The Commendator has ordered Simei to create a fake newspaper. Nice trick, right? And Eco - as obsessed as ever himself with conspiracy, with twists and double-crosses - lays the whole game out early, within the first dozen pages. His characters as charming as bunions, as competent as toddlers with power drills. That demands cynicism and a complete lack of ethics and the kind of rented-snake morality that only grows in someone who hates what he's become - and hates even more those who've forced him to it. And it's perfect for Colonna because it's a job that requires a loser. 80 million lire, Simei, the professor, offers. His new novel, Numero Zero, is a book about conspiracies and journalists - about a self-professed loser named Colonna (a hack journo, ghostwriter, manuscript reader and perpetually impoverished freelancer now skidding into middle-age) offered a sweet gig out of the blue by a former professor. The world you know is only the world you are allowed to know by powerful forces who trust ultimately in your laziness and stupidity to keep the truth from you.
That's Umberto Eco's conspiracy-obsessed journalist Braggadocio weighing in on the operating philosophy of Italian newspapers (or, maybe, newspapers in general) in the early 1990's. so news drowns in a great sea of information." X happens, you have to report it, but it causes embarrassment for too many people, so in the same edition you add some shock headlines - mother kills four children, savings at risk of going up in smoke, letter from Garibaldi insulting his lieutenant Nino Bixio discovered, etc. "The point is that newspapers are not there for spreading news but for covering it up.
Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Numero Zero Author Umberto Eco and Richard Dixon
0 kommentar(er)
