Umberto Eco in conversation with Paul Holdengräber

intelligence welcome here we are again and what a pleasure thank you very much ana.k it's a pleasure to be to be here in London with Umberto Eco and this new book the Prague Cemetery I actually have the new English edition and I have the American edition more scary more scary will that sell more books we don't yet know anyway I'm going to begin by reading something from the book and have you react to this reading it's something that I think will give a sense to the English audience it's discovering this book now what you are up to when you talk about the universal form of every possible conspiracy would conspiracy is incredibly important here from the picture created by Duma Alexandre de Meyer in reverence to the great writer I wondered whether the bard had not discovered in describing a single conspiracy the universal form of every possible conspiracy later you say on reflection Duma had invented nothing he had merely put into story form where according to my grandfather Abbe Burrell had already shown this led me to think even then that if I wanted to sell the story of a conspiracy I didn't have to offer the buyer anything original but simply something he already knew or could have found out more easily in other ways people believe only what they already know and this is a beauty of universal see you mumbling in of universal conspiracy so how how do conspiracies form yes first of all let me say another thing the book was published in Italy in last October one one year ago and in November there was the blow-up of the of the WikiLeaks affair and we discovered by the documents of WikiLeaks that every secret report sent to the government so-and-so was dealing with something that had already been published by Newsweek the the week before that it was so evident so I was right but it was not an idea of my so Universal conspiracy at the first who wrote a marvelous essay on that item was a carla papa who said that well the idea of a universal conspiracy start at the times of Homer in which everything happened in Troy was plotted the day before but the gods on the Olympus and the idea of a universal conspiracy is a way to refuse our own responsibilities that's why that's why dictatorships used always the idea of a universal conspiracy in order not what meet their flaws and errors and mistake that day having spent my first 10 years as a young boy educating under the fascist dictatorship that was the universal conspiracy of the demo Pluto to dike world democracy's capital is the juice plus the English were very terrible people because they ate the five times per day and that was the horrible image presented to the poor Italians of people ate in fact eating eating eating five times per day then only later I discovered that myself belonging to a normal family I ate five times a day in the morning in the morning then they gave me something to bring in the school for about ten o'clock that lunch then five o'clock and then even but then you know the image of the fat churches mocking his cigar and eating five five Tyburn days was a part of the universal conspiracy why do ma what do you map the title of my book is the cemetery of Brock the story of the cemetery of Prague was published by the by the first time he in German by a German spy good shape spy anti-semite impotent working for secret services and he wrote four volumes of a story very complicated called Biarritz and at a certain point imagined the idea of the universal plot made by the Jews coming or from all over the world in the Prague Cemetery during the night I don't know if you have visit approximate the prague jewish cemetery is marvelous to see about during the night it can be also very disquieting and they come from every place in the world and they introduced themselves I am Ravi Solomon from Singapore I am Robbie so-and-so from from Amsterdam and so and they plan the conquest of the world so I think to have been myself to to discover it in the Joseph Balsamo by Duma you have you have absolutely the same scene it takes place in a German Mountain the organizer of everything is Kalio Stowe the one who gather are the Freemasons from all over the world and they please introduce themselves I am master the great master so is so coming from Singapore am the great master coming from Amsterdam and they are plotting in order to to ruin the French monarchy but the pattern was exactly the same because and this pattern worked with different targets for du ma it was the Freemasons against the King therefore for urgency they were Jesuit then in the protocols of the Elders of Zion and in the book of the gotcha they were the Jews but it can work continuously you can invent a new universe a conspiracy tomorrow you have the empty gesture as long as it's empty yes you have only to fill up this lot and it this works but you have to insist universal conspiracy because conspiracies exist probably in this moment in the city there is a group of businessmen making a plot in order to conquer conquer a bank or a desert but even plot succeeds it is immediately discovered there was a plot to kill Julius Caesar and on the Ides of March twas clear there was a plot of Catalina and Caesar denounce it in the Senate it collapses and we knew about it the universal conspiracy on the contrary is a plot which is never discovered because it has no face and no no place is a sort of entity that nobody will never discover