This interview in the German daily der Spiegel with the famous author of Foucault’s Pendulum has this gem:

Eco: The people from the Louvre approached me and asked whether I’d like to curate an exhibition there, and they asked me to come up with a program of events. Just the idea of working in a museum was appealing to me. I was there alone recently, and I felt like a character in a Dan Brown novel.

The irony of Eco commenting on Dan Brown is too wonderful to miss. The article by the way is interesting throughout and Eco has brilliant things to say on the origin of culture and lists.

Edit: Just for the record, I don’t think I could ever say something nearly as nice about Dan Brown.

Ma ci è o ci fa?Me lo sono chiesta, sinceramente, quando ho letto sull’Espresso di questa settimana l’ultimo articolo di Umberto Eco, Il crocifisso simbolo quasi laico. Avessi avuto la mail di Umberto Eco, gliela avrei inviata immediatamente, la mia risposta. Siccome non ce l’ho, la mail, non mi è possibile reperirla, e postare sul sito dell’Espresso un commento così lungo è stato terribilmente difficoltoso (ci ho provato comunque) pubblico la mia lettera anche qui. Non la leggerà mai, d’accordo. Ma io gliela scrivo lo stesso, e tanti saluti: magari fra i labirinti del web, chissà, ci sarà qualcuno in grado di fargliela pervenire.

Gentile Prof. Eco,

Le scrivo qui perché spero che legga i commenti ai Suoi articoli, non avendo altro modo per farLe pervenire alcune considerazioni su quanto ha scritto.

Sinceramente mi pare molto strano che un semiologo e filosofo della Sua fama non colga alcuni aspetti di tutta questa vicenda che invece a me, che pure filosofa non sono, appaiono invece chiarissimi. Vedo di spiegarmi più nello specifico, e quindi perdoni la lunghezza.

1. Lei scrive: anche eliminando i simboli religiosi dalle scuole, questo non incide sulla vitalità dei sentimenti religiosi.Il problema della esposizione in luogo pubblico, tale è infatti la scuola o l’ufficio, di un simbolo religioso non ha nulla a che fare con la volontà da parte dello Stato di vietare o anche solo disincentivare l’adesione ad una religione. Non è compito dello Stato laico, infatti, né favorire né proibire in alcun modo ai propri cittadini di avere o non avere credenze religiose. Il problema riguarda, semmai, l’equidistanza dello Stato da ogni confessione religiosa. Esponendo in un luogo pubblico e per legge un solo simbolo religioso, lo Stato non può più essere considerato super partes. Ad un semiologo come Lei non può sfuggire l’importanza di un simbolo religioso esposto in luogo pubblico, per decreto o anche per semplice consuetudine: lo spazio pubblico diviene connotato dal simbolo religioso, e tutti coloro che sono cittadini dello Stato, ma non aderiscono a quella confessione religiosa si sentono automaticamente esclusi dallo spazio pubblico: come se esso, in un certo senso, fosse un po’ meno “loro”.
2. Le croci si trovano sui gonfaloni di molte città italiane…in modo tale che è divenuto un segno spogliato di ogni richiamo religioso. Ecco, appunto, la differenza fra la croce che trovo sulla bandiera inglese ed il crocifisso che mi tocca invece vedere pendere sul mio capo nell’aula scolastica sta tutta là: nella bandiera inglese non vi è più, ormai, alcun senso “religioso”, ma solo quello patriottico. Un musulmano nato in Inghilterra, ma anche un inglese purosangue, non riescono più a riconoscere nell’Union Jack un simbolo del cristianesimo. Lo era in origine, ma non lo è più, come per i cristiani non è più simbolo di Cristo la figura del pesce, che pure ai tempi della prima diffusione del cristianesimo lo rappresentava. Viceversa il crocifisso nella forma in cui è esposto in classe è ancora oggi esclusivamente un simbolo religioso. Lei scrive: il crocefisso, salvo quando appare in chiesa, è diventato un simbolo laico e in ogni caso neutro. Mi scusi, ma da quando? A me pare che neutro non sia per nulla. Se io vedo un crocifisso, appeso in un posto qualsiasi, a me viene da pensare alla religione cristiana, non alla cultura europea in senso lato; posso pensare anche a cose che non la cultura europea non c’entrano un beneamato, ma che hanno sempre una connotazione religiosa e cristiana; se vedo la bandiera inglese penso solo all’Inghilterra, e al cristianesimo manco di striscio.
3. Se un monsignore cattolico viene invitato a tenere una conferenza in un ambiente musulmano, accetta di parlare in una sala decorata con versetti del Corano. Be’ anche io, se vengo invitata nell’aula di una scuola cattolica a tenere una conferenza non mi preoccupo se c’è un crocifisso alle pareti (anzi, mi stupirei del contrario). Ma se vado in una scuola pubblica, sì che mi dà fastidio, perché là i padroni sono i cittadini dello Stato Italiano, non gli appartenenti ad una determinata confessione religiosa.
4. Esistono a questo mondo degli usi e costumi, più radicati delle fedi o delle rivolte contro ogni fede, e gli usi e costumi vanno rispettati. Certo, ma sono appunto abitudini, e come tutte le abitudini uno le può tranquillamente conservare a casa propria e negli spazi privati, ma non in quelli pubblici, se nello stesso spazio esse danno fastidio ad altri. Lei, caro prof. Eco, può tranquillamente fumare, a casa sua, se è sua abitudine; ma non lo può fare in uno spazio pubblico, perché darebbe fastidio ad altri. E dal momento che negli spazi pubblici non sono gli usi e i costumi che vanno rispettati, ma solo quanto è previsto dalla Costituzione, e la nostra Costituzione non prevede che vi sia una religione di Stato, l’abitudine di attaccare ai muri il crocifisso la può tenere a casa sua, se Le fa piacere, ma non lo può imporre dove casa sua non è.
5. Per questo una visitatrice atea è tenuta, se visita una chiesa cristiana, a non esibire abiti provocanti, altrimenti si limiti a visitare i musei. Il problema è che in una scuola pubblica, ad esempio, io non sono una visitatrice: ci vado come alunna, o, nel mio caso, come docente; sono tenuta ad andarci per legge, quindi non posso astenermi dall’entrarci anche se il crocifisso mi dà fastidio. Da alunna non posso evitare di frequentarla, da docente nemmeno. Domanda: se a me dà fastidio il crocifisso, che facciamo? Rimango senza istruzione pubblica, e mi devo andare a cercare una scuola privata atea? E da docente? Devo evitare di accettare impieghi nella pubblica amministrazione, e cercare anche lì di essere assunta in una scuola privata non confessionale?
6. La croce è un fatto di antropologia culturale, il suo profilo è radicato nella sensibilità comune. Chi emigra da noi deve anche familiarizzarsi con questi aspetti della sensibilità comune del paese ospite. Io so che nei paesi musulmani non si deve consumare alcol (tranne che in luoghi deputati come gli hotel per europei) e non vado a provocare i locali tracannando whisky davanti a una moschea. Mi scusi, ma io non sono emigrata, sono italiana almeno quanto Lei. Italiana e non credente. Non vivo il mio essere agnostica come una “provocazione” a chi è religioso, ma come una scelta personale e rispettabilissima. Non pretendo che siano chiuse le chiese, non chiedo che siano vietati i simboli religiosi tout court. Pretendo però che ogni volta che entro in un luogo pubblico come la scuola non ci sia un simbolo religioso a ricordarmi, come una specie di anatema, che io sono non credente, perché è come se mi dicesse che non sono poi così “normale” e che, dal momento che non mi riconosco in quel simbolo, non posso neppure essere davvero e compiutamente una cittadina del mio Stato, cioè una buona italiana, una buona europea, o una buona occidentale. Il che, me lo lasci dire, è davvero una enorme cretinata, e mi rifiuto di crederci anche se me lo confermassero intere schiere di filosofi o semiologi.

