<abstract>Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or 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 me 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> As ever with Eco, this is not just a novel, but a meta-book about the making of a book detailing the inner workings and construction of a non-partisan newspaper that will tell the "truth". The newspaper is the brainchild of an eccentric tycoon Commendator Vimercate, but the purpose is that just the idea of the newspaper is to serve as a lever on shadowy figures of power, who will allow him into their inner sanctum in exchange for his shutting it down. In effect, the newspaper will never be and the book documenting its rise as well, but it has to be seen to have real potentiality in order for its effect to be served. Convoluted as ever, Eco's prose and his ability to make this concept believable carry him a long way. The story follows the tales of the various reporters from the various beats, going down the rabbit holes of one conspiracy after another (as usual for Eco, for whom the semiotics of conspiracy was a special passion). Though they should be telling the truth, the various journalists bandy about obviously fabricated stories that they purport get closer to the "truth" than true stories would. The main theory is proposed by Braggadocio (one of many puns) who doggedly pursues a story of Mussolini having survived the second World War and having pulled the levers of power long into the 1970s. As ever, there are enough bits of real history woven in so as to make it nearly impossible to tell what's true and false, as Eco was delighted to have it. See <i>Foucault's Pendulum</i> for an even more extravagant and interwoven and longer treatment of the same idea. In the end, the main character Colonna has a book but no publisher and no interest because the newspaper about which he wrote never existed. Nor could he be sure to be able to use his story without attracting the attention of possibly existing shadowy forces that he fear might try to stop him. He takes his salary and slinks away. <h>Citations</h> <bq caption="Page 8">Losers, like autodidacts, always know much more than winners. If you want to win, you need to know just one thing and not to waste your time on anything else: the pleasures of erudition are reserved for losers. The more a person knows, the more things have gone wrong.</bq> <bq caption="Page 45">“Take the major British or American newspapers. If they report, say, a fire or a car accident, then obviously they can’t indulge in saying what they think. And so they introduce into the piece, in quotation marks, the statements of a witness, a man in the street, someone who represents public opinion. Those statements, once put in quotes, become facts—in other words, it’s a fact that that person expressed that opinion. But it might be assumed that the journalist has only quoted someone who thinks like him. So there will be two conflicting statements to show, as a fact, that there are varying opinions on a particular issue, and the newspaper is taking account of this irrefutable fact. The trick lies in quoting first a trivial opinion and then another opinion that is more respectable, and more closely reflects the journalist’s view. In this way, readers are under the impression that they are being informed about two facts, but they’re persuaded to accept just one view as being more convincing.</bq> <bq caption="Page 181">From time to time I hoped it might have been Boggia, the killer from a hundred years ago, who had materialized at night in Via Bagnera, through a sudden rent in time and space (what did Vonnegut call it? a chrono-synclastic infundibulum),</bq> <bq caption="Page 190">“You’re forgetting, my love, that Italy is slowly turning into one of those havens you want to banish yourself to. If we’ve managed to both accept and forget all those things the BBC has recounted, it means we are getting used to the idea of losing the sense of shame. Didn’t you see that all those interviewed were happily telling us what they’d done and were almost expecting a medal for it? No more Baroque chiaroscuro, everything in broad daylight, as though painted by the impressionists: corruption rife, Mafiosi officially in parliament, tax dodgers in government, and the only ones to end up in prison are Albanian chicken thieves. Decent people will carry on voting for the hoodlums because they won’t believe the BBC, or they don’t watch such programs because they’re glued to trash, perhaps Vimercate’s home shopping channels will end up on early evening television, and if someone important is murdered, he gets a state funeral.</bq> <bq caption="Page 191">All we have to do is wait: once this country of ours has finally joined the Third World, the living will be easy, as if it were all Copacabana, the hottest spot south of Havana.”</bq>