so it can be used that infinitive is like one great German sociologist zimmel said the most powerful secret is the empty one because if you have a real secret it gives you a certain power but this secret can be uncovered and you'd have no more secret but if the secret is empty you continue to say like like children I know something about you since I'm speaking to you I'm going to verify an etymology and see if it's correct us the secret originally try to you don't know no I don't know that idea because at least I have all my favorite quotation about secrets is Thomas Jefferson who said that for two people to keep a secret one has to be dead but it but but the notion of secret and secretion of something yet obably comes from yes yes and so a secret in and of itself cannot really contain itself right it but but if it is empty if it is empty then what I was the protect us if it is empty for so yeah forever forever so I I mean just to end with secret also the notion of secret being a person a secretary is someone who Russia secretary is the one who keeps keep your secret yes and the the piece of furniture and sit sit there is where you hide your credit yes right you hide little pieces of paper behind little but they are discoverable they are let's cover crop even your secretary as it happens usually want to go go to prison immediately confesses everything and you are condemned the table this is why it my mother always says you know they can't hang you for what you don't know how we have two two two two two two instead of the secretary to have an iPad so it's a secret this is a it amazing secret it is I'm not exactly sure what it says but it it says that my etymology of the word secret is really wrong I find this I find this really disconcerting but we we will have to have a debate about this in a while so Universal to come back to the notion of universal conspiracy a conspiracy is inevitable now I mean since you conspiracies as the real world how to continue cigarette or I think what inevitable he in the sense in which human beings are always fighting one against the water so they have to plot the the conquest of the ruinin of an adversary I think except you change in human nature the universal conspiracy is absolutely indispensable in order as I said or as popper said in order to to to deny to yourself or to your people that we are the responsible ones for something and to to is the eternal problem of the scapegoat somebody else is charged with the entire responsibility and I say of you as I had an opportunity of reading today is called inventing the enemy but it seems to me that inventing the enemy could also be called needing the enemy leading and inventing and inventing is the English title isn't it yeah because the Italian title kostia is building up how to construct a step by step the enemy we need me why why do we need enemy for reinforcing our own identity I tell you the story but with which I opened there say you are kindly quoting I was in New York I was talking with the taxi driver I always talk with the taxi driver because they give you the the temperature general temperature and he was a Pakistani and you asking me or you who come from as a dieter our is it a Europe odd what kind of language they English no no we know speaking besides that's beautiful and a certain point he asked and what is your enemy and I said what what do you mean no the enemy you have six centuries and centuries you are fighting against that you're killing him and they are killing you you your eternal enemies and I said we we do heaven it we don't have a fixed enemy for LA in the nineteen sent to enforce with half a century when Austria but then finished by the way we we started the last world war with one enemy and we ended it with another one so enemies and he looked at me as I was really emasculated and our people was a people without without any form of virility and so and so forth what by the way what the French call at least three days Kali I reflecting afterwards I realized they know we have an enemy simply the other people have an enemy outside the border lies we have an enemy inside the border lies day for two thousand years the Italian cities were fighting each order and even now the Italian opposition was unable to wing Berlusconi because they were fighting against each other that's Berlusconi fell down by his personal virtue not because of the virtue of the position but death another is another story every every Power had in order to keep its people united to invent some body which was older oke friends it sounds better with the capital a other and different even though slightly different but different and then like the progress cemetery even the image of the enemy follows certain fixed features and it has a pattern can you both know if you have to confess the secret can you both please address the audience as they cannot hear when you look at okay my my dear audience a baton idea obvious I have a feeling they don't like it when we look at each other so I kind of like looking at you but the people at intelligent square would prefer that we refrain so okay the day we will don't look it don't look at me give it okay so this is a form of enemy I can't look at you well in from now what I was saying that it was that from the beginning one of the first pattern of the figure of the enemy is in the early years of Christianity the Antichrist it is curl ears big nose strange of feet that's a but