   Cordiali Saluti, Galatea.
   

Umberto Eco, Zapiski na pudełku od zapałek

Leżący na biurku, przeczytany już dwa tygodnie temu zbiór felietonów Umberto Eco – “Zapiski na pudełku od zapałek” – czeka na swój wpis na blogu  cierpliwie. Zbyt cierpliwie, jak na felietony, które mają przecież poruszać, bawić, kipieć humorem i ironią. Mój brak zapału do pisania o Eco ma swój początek właśnie w niedostatku oczekiwanych od najlżejszej formy publicystycznej cech. Mimo że felietony są napisane sprawnie i z polotem, nie ma w nich siły, która kazałaby im zapisać się na dłużej w pamięci. Po dwóch tygodniach o publicystyce Eco pamiętam jedynie, że jej lektura była  nie gorsza niż kostka czekolady – ale niczym więcej. Nie umywa się Eco do rozpędzonego w szyderstwie Jerzego Pilcha, gdy ten jest w dobrej formie.

Konsekwencja, by wszystkie felietony tytułować a la poradnik (“Jak być Indianinem”, “Jak mówić o zwierzętach”, “Jak rozpoznać film porno” etc.), na początku podoba się, ale pod koniec książki i to już nie zaskakuje, ergo nudzi.

Finalnie, z całej książki najbardziej podobał mi się przewrotny projekt okładki. Biedny Eco.

—

Umberto Eco, Zapiski na pudełku od zapałek (oryg. Il secondo diario minimo)
Przekład Adam Szymanowski
Wyd. Historia i Sztuka, Poznań 2005

This week’s Der Spiegel has an interview with Umberto Eco on the subject of lists. Eco states that lists are stabs at immortality, an attempt to take control of the infinite through categorization:”We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. We like lists because we don’t want to die.”

I’ve always attributed it to something less grandiose, the desire not to squander whatever limited time we have, or to just plain get organized.

Of course there’s always the old saw about cultural insecurity, particularly among Americans. Lists of cultural artifacts, books, paintings, films,  have often been a quick way to stack ourselves up against others — “At least I’ve read Proust. Sniff.” I’ve seen evidence of this;  a few months back, in fact, I was appalled when a social networking friend humorlessly posted the Booker list, and then checked off each one he had read, even adding the number of times read in parentheses. But we’ll leave him to his demons, and as long as one uses them playfully, lists can be good references, to safely shake us out of our habits, show us something new.

A few weeks back though, when jotting down ideas for a list-based project, I was suddenly overtaken by a severe, albeit brief spell of depression, not about mortality as Eco argues, but the recent prevalence of list-making in popular culture.

“The list doesn’t destroy culture; it creates it.” Eco says. “Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists.”

But if the list creates culture, what in fact is behind the creation of the lists?

I began to wonder about the increasing presence of the list, and not just those numbered sets of bullet points, but graphic organizers, Powerpoints, and so many creative works gleefully basing their form on the dumbed down worksheet absurdities of K-12 education. Take Sufjan Stephen’s grandiose plan to record an album for each of the 50 states, or the graphs albeit tongue-in-cheek in the Believer. This reverie then glommed onto NaNoWriMo, Edmo, Drunkmo, all of these attempts to impose creativity through organized allotments of time or space.

I’m not out to bash these things. I’m a participant in this year’s NaNoWriMo and believe me, it’s good to be writing rather than fretting over where my life is going. Besides, when you’re looking to brainstorm fiction ideas, lists are an insanely effective way to tap memories and ideas you had no clue were there.

But I also wonder if this recent surge in list making might not also be the result of our waning ability to organize our own thoughts.

Take research on multitasking, the implications of which are ignored in inverse proportion to the frightening results. According to an August article in Wired, Dr. Clifford Nass found that multitaskers do poorly on cognitive tests, showing an inability to ignore “irrelevant” information.“Whether people with a predisposition to multitask happen to be mentally disorganized, or if multitasking feeds the condition — “that’s the million dollar question.”

To add a ten-dollar question of my own, is this mental disorganization being fed by the computer, and is that in turn stoking our desire for order; is the smog build up in our gray matter behind our recent, and often misguided attempts to assign rank to novels, works of art, or experience itself? As much as I enjoy checking them off, you’ve got to admit that the 1001 Books/Places/Painting/Records to Read/Visit/See/Hear Before You Die series is not the end all and be all of taste.

