Travels in Hyperreality

by Umberto Eco, William Weaver (Translator), John Radziewicz (Editor)

Overview

“A scintillating collection of writings by one of the most influential thinkers of our times.” —Los Angeles Times

With the same wit, learning, and lively intelligence that delighted readers of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco entertains and intrigues once again, this time on subjects ranging from pop culture to philosophy, from the People's Temple to Thomas Aquinas, from Casablanca to Roland Barthes. Acute, ironic, and often very funny, these timeless essays open up fresh worlds of possibility and new frameworks of existence. A classic work.

“Eco combines scholarship with a love of paradox and a quirky, sometimes outrageous, sense of humor.” —The Atlantic

"Amusing and often brilliant.” —John Updike, The New Yorker

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780156913218
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/27/1990
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	324
Sales rank:	180,229
Product dimensions:	7.98(w) x 5.28(h) x 0.82(d)

About the Author

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was the author of numerous essay collections and seven novels, including The Name of the Rose, The Prague Cemetery, and Inventing the Enemy. He received Italy’s highest literary award, the Premio Strega; was named a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government; and was an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Hometown:

Bologna, Italy

Date of Birth:

January 5, 1932

Date of Death:

February 19, 2016

Place of Birth:

Alessandria, Italy

Education:

Ph.D., University of Turin, 1954

Editorial Reviews

By ``hyperreality'' Eco is alluding to the American ``frantic desire for the almost real,'' the yen for fakes to fill a cultural void. The trenchant title essay analyzes the American psyche as it hops from erotic laser holograms to the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Disneyland. Eco, well known as a novelist (The Name of the Rose, is urbane, detached, elegant and sometimes obscure as an essayist. This uneven collection of newspaper and magazine pieces reflects the Italian scholar's love of the Middle Agesone essay compares American universities to monasteries, another focuses on Thomas Aquinasthough, for the most part, Eco relentlessly analyzes the present. He examines sport as a calculated waste of energy, presents a structuralist critique of Casablanca and offers commentaries on the Red Brigades, credit-card cheats, the religious revival and blue jeans as a latter-day version of knights' armor. (May 22)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This smorgasbord of 26 pieces ultimately focuses on the boundaries of realism as exemplified by the``hyper reality'' of American phenomena like the Madonna Inn, wax museums, San Simeon, theme parks, etc. Though his tone is witty, Eco's purpose remains that of the semiologist. He is concerned about ``the systems of signs that we use to describe the world and tell it to one another,'' and aims both to expose the ``messages'' of political and economic power and of ``the entertainment industry and the revolution industry'' and to show us how to analyze and criticize them. Though these essays are generally entertaining, they lack the originality and punch of Barthes's Mythologies and seem unlikely to find the same popular success as Eco's own The Name of the Rose . Richard Kuczkowski, Dir., Continuing Education, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y.

Library Journal