fundamentally it stinks and the same pattern is used that during the century is to to differ to represent the Muslim enemy theoretic enemy the Jewish enemy so always the same pattern to make the enemy Arkadiy archetypically repugnant such that in every case you have to refuse it in the sense in which Darwin demonstrated that the face movements in order to express this gosta are all the same in every civilization certain movement of the of the mouth of the nose and so and so forth so in every civilization there was a construction of the figure of the of the enemy that's all in this essay well apparently thing I do down now certain C quotations of different kinds of enemies everybody from soccer to to James Bond you have in lastik passage you're a big reader of Ian Fleming yes I always also wrote an essay on the nobles of Flemmi not on the movies on the novels of lady yes and Fleming is exceptional because he has the Russian enemy the German enemy then the Chinese doctor no the Chinese enemy is as a good collection ant in the International Wang which is bluffing to his blood avi over another another feature of the enemy in Fleming it is that it's always of uncertain nationality is always a mission never a pure Englishman so always aim attack only the effect of some blood mixture here in this essay you you you spell it out very clearly you say trying to understand other people means destroying the stereotype type without denying or ignoring the other nests in the Prague cemetery you have sorry if I turn my head again because I know to listen no no but Sir it's cruel thank you thank you for reminding me in the Prague that le toumelin no it's not nature it's not it doesn't sound nature that it doesn't say that natural dead so he yeah in the Prague Cemetery you have told us a story with every character being absolutely real in history except for one that character is haunting Simoni me and you have constructed in him I must say probably what you wanted to construct namely I mean constructed merely in terms of invention I mean it is your invention you have invented the vilest ugliest most horrendous most disgusting most despicable human being thank you you very much now that it was that was my my purpose but but why why give us the depiction of somebody quite as ugly that as Simone Nene is fundamentally for juror but also moderate and fundamentally racist and in the opening pages he pronounces horrible judgments not only against the Jews but against the German the French and Italians the women infants and he and he uses such a horrible material such horrible cliche the data in a way I was preoccupied that some reader could identify him herself with it so to keep the reader distant and probably also myself distant I had to make him as repugnant as you as you said then once taking this decision there was also the sincere pleasure of the narrator to do to invent a character like this to make him the most immoral person because you know the story he has the right pattern certainly he decides if you sell them to to the Freemasons against the Jesuit or to the Jesuits against the freemason or to certain point discover that anti-semitism is more rentable in that historical moment and he conquered the protocols of the Elders of Zion and is participated to the Dreyfus Affair and he makes many other many other it was an invented character because for narrative reasons silver wise I would have written another academic book on that story I I had to attribute to the same person deeds of many of many authors so I had to invent it but insisting he's saying that it is the twist the twist one of the of the old novel because in telling the story he had continuously the impression of speaking of somebody that was living around me the world is full of Simon eNOS and so he was telling a story of the nineteenth century but what it I would like my reader to go around with this novel like Abba Dekker visiting the world as I or look one single Nene look another semolina in every counter you can do that with a certain probability of success talk about I wanted to question you a bit further about something he said in passing here which is the pleasure you got in describing someone quite as ugly the literature from the beginnings is full of texting which monsters dragons and other horrible creatures have described I I think that Shakespeare felt a great pleasure in describing Richard the third Iago or details was very happy to describe Fay Jeannie's is a way to to to loot it is a way to exorcise some some ugliness that we find but you know since in an oval you describe the you try to describe world such as it is you you can describe beautiful characters like Snow White or the Queen there are the two possibilities usually they do both the denominator so that but maybe is to invade two invading Simoni always there with his mission city probably and so you have depression I existed with my piano pedal more only on the horrible side do a very good job of making him repugnant also because the only two nice characters of the book II Polly Tony Abel and more visually are immediately killed as it happens usually and so I remainder without without the plus pole I had only the minus one well you you just give give people a sense of how he is described very early on in the very first pages all I know about the Jews is what my grandfather taught me my childhood years were soared by their Specter when I was old enough to understand