As Nass states, acts of multitasking involve exploration, the act of gathering up as much information as possible over exploitation, focused concentration on what we’ve gathered. All of these lists seem provide the promise of exploitation, or a false sense of mastery over that information. But more importantly, I think they attract us because we can sense something is wrong. Lists provide a simplified route to exploitation, a cognitive lifeline to those flailing about in a morass of often irrelevant information.

In this interview with Der Spiegel, Umberto Eco talks about an exhibition he’s curating at the Louvre. It’s all about lists, particular their use in art and literature. “How does a person feel when looking at the sky?” says Eco. “He thinks that he doesn’t have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky…”

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.

Sun Tzu, The Art Of War

This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.

Charlie Chaplin

Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.

John F. Kennedy

Concern with pleasing humans causes the loss of all spiritual growth.

Umberto Eco, Baudolino

He called so loud that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded:–Princes, Potentates,
Warriors, the Flower of Heaven–once yours; now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of battle to repose
Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find
To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?

John Milton, Paradise Lost

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.

Walt Disney

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

Mark Twain

Before all else, be armed.

Niccolo Machiavelli

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Isaac Asimov

It’s an old joke. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. One, two, three, four…

Yeah, yeah – it’s stupid. But such old dumb jokes persist. They never go away, probably because they hit on something universal, and in this case on how people actually are clownishly incompetent at saying what they mean. In modern versions you just quote George Bush mangling the language – I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family and that sort of thing. But the joke here is that when people don’t know how to say what they mean, and maybe don’t really even know what they mean, they offer lists. And you laugh at them.

Yes, lists aren’t thought, and the only good variant on the old joke in question comes from that little nasty list-poem from Samuel Hoffenstein – “Your little hands, Your little feet, Your little mouth – Oh, God, how sweet! / Your little nose, Your little ears, Your eyes, that shed Such little tears. / Your little voice, So soft and kind; Your little soul, Your little mind.”

Now THAT is a list. He called the piece “Love Song.”

But let’s say you’re in the City of Love, Paris – which is also the City of Lights, or the City of Endless Gray Rain, as many know – you could visit Room 33 in the Denon Wing of the Louvre, one of those gallery spaces under that odd glass I. M. Pei pyramid that Mitterrand commissioned in the eighties. And there, now running through February 8, 2010, you’ll find an odd exhibition of prints and drawings:

The Louvre invites Umberto Eco: “Mille e tre”

Having extended an invitation to Umberto Eco, who chose to work on a theme described as “The Infinity of Lists,” the Louvre presents an exhibition of ancient and contemporary graphic works, as well as around 20 multidisciplinary events in the auditorium and the rooms of the museum.

The exhibition “Mille e tre” traces the evolution of the concept of a list through history and examines how its meaning changes with the passage of time: from its ancient use in funerary traditions to its present-day use in everyday life, via the creative processes of contemporary artists, the list is a vehicle for cultural codes and the bearer of different messages.

So it seems lists are thought. Umberto Eco convinced Marie-Laure Bernadac, Curator in Charge, Special Advisor on Contemporary Art, Musée du Louvre, of that notion. And the matching book from the exhibition, The Infinity of Lists, will be released on November 17 – so get your pre-order into Amazon. Something is up. And the title of the thing – “Mille e tre” – refers to the list of sweet young innocent things Don Juan boasted he had seduced in Spain. Maybe this is sexy.

Or maybe it isn’t. At the Corner, the group blog from the editors and staff of the conservative National Review, Mike Potemra offers Umberto Eco, the Dennis Miller of Semioticians:

I loved Dennis Miller long, long before he became a right-winger. Back in the day, the rap on him was that his range of cultural references was far too wide – from highbrow to lowbrow and including everything in between – for viewers of Monday Night Football. (I thought it was delightful, and I’d start watching football again if they brought Miller back.) Umberto Eco has a new nonfiction book out called The Infinity of Lists, a very beautifully produced illustrated volume from Rizzoli, and there’s a positively Millerian moment in it. Writes Eco: “Then there is the list that becomes chaotic by excess of ire, hatred, and rancor, accumulating cascades of insults. A typical example is that of [the notorious anti-Semitic writer] Céline, who bursts out in a tide of abuse, not against the Jews for once but against Soviet Russia.”

Of course this guy at the National Review would like that – lists of anti-soviet insults. The National Review was founded by William F. Buckley, after all.

But perhaps Mike Potemra, in the words of George Bush, misunderestimates Umberto Eco.

Well, Eco is a kick:

Umberto Eco (born 5 January 1932) is an Italian medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, literary critic and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa, 1980), an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. His 1988 novel Foucault’s Pendulum has been described as a “thinking person’s Da Vinci Code.”

It seems Eco was voted second in Prospect Magazine’s 2005 global poll of the world’s top one hundred intellectuals, but fell to fourteenth last year. But he’s not exactly a household name. Most people might vaguely know him because of the movie based on his 1980 novel, The Name of the Rose (1986) – Sean Connery as a medieval Sherlock Holmes, who happens to be an Italian monk, with a Scottish accent, and Christian Slater as his young blond Watson, but also a monk, who happens to look like a surfer and sounds like he’s from Santa Monica. That was one odd murder mystery. Eco co-wrote the screenplay and must have been amused. As for Foucault’s Pendulum, many read that two or three times and still don’t know quite what was going on. It made your head spin, but then it also made you feel superbly intellectual and historically deep, and all worldly and well-informed, and smug. And pretending to read it at Starbucks was a foolproof way to pick up a certain kind of young woman, the quiet somewhat mousey kind, with smoldering repressed passions, of the forbidden sort. Eco was useful.

But what’s with this roomful of lists in Paris?

Actually, in Der Spiegel, Susanne Beyer and Lothar Gorris sit down with Eco and ask him about that – he is considered one of the world’s great scholars, and the Louvre one of the world’s most important museums, and all this sounds a tad commonplace. What’s up with that?

Here’s the odd answer:

The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order – not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists – the shopping list, the will, the menu – that are also cultural achievements in their own right.

Okay then, the old bad joke was based on a faulty premise. Making lists is how we make sense of the world, the essence of our culture and thought, how we face the infinite meaninglessness of it all. You can pull a Pascal and seek God, or look for your one true love, your soul mate, or live a Mother Teresa life of service – or you can make lists.

