Just plain fun -- Misreadings by Umberto Eco

Hi guys,

I've laughed so hard I'm crying now so I decided to share it with you. In this collection of mock "editorial reviews" Umberto Eco rejects the Bible, Dante, Homer, James Joyce and a number of other great writers. It's hilarious!

I'll post some of it now, and the rest is here:

www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/m...ction.html

The Bible:

I must say that the first few hundred pages of this manuscript really hooked me. Action-packed, they have everything today's reader wants in a good story. Sex (lots of it, including adultery, sodomy, incest), also murder, war, massacres, and so on.

The Sodom and Gomorrah chapter, with the tranvestites putting the make on the angels, is worthy of Rabelais; the Noah stories are pure Jules Verne; the escape from Egypt cries out to be turned into a major motion picture . . . In other words, a real blockbuster, very well structured, with plenty of twists, full of invention, with just the right amount of piety, and never lapsing into tragedy.

But as I kept on reading, I realized that this is actually an anthology, involving several writers, with many--too many--stretches of poetry, and passages that are downright mawkish and boring, and jeremiads that make no sense.

The end result is a monster omnibus. It seems to have something for everybody, but ends up appealing to nobody. And acquiring the rights from all these different authors will mean big headaches, unless the editor takes care of that himself. The editor's name, by the way, doesn't appear anywhere on the manuscript, not even in the table of contents. Is there some reason for keeping his identity a secret?

I'd suggest trying to get the rights only to the first five chapters. We're on sure ground there. Also come up with a better title. How about The Red Sea Desperadoes?

I've read many more excerpts, but unfortunately not in English so I suggest you just get the book and read it all!!

I never realised Eco could write humor??? :clap

what a hoot!... a masterpiece to be sure... as with some movie adaptations, much better than the original!

thanks for the laugh... i needed one about now, having been dealing with beginners all morning...
love and hugs, maia

Regretfully, we are returning your manuscript: Joyce, James, Finnegan's Wake


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Please, tell the office manager to be more careful when he sends books out to be read. I'm the English-language reader, and you've sent me a book written in some other, godforsaken language. I'm returning it under separate cover.

:ha :lol :rofl :hail

That was sweet, thank you!

I do think Eco can be VERY funny, but it's a often very strange sense of humor.