A novel?

That is the question that the Mite and I were arguing last night. Is the new Eco really a novel? After I finished it I passed it along to him, and now he's finished it, and right there we have some sort of record being set, as it's the first time either of us actually finished any Umberto Eco books aside from the short essay collections. I mean, how many people really did finish NAME OF THE ROSE? 'Fess up, fella. You know you didn't even come close. The difference between you and me (and the Mite) is that we admit our failings; you try to hide them. Feh!

Anyhow, the plot is that our narrator has suffered amnesia. He can remember nothing of his life, but he can remember all the books (and comics and magazines) he's read. So he has to recreate himself, and he does this through rereading. Along the way he paints a picture of WWII Italy that is fascinating, perhaps because it's so new to me. The recreation of his self, however, only comes about through—well, read it and find out for yourself, if you're interested. Do I recommend it? Well, there's where the Mite and I part ways. I do, for the Italian stuff. He doesn't, because he feels the novel ultimately fails as a novel. "I like the fact that the pomo is seamlessly and non-annoyingly a part of it, but it's a book with one character, and one character does not a novel make." Maybe. I might mention it in Caveman, when I get back to it, though. It does have that value.

Speaking of which, I will be starting Caveman (and a summary of MHL going forward, among other things) as soon as my new toy arrives. It still hasn't. I shoulda bought it outright, but oh no, get the employee discount, says I. Bloody cheapskate, says the Mite. Who should know about such things. He has posted a new TWHS episode, by the way (or BLT, as a dyslectic might put it in Craigian terms), for those who wonder if he was able to make it through his weekly permanent depression. The only thing that got him down this week was the thing that got everybody down, the terrorist attacks on London. "The unspeakable affects you in ineffable ways," he says, "if you don't mind the tautology." At which point he does refrains from elucidating what he is incapable of elucidating. Me either. Our London office reported to us by the time I arrived in the office yesterday that my friends over there were caught all over the London map on their various ways to work, only a couple of them actually making it in to Canary Wharf, our London office way the hell east out by Greenwich which looks sort of like a cleaned-up B Begins Gotham. But all were safe and unharmed. We live in a small world now. No matter what happens where, we have people we have to check up on immediately. We were all New Yorkers after 9/11. We were all Londoners after yesterday. We are all world citizens when anything happens to any of us. Not an original thought, but no less a true one.