetched is the closest thing to a miracle.</bq> <bq caption="Page 513">If you feel guilty, you invent a plot, many plots. And to counter them, you have to organize your own plot. But the more you invent enemy plots, to exonerate your lack of understanding, the more you fall in love with them, and you pattern your own on their model. Which is what happened to when the Jesuits and Baconians, Paulicians and neo-Templars each complained of the other's plan. Diotallevi's remark was: 'Of course, you attribute to the others what you're doing yourself, and since what you're doing yourself is hateful, the other become hateful. But since the other, as a rule, would like to do the same hateful thing that you're doing, they collaborate with you, hinting that---yes---what you attribute to them is actually what they have always desired. God blinds those he wishes to destroy; you just have to lend Him a helping hand.'</bq>