he reminded me that the Jew as well as being as vain as a Spaniard ignorant as a Croat greedy as eleventeen ungrateful as a Maltese in so insolent as a gypsy dirty as an Englishman unctuous as a kalmyk imperious as oppression and the slanderous as anyone from Asti is adulterous through uncontrollable lust the result of circumcision which makes them more erectile with a monstrous disproportion between their dwarfish build and the thickness of their mutilated protuberance so it was a racist he wasn't yeah he certainly was a racist um yeah curious in in some way as to the very very beginning of our conversation why we in in some way we are constantly believing or putting our belief in something we already believe in yeah and at the same time you you said you want to create a medica where people will recognize in some form or another hearings of the illiteracy moaning yeah the here is a Monstress a character so in some way is is a book and attempt to disfigure to unveil the truth about ugliness yes no I didn't say that people was to believe only what they already believe I say that secret services usually do that and this book is not written for the secret services is written for the normal the normal people who maybe can learn something they didn't know as yet you you early on in the book you say what does a philosopher say OD ergo soon I hate therefore I am and you're hearing me I'm sorry I'm looking I'm I hate therefore I am it is as though hatred is much stronger yes DDD the one who makes this sort of final discourse about hatred is radscorpion the chief of the secret russian secret police that play the role even though uncertain in the construction of the protocols but it isn't frankly it is after having given rutkowski those ideas that ayah i understood better l in discussing of that with a friend the very nature of hatred as opposed to love lover is a mutilating experience that separates you from the rest of the world I love you you want you love me I don't want you to love somebody else I don't want that somebody else it loves you so it's restricting the human community to a polarity between two persons except the Saints who go leeching the lepers let's not let leprosy element but they are not encouraging hatred on the contrary is generously social he can unite an entire people against another and other people you heard it here and in fact the dictatorial power do not invite people to love they invite people to guy against the hated enemy so hatred is a generous is a and so it's easy to be maneuvered the for for political for political reasons if not you cannot explain because the history of mankind starts with Cain and not with Mother Teresa of Calcutta he starts with Wars massacres people are hating animals but because they are eating each other intra interspecific intended the animals hate the ones of the other species lion it's a Gizelle's very difficult that the lion eats a lion huh it's very rare and seems the wolf it worth but only when they are killed that they they stop eating the wolf and they don't pursue the man but man is a interspecific conveyor of hatred since we're talking about my fault I think no no no III I mean we wish we could have it otherwise but since we're talking about men as opposed to animals one of the characteristics of men is that they have an incredible ability that animals may have less of of lying certitude and your novel is also an exploration not only about conspiracy and paranoia but of the extraordinary ability which men may share with novelists of telling an untruth first of all let me make a sharp distinction between lying and making fiction because making fiction is a lawyer game I pretend that the girl called has no white existed and you with me you pretend to to to to believe me and we play this game and after the end of the story you go home and you know that doesn't know why did not existed so there is no I don't cheat you I no cheating I can make you to win about the destiny of no white when she is the the Apple but for for a short time after the end of the movie or the story that's a lie on the country once me to make you to believe the contrary of the truth and I arrived to to be interested in forgeries just because being interested in languages I was interested on the specific human ability to tell the contrary of the truth you know to lie is to tell the contrary of the truth knowing that it is the contrary of the truth otherwise is not a lie is a mistake and in order to make another one to believe the contrary of the truth that that are the principal features of lie already described by certain Gosling okay now animals tell the truth not consider animals able to disguise themselves in order to cheat the enemy they are not lying they are simply endowed with certain quality certain color when what they are terrified by the enemy they could hide themselves and the enemy doesn't see them but this is not a lie when it when when a dog barks is in order to say there is a body outside I have never seen dog barks in order to make me to believe that there is somebody outside were while it is not true no so that's why it is a dog another not a human being so what characterize the language as a language sometimes we meet the forms of behavior we are not sure if they are a language or not if they have a semiotic nature or not the test is can be this behavior used in order to lie if so is the language can be used in order to design a