And perhaps the cultured person should be understood as a sort of custodian looking to impose order on places where chaos prevails, with more than lists of things, but when asked that, Eco offers this:

The list doesn’t destroy culture; it creates it. Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists. In fact, there is a dizzying array: lists of saints, armies and medicinal plants, or of treasures and book titles. Think of the nature collections of the 16th century. My novels, by the way, are full of lists.

Beyer and Gorris do point out that accountants do make lists, not just Homer, James Joyce and Thomas Mann, and accountants lists are just lists, after all.

But Eco parries that:

Yes. But they, of course, aren’t accountants. In “Ulysses,” James Joyce describes how his protagonist, Leopold Bloom, opens his drawers and all the things he finds in them. I see this as a literary list, and it says a lot about Bloom. Or take Homer, for example. In the “Iliad,” he tries to convey an impression of the size of the Greek army. At first he uses similes: “As when some great forest fire is raging upon a mountain top and its light is seen afar, even so, as they marched, the gleam of their armor flashed up into the firmament of heaven.” But he isn’t satisfied. He cannot find the right metaphor, and so he begs the muses to help him. Then he hits upon the idea of naming many, many generals and their ships.

Beyer and Gorris of course speak for all of us. That stuff is boring, and where Homer strays from anything like poetry. And those of us who are former English teachers, who taught Homer, know that’s where the kids roll their eyes. Homer may have asked the muses for help, but the muses gave him bad advice. The lists are just boring.

But Eco says we underestimate the power of lists at our peril:

At first, we think that a list is primitive and typical of very early cultures, which had no exact concept of the universe and were therefore limited to listing the characteristics they could name. But, in cultural history, the list has prevailed over and over again. It is by no means merely an expression of primitive cultures. A very clear image of the universe existed in the Middle Ages, and there were lists. A new worldview based on astronomy predominated in the Renaissance and the Baroque era. And there were lists. And the list is certainly prevalent in the postmodern age. It has an irresistible magic.

And he claims this magic runs deep:

We have always been fascinated by infinite space, by the endless stars and by galaxies upon galaxies. How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn’t have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see. Lovers are in the same position. They experience a deficiency of language, a lack of words to express their feelings. But do lovers ever stop trying to do so? They create lists: Your eyes are so beautiful, and so is your mouth, and your collarbone … One could go into great detail.

And it’s not just our deficiency of language versus the cold, indifferent infinitely immense universe that is the problem here, for which lists are a partial solution. Nope, Eco says we make lists because we’re in some sort of existential battle:

We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It’s a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don’t want to die.

Okay. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. One, two, three, four… Don’t stop me. I don’t want to die. If I stop I’ll disappear.

Well, that seems to be the idea, although Beyer and Gorris try to trap him:

In your exhibition at the Louvre, you will also be showing works drawn from the visual arts, such as still lifes. But these paintings have frames, or limits, and they can’t depict more than they happen to depict.

Okay, Umberto, what do you say to that?

But he has an answer:

On the contrary, the reason we love them so much is that we believe that we are able to see more in them. A person contemplating a painting feels a need to open the frame and see what things look like to the left and to the right of the painting. This sort of painting is truly like a list, a cutout of infinity.

The man can turn a phrase, but he may be onto something there. Everything we are, the life we lead from first self-awareness to death, may be like that painting, just be a cutout of infinity, a snapshot that frames some things and only implies others, or something like that. Far out.

But Eco doesn’t go there. He was asked to mount an exhibition, and lists occurred to him:

Why am I so interested in the subject? I can’t really say. I like lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia. People have their preferences.

And he doesn’t like talking about his preferences, or about himself, as no one can really describe anything:

Look, ever since the days of Aristotle, we have been trying to define things based on their essence. The definition of man? An animal that acts in a deliberate way. Now, it took naturalists 80 years to come up with a definition of a platypus. They found it endlessly difficult to describe the essence of this animal. It lives underwater and on land; it lays eggs, and yet it’s a mammal. So what did that definition look like? It was a list, a list of characteristics.

Think of a tiger, which science describes as a predator. How would a mother describe a tiger to her child? Probably by using a list of characteristics: The tiger is big, a cat, yellow, striped and strong. Only a chemist would refer to water as H2O. But I say that it’s liquid and transparent, that we drink it and that we can wash ourselves with it.

Now you can finally see what I’m talking about. The list is the mark of a highly advanced, cultivated society because a list allows us to question the essential definitions. The essential definition is primitive compared with the list.

Yeah, but if lists are so wonderful, offering insight and fixing permanence, Beyer and Gorris point out that would make the Internet, and the lists that the search engine Google creates, prefect for him.

And Eco offers this:

Yes, in the case of Google, both things do converge. Google makes a list, but the minute I look at my Google-generated list, it has already changed. These lists can be dangerous – not for old people like me, who have acquired their knowledge in another way, but for young people, for whom Google is a tragedy. Schools ought to teach the high art of how to be discriminating. …

Education should return to the way it was in the workshops of the Renaissance. There, the masters may not necessarily have been able to explain to their students why a painting was good in theoretical terms, but they did so in more practical ways. Look, this is what your finger can look like, and this is what it has to look like. Look, this is a good mixing of colors. The same approach should be used in school when dealing with the Internet. The teacher should say: “Choose any old subject, whether it be German history or the life of ants. Search 25 different Web pages and, by comparing them, try to figure out which one has good information.” If 10 pages describe the same thing, it can be a sign that the information printed there is correct. But it can also be a sign that some sites merely copied the others’ mistakes.

Hey, maybe that’s what’s happening right here, on the screen in front of your eyes, right now, as you read these words. Think about it.

But Umberto Eco clearly has no use for the medium here, the internet, or for bloggers who use it to engage in the issues of the day, or in matters of art and the philosophy of art and the nature of awareness and cognition.

But on the net, in The Art Newspaper, you will find this – what Jean-Marc Terrasse, auditorium manager of the Louvre, who is in charge of Eco’s project, thinks of what Eco is up to. Terrasse calls him a modern-day Diderot. You know Diderot, the man who came up with the concept of the encyclopedia, and produced the first one. Wikipedia has no Diderot.

