Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose"

Read: September 5, 2011

Eco's The Name of the Rose has been on my list for several years, but it was always one of those books I wasn't sure I'd ever read because I found its reputation intimidating. I've found, in this past year of unstructured reading, that I swing from opposites. Sometimes I'll crave nonfiction, sometimes fiction; sometimes I'll want to be challenged, and others I want to veg out with a non-thinking books. Usually the latter impulse results in a popular series (Outlander, The Parasol Protectorate, and Song of Ice and Fire for this past year), so I'll intersperse a book in the series with some of the more lofty books. Picking up The Name of the Rose resulted from a more vicious swing towards the lofty (probably from some deeply unsatisfying popular fiction response). Eco's book took me a bit of reading, but it was well worth the effort.
An often dense read, this intellectual book does not shy away from ecumenical, theological, historical, or philosophical digressions. However, the murder mystery propels the plot forward, as does the real-time narration (Adso narrates the book in seven days, marking chapters according to the daily monastic schedule). The chapter descriptions lend an academic feel to the novel and the decision to break chapters by time of day rather than action not only pulls the reader into the world of the abbey, but also makes the reader's progress easy to note. Eco is quite frankly a genius and I sometimes wished I read the book along with one of the companion guides - at the very least to translate the Latin, Greek, and sometimes even German quotations, but also to explain the historical background. With the caveat that this is not a book to be taken lightly, however, I was absolutely enthralled by it. 
I was amused by all of the references to Sherlock Holmes throughout the book. Brother William of Baskerville, Adso's mentor and fortunately a man and not a hound, is quite obviously a reincarnation of Sherlock himself. He employs the careful deduction and rationality he learned from Francis Bacon in England, and in this he is quite modern. I wondered just how anachronistic he is. In the time of Inquisition, relying on evidence and logical reasoning was not very common, and William's lectures about the devil and his supposed actions seemed highly suspect for a supposedly medieval mind. I read it as a kind of "wish fulfillment" historical fiction - wouldn't it be great if we could introduce a modern mind, trained in logic and rationality, into the world of the Inquisition? Be that as it may, I have no problem with wish fulfillment.
The Sean Connery movie adaptation, which I watched as a celebration for finishing the book, is one of those adaptations that make unexpected changes to the plot line that you were not entirely sure was necessary, but at the same time could understand Hollywood's motivations. Absolutely read the book first.

Claire Dederer's Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses

Read: August 27, 2011

I wish I could remember where I came across this book and which publication recommended it, because it's not the kind of book I usually pick up. I think the closest comparison I can make is to Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, though thankfully it's not nearly as solipsistic.
This memoir looks at a new mother's life in Seattle, struggling against all of the hippie advice/admonitions to new mothers: make your own baby food from organic fruits and vegetables, breast feed for several years, carry your baby with you everywhere you go in one of those slings, and my favorite/most absurd - co-sleeping (babies and toddlers share their parents' bed). Claire tells her story of struggle against this and the concomitant guilt and worries through a series of vignettes and flashbacks to her childhood. When she was young, Claire's mother met and started dating a much younger, very stereotypical Seattle hippie man (whose name I've forgotten). Her parents do not divorce, in part because they worry about how that would affect the childrens' lives, so they maintain this careful balance where the husband and wife remain legally married and share property, etc, but live apart, while the mother lives with her new boyfriend.
Claire's theory about her own life follows something like this: mothers in the 60s and 70s embraced their freedom and relief of duties which flowed from the sexual revolution, and this led to a lot of unstructured, broken homes. Parenting was stress-free because people were the masters of their own destinies, and hovering parents would only create children who needed to make the same fight against "the man," or however you phrase that particular struggle. Then, when those kids grew up, they prioritized all the things they didn't have when they were younger: solid homes, mothers who were invested in their kids happiness, private schools and play groups that ensured the children's success and uniqueness. Ergo, all the crazy parenting rules. It's one of those sociological explanations that can barely be proven, and if it did provide evidence it would necessarily be anecdotal. So, it bothered me somewhat that Dederer presented it as a universally applicable explanation rather than focusing on how it impacted her own life, because in that it was an interesting archnarrative.
Dederer uses a yoga theme to link together the vignettes. She develops serious back pain late in her pregnancy and it ultimately makes breastfeeding impossible. Several of her friends recommend yoga and a lot of the humor in the book comes from Dederer's many attempts to figure it out. She starts by venturing into a new age bookstore with her large stroller and buying a mat and a video. I think trying to learn yoga from a video is almost impossible, as Claire discovered, but it was funny to read about her attempts. Throughout the book, the chapters are each assigned a pose, usually one that Claire learns/struggles with in the chapter, but also one that thematically relates to the chapter subject.
My question when I read memoirs is always, "why does this matter?" There are oodles and oodles of memoirs out on bookshelves right now and they must meet at least one of two criteria to be worthwhile: excellent writing or fascinating subject. Ideally, both. Dederer's book was mildly interesting because I enjoy reading about yoga (I find it somewhat inspirational to go and practice on my own) and it was also mildly interesting to read about these crazy mothering rules in Seattle because it was so foreign. The writing was engaging and humorous. Her characters were fully realized and lovable, which one would hope to be the case because she's writing about her friends and family members. Despite this casual enjoyment, however, I don't think I would recommend it to anybody who didn't express a lot of interest in some of the subjects Dederer talks about. It's one of the many memoirs out there that will be enjoyed by people who are already familiar with the subject matter, but won't reach out to new audiences successfully.