This book is a series of conversations between author and semioticist Umberto Eco and screenwriter and author Jean-Claude Carrière, guided by essayist Jean-Philippe de Tonnac in 2012.
J.-C. C. Objection, Your Honour. I recently read an article in a medical journal saying that Alzheimer’s is occurring younger and younger. Some people are developing it at the age of forty-five.
U. E. OK. In that case I’ll stop learning poems by heart, and start drinking two bottles of whisky a day. Thanks for giving me hope.
Both Eco and Carrière were approaching their eighties at this point, and the book occupies a position somewhere between Grumpy Old Men and Two Old Farts In The Night – but knowingly.
Our uncalled-for longevity mustn’t blind us to the fact that the world of knowledge is in constant flux and that of course we can only have a proper handle on it for a limited period of time.
Both men were in the twilights of immense careers, and acted as nexuses for vast networks of interesting people. They were also both avid book collectors, with personal and peculiar curated libraries of rarities and precious antiquities. They are speaking during one of those periods where the printed book was once again being pronounced dead, and also the period where the internet was becoming irretrievably loud and social media was entrenching itself in our brains. They are aware of being alive in the midst of massive change, and, yes, the Grumpy Old Men are present:
But these days everyone wants to be heard, and inevitably in some cases all that is heard is their stupidity. Let’s just say that the old kind of stupidity didn’t flaunt itself, didn’t make itself known, whereas today it shouts from the rooftops.
There’s a lot in this book that feels like it resonates, on a number of levels. Including this bon mot: “The future is not a career.” Which amuses me perhaps more than it should. But the above quotes mislead. It shows two old men whose minds, largely, remain open — two people, in fact, who work on keeping their minds open, who are determined to not calcify into Grumpy Old Men. Not when there are new ideas to hear and new (old) books to find and knowledge still to gather and process. They are self-reflective, self-aware of their own privileges and blind spots, and still in love with both the chosen subject and with the world.
Of course, a nominal subject of “books” and the conversational prompts by de Tonnac just set the pair off down country tracks and hidden alleys, as you’d expect from the author of Foucault’s Pendulum and Luis Bunuel’s screenwriter. To the point where, eventually, I reacted only with a raised eyebrow as “a certain Madrolle who explored the theology of the railway” was mentioned in passing and made a note to follow up later. (This turns out to be Antoine Madrolle, 1791-1861, and the book in question seems to be The Theology of Railways, Steam and Fire, republished in 2003.) I made a lot of notes. They do not wear their erudition lightly: but, at this stage in their lives, why should they? The conversations range out with incredible breadth — and, after a while, what began as feeling slightly stilted and staged ends up feeling like a real conversation between two immense wunderkammer minds.
…‘nowhere do we find the haven our misfortune longs for’.