But we learn Eco really likes the Louvre:

Eco’s personal relationship with the Louvre and with Paris is a very strong one: since his days as a university student in the 1960s – the decade he spent in the French capital, where he has a house – he has been a frequent visitor there. “Eco loves the museum and what it evokes,” says Terrasse. “In the French traditional and literary subconscious since the 19th century, museums have been a place for adventure and a popular setting for crime novels. His knowledge of the diversity of the paintings in the Louvre is that of a great scholar, an expert. Indeed, for Eco, a museum is a place of selection that guarantees that what is exhibitioned is worthy of artistic consideration. A kind of objet trouvé, like Duchamp’s urinal.”

Wait – the roomful of lists is like Duchamp’s urinal from 1917, that Found Object kind of art? Look at it – it is what it is. But if you look into the matter, it seems he titled it “Fountain” and signed it “R. Mutt.”

From Beatrice Woods’ program notes from the 1917 exhibition:

Whether Mr. Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.

And Duchamp described his intent with the piece was “to shift the focus of art from physical craft to intellectual interpretation.” Maybe that’s the problem here. That’s just a urinal, and lists are just lists.

But not to worry – on Tuesday, December 1, there will be the “Listing Ceremony” under the giant glass pyramid in the Louvre, which is celebrating its twentieth anniversary of being totally out of place:

It promises to be an elaborate spectacle at which Eco will read some of his own work as well as texts by Homer, Victor Hugo, James Joyce, Georges Perec, Gertrude Stein, Christophe Tarkos and Olivier Cadiot, among others.

Ah, Gertrude Stein, that gal born in Pittsburgh and raised out here in Oakland. Maybe echo will read her most famous words – “A Rose is a rose is a rose.” That’s the ultimate anti-list. It’s just the name of the rose. There will be a hundred layers of irony as Umberto Eco reads those words.

After all, sometimes a rose is just a rose, and list just a list. And a kiss is just a kiss, as time goes by – and we’ll always have Paris.

The Charter for Compassion “a single document crafted by people from all walks of life, nationalities, beliefs and backgrounds with the intent to unify, inspire and bring compassion back into the hearts of society” is hierdie week bekendgestel deur Karen Armstrong. Dit klink so eenvoudig, maar tog is dit nie. Nietemin, iets om na te streef. Soms dink ek mense plaas te veel fokus op dit wat hulle kan doen om ‘n verskil in die wêreld te maak en vergeet van wat om nie te doen nie.

Daar is ook ‘n uitstekende onderhoud met Karen Armstrong op TED se webwerf:

Human beings are chronically predisposed towards idolatry. We constantly give absolute value to purely temporal, limited realities, such as a god, a nation, or an ideology. When something inherently finite is invested with ultimate value, its devotees feel obliged to eliminate any rival claimant because there can only be one absolute. We find this kind of idolatry in the Book of Deuteronomy in the Bible; but it also characterised some of the worst political and moral disasters of the twentieth century.

***

‘n Nuwe dinosaurus is in die Vrystaat ontdek. Aardonyx celestae was ‘n herbivoor en is 195 miljoen jaar oud.

***

‘n Haai in Auckland, Nieu-Seeland, se akwarium het geboorte gegee deur ‘n bytwond.

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Umberto Eco, skrywer van The Name of the Rose en Foucault’s Pendulum met 50,000 boeke in sy besit, in ‘n onderhoud met Der Spiegel: “We like lists because we don’t want to die.” En: “If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you’re an idiot.” Hy verduidelik ook hoekom Google sleg is vir jong mense.

***

Die hoofstad van motorbedryf in Amerika, Detroit, het beter dae geken. Maar met die ineenstorting van die industrie, kan ‘n mens huise in Detroit vir niks koop nie. Die probleem is egter dat niemand wil nie want daar is nie meer genoeg werk vir al die mense nie. Die stad kan nie die uitgebreide infrastruktuur bekostig nie. Dus, maak die stad kleiner en verander woonbuurte in plase. As die visie realiseer sal Detroit ‘n stadskern hê, omring deur groen gebiede met “urban villages”.

***

Japan beplan om teen 2030 ‘n ruimtestasie te vestig wat sonenergie na die aarde sal kanaliseer deur middel van mikrogolwe of laser.

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Denemarke beplan om “anti-sosiale” immigrante wat nie kan of wil integreer in die Deense kultuur nie, sowat R150,000.00 te gee om terug te keer na hul land van herkoms, nadat hulle belowe het om nie weer Denemarke toe te kom nie.

***

Navorsing dui daarop dat babas se taalvermoëens al in die baarmoeder begin ontwikkel. G’n wonder hulle goegoe en baabaa nadat hulle gebore is nie, want dit is hoe mense met hulle praat as hulle nog in die ma se maag is.

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‘n Moontlike model vir koerante wat sukkel om te oorleef in die era van gratis nuus: laat die vakunies betaal.

Today, we’ll be gushing over Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum!

Personally, I believe we don’t really have to gush that much, because Foucault’s Pendulum is something every sceptic should read, and love, and then read again, and are there seriously people who haven’t yet?

No, I didn’t think so.

Anyway, FTW!contents include: historical geekery, conspiracy theories, people making up conspiracy theories for moniez having the theories backfire in their general direction, metatextuality, pro-scepticism, rationalism, good writing, and even an interesting plot, and much much moar.

There are also  Eco’s articles, my personal favourites being: the one about fascism (which I like to re-read from time to time) here, and the one about culture, diversity, and stuff here.

Hoy Viernes 13 de Octubre sale a la venta en España el nuevo libro de Umberto Eco “El Vértigo de las listas” (Lumen)

¿Por qué obsesionan tanto al ser humano las listas o enumeraciones? Esta es la pregunta que trata de contestar Umberto Eco en El vértigo de las listas (Lumen). El intelectual y escritor italiano ha realizado una exhaustiva investigación sobre este tema a través de su registro en la literatura y el arte. Desde Homero hasta Thomas Pynchon pasando por James Joyce, y desde la reproducción del Escudo de Aquiles, de finales del siglo V antes de Cristo, hasta obras de Andy Warhol, pasando por Gustav Klimt y Paul Rubens. Un asunto, el de las listas, que suele gustar a casi todas las personas.