possible world which is not the world of what is the case and without informing me that it is a tongue-in-cheek I am only telling a story the story of Achilles or Ulysses but from Alma from our own do to make official Miss dough to have a tongue in cheek and to to make a cleanser we wing the wings do to you okay that's so lie from life forgery forgery is a form of line not the only one we we lie every moment in our life because they are innocent lies nice to see you you feel very well today this take care we are interested in the in the in the health of that / take aways by then they are horrible lies again and forgery is a specific for a very complex the very very very very artistic form I was allowed to I was about to ask you the relationship between forgery and fiction making yes I taught I don't let me take a one of the Paramount examples of forgery - to which I I devoted one of my novels which is bubbly the lateral press the job okay in the 12th century it appeared letter sent by an emperor priest but by by chance priest and King with the idea of the cicadas Imperato who describes a marvel's kingdom beyond the Muslim territories in Asia but then the idea shifted and it was in Africa in anyway very far away a Kingdom full of riches earth full of Marvel's and full it was a beautiful story and it was a forgery and not a piece of fiction because it presented itself as a real document sent by a real kid and that was one of the forgeries that produced history let's say in a good sense because even Marco Polo when exploring China was looking for the kingdom of prestige oh and when we did the kingdom shifted from Asia to Africa it encourages the Portuguese to explore Africa it even justified in a way the Crusades because if there was a Christian world beyond the Muslim one that there was an opportunity and the sort of religious right to go through and what is the difference with the piece of fiction very very thinking it is a pragmatic difference we would say technically speaking is in the intention of the utterer not in the object in the garden the intention suppose I give you Pinocchio and I consider you a very very gullible person and it it has a real story that happened in in Rory Tanya years ago and you believe that I was really puppet with her with with mobile nose and this the text is always the same is my intention which has changed - changed the feature into a forgery okay to push it a little bit I wonder if the skill involved in creating a good forgery is in any way parallel to the skill involved in writing a good yes but that is the government all the protocols that is the problem right because it does it is artistically ill-shaped while the latter pastor John is very good and you can read it as a Bible story even the donation of Constantine was very well done and was taken seriously for - for one thousand fifteen fifteen hundred centuries the protocols sinks they are probably they are not the work of Simone eeny that's my novel they are the product of a collective series of influences and they are a patchwork so they have self-contradictory in one page they say a in the other page I said no nazo so they are artistically incredible and that is one of the great mystery how they were believed so much but I existed many times in saying that they are books or movies able to create a cult just because they were not in harmonious form of art but because they were out of joints they were disconnected the great cases Casablanca who was done by by mistake even even the choice of the of the proton you know no infer the first one chosen for Casablanca and since other dnd refused they were obliged to take to take a free burger the first one was Ronald Reagan imagine imagine with Ronald Reagan Casablanca complete flop Oh with Alfred ball got President of the United States it wouldn't be it wouldn't be a day and that's why Ingrid Bergman is so fascinating because she didn't know until the end if she had to be loved with Paul Henreid or with Humphrey baggage she didn't know and so she was always ambiguous in looking at both so creating a very mysterious and fascinating so the beauty of Casablanca is that they put together two thousand cliche without to know how to mix them or take the most call to movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show which is completed out of joints and that becomes called why because you can pick up paths of it and use them without paying attention to the whole that's why doing the picture or work as a blank and the movies young people especially old people pronounce the lines before the the actors because each of them knows a part of the movie run under the usual surface and you can use a part of Casablanca without pay attention to the total to the entire story and the protocols are like that you can use the cliche of page ten without paying attention that in page 25 there is the oppositely shape and that moment you are using that but can't you do that with any work you can elicit Li do that with very complex works of art with the Divine Comedy you can you I think they are disconnected works and words that you can disconnect due to their complexity so you can do with Dante with Homer probably with Petrarch you can do with part of Shakespeare but TS Eliot was very clear he say why Hamlet is the more fascinating the most fascinating of his play because it's completely disconnected he he put together different sources he was unable they even if there