On Literature

In this collection of essays and addresses delivered over the course of his illustrious career, Umberto Eco seeks "to understand the chemistry of [his] passion" for the word. Eco's luminous intelligence and encyclopedic knowledge dazzle throughout. And when he reveals his own ambitions and superstitions, his authorial anxieties and fears, one feels like a secret sharer in the garden of literature to which he so often alludes. Illuminating, accessible, stimulating, this collection exhibits Eco's diversity of interests and depth of knowledge in pieces such as these and many more: A Reading of the Paradiso On the Style of The Communist Manifesto Wilde: Paradox and Aphorism A Portrait of the Artist as Bachelor Borges and My Anxiety of Influence On Symbolism On Style The American Myth in Three Anti-American Generations Umberto Eco is a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna. His collections of essays include Kant and the Platypus, Serendipities, Travels in Hyperreality, and How to Travel with a Salmon. He is also the author of the bestselling novels The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, and Baudolino. His most recent novel is The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. He lives in Milan. Translated from the Italian by Martin McLaughlin