El secreto de esta obsesión de Umberto Eco lo desvela él mismo en la primera página del volumen, en el prólogo: “El que lea mis novelas verá que en ellas abundan las listas, y los orígenes de esta predilección son dos, ambos se remontan a mis estudios juveniles: algunos textos medievales y muchos textos de Joyce (no hay que olvidar la influencia de los ritos y textos medievales en la formación del joven Joyce). Ahora bien, entre las letanías y la lista de cosas que contiene el cajón de la cocina de Leopold Bloom en el penúltimo capítulo del Ulises transcurren muchos siglos, como transcurren también entre las listas medievales y el modelo de lista por excelencia, es decir, el catálogo de las naves de la Iliada de Homero, de la que parte este libro”.

Después de esta revelación, el autor de libros como El nombre de la rosa o El péndulo de Foucault despliega su sabiduría a través de 21 capítulos. Entre ellos La lista o el elenco (cuyo extracto es el que avanza hoy Babelia en la edición digital de este periódico), La lista visual, Listas de lugares, Colecciones y tesoros, La enumeración caótica o Intercambio entre lista práctica y lista poética.

Este libro reproduce el mismo esquema de otros dos suyos: Historia de la belleza e Historia de la fealdad (ambos en Lumen). Es decir, una reflexión de Eco sobre el tema abordado y abundantes ejemplos de textos literarios, todo ello acompañado de reproducciones de cuadros, fotografías o esculturas, lo cual permite una doble lectura sobre el asunto. Un capítulo inquietante es el titulado Lo indecible dedicado a creencias de dioses, ángeles y demonios y los mil nombres que reciben. Mientras el primer nombre de ángeles es Abdizuel y el último es Zymeloz; el de los demonios empieza con Aamon y termina con Zepar. Porque ni dioses ni demonios se han salvado de las enumeraciones y pronunciaciones en alto o en susurro.

La lista o el elenco (PDF) – Un fragmento de “El Vértigo de las listas” en El País.com.
Ficha del Libro│Editorial Lumen.

Umberto Eco: Education should return to the way it was in the workshops of the Renaissance. There, the masters may not necessarily have been able to explain to their students why a painting was good in theoretical terms, but they did so in more practical ways. Look, this is what your finger can look like, and this is what it has to look like. Look, this is a good mixing of colors. The same approach should be used in school when dealing with the Internet. The teacher should say: “Choose any old subject, whether it be German history or the life of ants. Search 25 different Web pages and, by comparing them, try to figure out which one has good information.” If 10 pages describe the same thing, it can be a sign that the information printed there is correct. But it can also be a sign that some sites merely copied the others’ mistakes.

SPIEGEL: You yourself are more likely to work with books, and you have a library of 30,000 volumes. It probably doesn’t work without a list or catalogue.

Eco: I’m afraid that, by now, it might actually be 50,000 books. When my secretary wanted to catalogue them, I asked her not to. My interests change constantly, and so does my library. By the way, if you constantly change your interests, your library will constantly be saying something different about you. Besides, even without a catalogue, I’m forced to remember my books. I have a hallway for literature that’s 70 meters long. I walk through it several times a day, and I feel good when I do. Culture isn’t knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in two minutes. Of course, nowadays I can find this kind of information on the Internet in no time. But, as I said, you never know with the Internet.

SPIEGEL: You include a nice list by the French philosopher Roland Barthes in your new book, “The Vertigo of Lists.” He lists the things he loves and the things he doesn’t love. He loves salad, cinnamon, cheese and spices. He doesn’t love bikers, women in long pants, geraniums, strawberries and the harpsichord. What about you?

Eco: I would be a fool to answer that; it would mean pinning myself down. I was fascinated with Stendhal at 13 and with Thomas Mann at 15 and, at 16, I loved Chopin. Then I spent my life getting to know the rest. Right now, Chopin is at the very top once again. If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you’re an idiot.

A entrevista de Umberto Eco ao Spiegel pode ser lida na íntegra aqui.

Montanhas da mente, de Robert Macfarlane (R$44,90, Saraiva)

No teu deserto, de Miguel Sousa Tavares (R$30, Saraiva)

Seis passeios pelos bosques da ficção, de Umberto Eco (R$36, Saraiva)

_______________

Veja também as pilhas de livros dos meses anteriores.

E já que está por aí, conheça também meus hábitos de leitor.

Fui até a Livraria Cultura e peguei uma revista deles. Há o texto de Umberto Eco onde fala sobre, não só a falta de escrita, mas a escrita bonita.

O autor não questiona que as pessoas escrevam errado, mas que as pessoas não escrevem mais. Na era da informação, para que se preocupar em escrever certo se o Word corrige? (usei isso de argumento na cadeira de Metodologia do Ensino Superior no Doutorado, semestre passado, quando um colega argumentou que sua filha “não precisava decorar a tabuada já que há calculadoras e computadores por toda parte”. Sim, isso realmente aconteceu.).

O argumento de Eco é extremamente importante, dizendo que a caligrafia não é algo ultrapassado, mas deveria estar mais presente. Cita um artigo que menciona que a escrita a mão nos obriga a compor a frase mentalmente antes de escrevê-la.

Realmente bastante interessante. O texto pode ser lido na íntegra aqui.

Umberto Eco:

The list doesn’t destroy culture; it creates it. Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists. In fact, there is a dizzying array: lists of saints, armies and medicinal plants, or of treasures and book titles. Think of the nature collections of the 16th century. My novels, by the way, are full of lists.

Our fridge door is mapped with lots of lists. Thus I travel through my day: from one point of departure to another, ordering organic bread at the organic grocer’s, sweeping the laminated floors around the flat, sending off forms to dark, tall office buildings, phoning this client prior to that client, drafting lists of objectives for classes, until I reach that vaunted sense of completion.

I can see my stubbled face in the blank fridge door as I stick on new post-it note after new post-it note. Each day has its own itinery until no more days are left to fill with arrivals and departures. That will be the day destination becomes destiny and completion fulfilment.

O apagão da noite de terça-feira, 10/11, que deixou 18 Estados no escuro, me fez recordar Jane Jacobs, crítica do planejamento urbano, falecida em 2006 aos 89 anos. Em seu último livro (Dark Age Ahead, Random House 2004) ela disse que a internet dava um falso senso de segurança sobre a permanência da cultura. Jacobs acreditava que os milhões de detalhes de uma cultura viva e complexa não são transmitidos pela escrita ou qualquer outra representação gráfica, mas sim pela transmissão oral e pelo exemplo dos mestres de ofícios.