was a Ingrid Bergman she would have never known until the end of to be or not to be that that is the marvelous analysis made by Eliot apropos her Hamlet sings is completely disconnected and probably not even Shakespeare knew how to go at the end it is fascinating and Eliot says it's not interested in interesting because it's beautiful but it's considered beautiful because it is interesting because it always appeals us for some fundamental ability so there are disconnected works because they are bad they are disconnected worse works because they are ambiguous Hamlet they are disconnectable works like Helia The Divine Comedy and so on because they are so complex that it is like a wood in which you make your personal track from it for a lot to for a cabin to a cabin and you ignore all the rest and then they are worse that that are not out of joint Madame Bovary is not out to Joyce the canterbury tales are not out of joe and out of joint means like a car in which something started to break itself and the republican party blinked a book I see Digga Digga Digga Angolan the gradually Ganguly or to use your favorite English word discombobulated yes discombobulating in this combat you you can be discombobulated by a beautiful and complete work of up yeah yeah no no I was about to mention as usual you were mentioning Homer and the rest but what what what strikes me though is to come back to this notion of lying it's an ability of human beings in this particular case of see Menindee of the possibility not only of creating hoaxes not only of creating forgeries but the possibility of ending up totally and utterly and profoundly believing the lies we create so that we create another reality it becomes and it reminded me of a passage which I don't know if you had to mind in adult there's a wonderful line in banja Michael Starr where he says you some dessert for Telmo bizarre Telmo a college Crisostomo Infineon Newfie nice open Lizzy cuvee we are such strange bizarre sorry had said in French first but we asked now I'll speak to you with such strange and bizarre human beings that the feelings we believe we pretend to have we end up by feeling them yes and see Bellini at a certain moment starts to believe what he himself has forged right yes and cannot understand why people don't believe what it has created but then there is people see Bellini is not so smaii knee makes forgeries for money but there only the contrary people who have the real aesthetic pleasure of spending the entire life as a lie and Leo taxi taxi you are not to mention many reader be me believe I am a genius because I invented Leo taxi no Leo taxi really existed and did more and more water I succeed in telling in those few few pages he started his activity by inventing the Sharks of the Gulf of mud say they're moving all the French in a veto to change the Sharks then in Geneva invented a sorter a submerged city bringing scorers to explore the lake tufa then he started a series of anti-clerical tracks and making flourishing industry against the church but then he became Catholic and he produced empty Masonic leaflet books but at the same time his wife was always selling under the counter the anti-clerical books because it remained a certain quantity of books to be to be sold that at a certain moment he declared that all his denouncing of the Masonic hoax was an oaks of himself in order to baffle the Catholics and in doing that he lost a lot of money so you understand that a lot an entire production of rentable books it means that it did it for the pleasure for the pleasure of being always different from from itself even at the cost of ruining himself is an incredible car so he's a made amazingly Romanesque he's amazing he's a amazingly long he couldn't be a better invention even if you invented him yes but that that's true always too why I write mostly historical novels because what you find in real history even in the history of science so is more Romanesque than what you can invent life has more fantasy and imagination that fiction can could you invent a man like Berlusconi say more no no okay so life is I don't know in the the island of the day before there is is an episode that I think it's pretty comic because German Jesuit in order to observe upon the ship the movements of the satellites of Jupiter construction and armor bearing with oil inside and inside of the old and all the bearing and on the basic sort of pedestal and this is there and he had a sort of help with the telescope and so he believes he can observe the satellites without being disturbed by the movement of the ship because they all compensate them at a certain point there is a palpable that this machine was invented by Galileo who tried desperately to solve the idea to everybody and everybody was smart enough to refuse it so a genius like a Lilia was also able to imagine absolute stupidity that's nobody is somebody and invented the thing like that and attributed to Galileo there was a be scanned oh yes it did that and what what strikes means somebody like taxi'll is and also in simile me is how utterly shameless Seiya yes the derivative and the notary advice is the absence of shame yes it's endless endless is not how do you how do you live a life made of what one might call such fantasy or so many intricate lines are you asked indeed to me to see Malini both no no I full of shame a lot of no I think that shame is one of the instruments of morality you don't