E o escritor italiano Umberto Eco sempre torceu o nariz para o armazenamento (storage) de informação em meios eletrônicos, mídias digitais, suportes como CD-ROM ou DVDs. Ele disse: “O formato do disquete de computador já desapareceu. Não durou 30 anos. Se tenho de deixar uma mensagem à posteridade, o farei em forma de livro e não em suporte eletrônico”.

A regra preconizada por Jane Jacobs é cada vez menos praticada e no cenário da comunicação digital do século 21 os sistemas de informação fornecem exatamente essa ilusão de segurança e onisciência. Pouco mais de duas horas de apagão serviram como demonstração de nossa fragilidade: celulares sem conexão, estações rádio base colapsando, degradação de ping para vários endereços na rede, até mesmo o Twitter começando a dar sinais de esgotamento à medida que baterias de celulares e notebooks iam descarregando. Sem nobreaks, sem becapes automáticos (nessas horas quem usa Mac e TimeMachine respira aliviado) muita gente que estava trabalhando em seus computadores deve ter perdido dados preciosos.

O cenário da noite de ontem serve para introduzir o tema do armazenamento e preservação da informação em midias ópticas. Numa época em que arquivos digitais são gradativamente guardados na nuvem virtual do Google, ZoHo, DropBox, File Dropper e outros ou então em HDs domésticos com grandes capacidades de estocagem, a TDK recentemente divulgou uma impressionante conquista técnica: um disco óptico de 10 camadas com capacidade para estocar 320 GB de informação utilizando a tecnologia Blu-ray. Para se ter uma idéia do que isso representa, os atuais discos Blu-ray tem uma capacidade de estocagem de 25 gigabytes por camada.

É interessante, mas chega atrasado porque o arquivamento óptico está com os dias contados. Veja as razões:

Capacidade: as melhores respostas competitivas das mídias ópticas aconteceram com o CD-ROM, no início dos anos 90, e com o DVD no começo da década de 2000. Mas o disco Blu-ray de multi camadas nunca deixará de ser apenas uma fração da capacidade de armazenagem dos discos rígidos atuais.

Desempenho: a taxa de transferência de dados do Blu-ray (24X) é a metade da oferecida pelos HDs atuais. E a medida que o espaço de arquivo aumenta os discos rígidos também estão ficando cada vez mais rápidos. Já o Blu-ray deve estacionar no limite máximo de 48X.

Densidade: trabalhar com uma única espécie de mídia é melhor e mais simples que lidar com 6 ou 10 tipos diferentes. A elevada densidade dos discos rígidos atuais os torna mais convenientes.

Custo: além de não terem sido popularizados nos PCs os gravadores de Blu-ray são muito caros bem como a mídia. Enquanto isso, um HD Firewire ou USB custa em média 100 dólares no mercado internacional, e oferece tempo de acesso muito mais rápido, mais capacidade de estocagem e transferência de dados. Se existisse demanda os preços de harware e mídia Blu-ray poderiam cair, mas quem garante que essa demanda acontecerá?

A história evolutiva da informática demonstra que a medida que as atualizações tecnológicas acontecem os meios eletrônicos de cópia e armazenagem de dados são sucateados. Por isso Umberto Eco ridicularizou a breve duração dos disquetes.

Para que dados arquivados eletrônicamente continuem podendo ser consultados, editados e reproduzidos, 20 anos é um prazo padrão para a mudança dos sistemas de armazenamento de informação. A migração digital consome tempo e muito dinheiro. Para se ter uma idéia, armazenar e manter íntegra uma cópia master digital em alta resolução de um filme, custa cerca de 12,500 dólares por ano. Arquivar uma cópia comum do filme custa 1.000 dólares anuais.

O Centro de Conservação Audio Visual da Biblioteca do Congresso dos Estados Unidos, gasta milhões de dólares por ano arquivando músicas, noticiários de rádio e televisão e todos os livros publicados sobre a história norte-americana. É um volume extraordinário de informação. Até 2012 a instituição que este ano armazenará cerca de 4 petabytes estará arquivando 20 petabytes anualmente. Um petabyte equivale a um milhão de gigabytes e representa algo como 330.000 horas de programação de TV.

A maior parte dos consumidores domésticos ainda vai utilizar por alguns anos os DVDs e um percentual menor garantirá uma sobrevida aos CDs, mas a mudança de foco e lógica na armazenagem de informação está mudando rapidamente para arquivos online (a “nuvem” oferecida pelo Google, ZoHo, DropBox, File Dropper e muitos outros serviços) e para HDs externos domésticos. A indústria ainda não cedeu ao fascínio da cloud computing & storage, mas soluções seguras já estão surgindo para atender esse mercado.

Mais e mais pessoas vão baixar conteúdo informativo e de diversão diretamente da internet, eventualmente estocando o material em suas bibliotecas digitais. Se por acaso o HD pifar, a casa for inundada ou pegar fogo, os fornecedores na internet estarão disponíveis para novos downloads. Pouca gente vai se dar ao trabalho de continuar gravando e guardando montanhas de CDs e DVDs. Os pendrives atuais com capacidade para 16, 32 ou mais gigabytes indicam a tendência e os futuros (próximos 5 anos) chips Terabit 3D possibilitarão o transporte de imensas quantidades de informação como uma atividade banal. Esse é um mercado que crescerá sem limites.

O que nos traz de volta a Jane Jacobs e Umberto Eco. É claro que o aprendizado de modos e fazeres vai continuar acontecendo no universo digital. As inúmeras comunidades, as guildas informatizadas atuais, darão conta dessa tarefa. Mas se os meios eletrônicos pifarem, devido a catástrofe natural ou desastre causado pelo homem, no evento de uma nova “idade das trevas” é evidente que o saber-como-fazer uma infinidade de coisas vai depender das frágeis memórias dos sobreviventes e sobretudo das informações acumuladas nos livros e guardadas nas bibliotecas. Nesse sentido a tese de Umberto Eco continua parcialmente válida e o papel, dependendo das circunstâncias, pode preservar melhor as informações e possibilitar a construção de uma nova cultura. Mas imaginem transportar uma biblioteca tradicional para uma colônia no espaço…

Pensando nisso o professor Tadahiro Kuroda da Universidade Keio, no Japão, criou a “Pedra da Roseta Digital”, um chip de memória wireless encapsulado em silicone. Kuroda garante que o artefato pode guardar dados por um milênio.

O chip de memória criado pelo professor Kuroda é formado por quatro finas camadas, cada qual contendo 1.100 nano chips. A “pedra da Roseta digital” tem capacidade para arquivar com segurança durante 1000 anos dados que hoje ocupariam 480 CDs. Se fossem comercializados hoje cada super chip custaria cerca de 625 dólares.

Na Universidade da California nasceu uma idéia mais ousada. O professor Alex Zettl desenvolveu um método que segundo ele garantirá à humanidade o arquivamento seguro de informações por um bilhão de anos. Zettl propõe chips de memória baseados em nano tubos e partículas de ferro. Mais radical que a proposta de Tadahiro Kuroda, o experimento de Zettl se conseguir ser viabilizado industrialmente, pode tornar a decadência digital de dados coisa do passado.

Como testar o futuro de sua mídia digital

Leia mais sobre a Pedra da Roseta Digital e sobre o projeto da Universidade da California, aqui e aqui.

Veja as 10 mais destacadas tendências de TI para 2010, segundo a consultoria Gartner.

Eco is currently curating a new exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, on the “essential nature of lists, poets who list things in their works and painters who accumulate things in their paintings“. In the interview he discusses the place lists hold in the history of culture, the ways we try to avoid thinking about death and why Google is dangerous for young people.

Via Der Spiegel (here)

Spiegel Online published an interview with the legendary man of many minds Umberto Eco (who seems, as he grows in age, to more and more resemble the Dunkin Donuts Guy). The subject of said discussion is on a newly curated exhibition by Eco, at the Louvre, containing works around the theme “The Infinity of Lists.” But toward the bottom of the page, he has some interesting things to say about internet and the education system:

Education should return to the way it was in the workshops of the Renaissance. There, the masters may not necessarily have been able to explain to their students why a painting was good in theoretical terms, but they did so in more practical ways. Look, this is what your finger can look like, and this is what it has to look like. Look, this is a good mixing of colors. The same approach should be used in school when dealing with the Internet. The teacher should say: “Choose any old subject, whether it be German history or the life of ants. Search 25 different Web pages and, by comparing them, try to figure out which one has good information.” If 10 pages describe the same thing, it can be a sign that the information printed there is correct. But it can also be a sign that some sites merely copied the others’ mistakes.

While Eco, I believe, is implying this idea should be pushed in a primary school setting, it’s something that, unfortunately, prevails within online (and print, at times) journalism and needs to be discussed. Writers are constantly dragging their feet over the lack of copy-editors problem online journalism faces, but what about the damning lack of fact-checkers? Even then, you see so many half-truths passed around so often as fact that you start to get the idea that it doesn’t matter anymore, that fact-checkers seem unable, or unwilling, to unwind the web of nonsense that has been spewed to get at the real information needed.

Ca doit être l’influence d’Alix Girod de l’Ain, cette recherche du bon mot et de l’image juste. Je revoyais hier un édito datant de cet été que j’ai utilisé pour le collage Bon à recycler, dans lequel elle raconte les pérégrinations d’une mère de famille qui souhaite remplir son caddie durablement. Il y a chez le Docteur Aga un humour décapant qui s’attaque à tout, fait d’actualité et débats de fond, amours des people et idées toutes faites :

Nos enfants sont devenus d’admirables mini-écocitoyens et, au passage, de prodigieux casse-bonbons, pense la cliente in petto. Les psys disent que c’est la surinformation ambiante qui leur fiche la frousse. (…) Une heure plus tard, en réglant les 194 € de son Caddie bo-bio, la cliente réalise qu’elle a dépensé 30 % de plus que d’habitude. Pourtant, elle a tout de même le sourire… Vous savez pourquoi ? Parce qu’elle s’est acheté, pour elle toute seule, un pot de Nutella qu’elle a décidé de ne même pas planquer derrière les réserves de boulgour équitable.

Ce type de plume me manque dans la presse du développement durable. Il y a bien J’ai testé de Laure Noualhat dans le magazine Terra Eco. Il y a ces blogs où l’on discute consommation durable, publicité et greenwashing. Et puis il y a, en majorité, une communication autour du développement durable qui se fait sur le mode culpabilisation. Peut-être parce que les messages sont trop focalisés sur l’avenir de la planète. A long terme nous sommes tous morts, disait Keynes.

Alors, comment parler du développement durable, comment formuler des messages touchant le public le plus large, la forme étant au moins aussi importante que le fond ? J’ai trouvé une piste du côté d’Umberto Eco. Sa critique est celle de la société du spectacle mais aussi de la société de consommation. Il n’y a pas chez lui de discours écologiste  mais une défense du bon sens. Je crois n’avoir jamais lu aussi engagé et drôle que Comment manger une glace :

Comme les parents de ces gloutons ambidextres que j’enviais tant, la société de consommation feint de vous en donner davantage, quand en réalité elle vous donne pour quatre sous ce qui vaut quatre sous. Vous balancez votre bon vieux transistor pour acheter un poste multifonctions, y compris le système autoreverse, mais d’inexplicables faiblesses de sa structure interne feront que cette merveille dernier cri ne durera qu’un an. Quand à votre nouvelle voiture, elle aura beau exhiber des sièges en cuir, deux rétroviseurs latéraux réglables de l’intérieur et un tableau de bord en bois précieux, elle résistera moins bien que la glorieuse Cinquecento qui, lorsqu’elle était en panne, redémarrait avec un coup de pied.

Mais la morale d’alors nous voulait tous spartiates, celle d’aujourd’hui nous veut tous sybarites.

Comment voyager avec un saumon, pp. 173-174

PS – J’ai commencé ce blog il y a 6 mois tout pile et j’ai pris goût à la veille, à l’écriture et à vos commentaires tantôt spartiates, tantôt sybarites. Merci à ceux qui le suivent, bienvenue à ceux qui arrivent !