you don't do something evil fundamentally because you feel the shame of doing that or if not fundamentally also because you can avoid to doing evil because you think that God has prohibited it or that but shame is a is a sort of control of our behavior the miserable people and we know many of them still around us are shameless they are doing incredible things that without any shame to which is the principal feature of prostitution prostitution means female or male Constitution means not to feel the shame of what they are doing because they are doing it overtly openly without shame okay or the order even if they do something reproachable they try to do it in the room the prostitute male or female has no shame okay in the case of boast excellence immunity you have people who believe a shameless and believe powerfully in their lives and I mean it's a very strange thing to say that you believe in your lives but in some way what happens is there is no notion anymore of what what is true and what is false but I think that everybody sometimes being obliged for some reason for social reform lie at a certain moment believes and perhaps as the lie was was true he is also a sort of defense I think it I had to write another novel to explain this this problem they are certain to believe he's her own lies is I think it's very normal I have a friend i have a friend was a daughter very intelligent girl women with with two children and she became a psychiatrist and my friend for strange reason didn't lie to have a daughter psychiatrist and he told that she was a psychoanalyst it seemed more seems more elegant so my daughter is a psychoanalyst was talking with with the daughters or so your cycle psychoanalyst know my passions bark I have really mad people to cure every day barking people said and my father doesn't want to to know it now my friends keeps going and believing that it is ISM his daughter is a psychology today they have an advantage of living in two different parts of the world so it is not there to control what was that but but I'm interested in this phenomenon which you described of how we tell stories about our lie our lives and how we also omit what one might call it an excluding view of the self and the cumulative view of the self one where we sort of erase as it were part of our existence and tell a story a biography of our own self of our former self where we shed away part of our life yes this is another story but it has to be with lying because there are people like me for instance there are cumulative of their past and the post-award and so I try always to to meet my friends of the of the the primary schools so I keep contacts with with all my my old world right happy Christmas to all the girl of my life every year and I want to keep this continuity of all my life there are all the people who are living their life as an artichoke peeling it step by step they want to remember only the immediate past if you tell them but you were oh no no no no they deny their own past which is a form of self line which is not a lie is his removal is a removal why I I don't know I don't know but I know people like like that the artichoke oriented people one of the phenomenons of the protocol of the Elders of Zion is that though it was denounced actually in London in 1921 in The Times of London 1921 3121 it just doesn't go away no it was more and more believed what is I mean I'm still trying to understand this phenomenon oh it's not so difficult I tell always the story of Nesta Webster an anti-semite English woman who wrote a book on secret societies but that book was Amazon the universal conspiracy and he wrote it in 24 so here she already knew that it was a hoax at the end she say okay okay okay it was a forgery but since it says exactly what the Jews think it is true so there are certain texts that do not serve to create prejudice but to reinforce prejudice the protocol out of joint such as it is is very useful to useful to rein force your previous pressure you can pick up and you can pick up in a detail according I mean the protocols works as the discourse of the used cars vendor do you remember that during a political campaign against Nixon they said would you buy a used car from that man it means that the one who said it comes from that's where that expression comes from is that where that expression comes from would you buy a car from that man now you are asking me no no I remember I know no I remember that it was used in the United States for the two definition of Nixon would you buy a used car by that man and the other is a man who enters after you in a revolving door it gets out first which is marvelous as a definition well okay the used car windows tells you of this fantastic car because it's able to make 200 miles per hour as a tiger and you said ever they have my childre in is them combs the more more family-oriented car you can go slowly is confortable and use them both the arguments and you have only to pick up the one that reinforces your prejudice because if you are there it is already because you wanted that car and you wanted only to become mixed I had had such a marvelous occasion of of being with a car salesman in America once with my my father for some reason has always loved American cars and he's quite death he doesn't hear very well and in America the the custom is you know for you I'll give you and give it to you for twelve thousand dollars and my father turned to me and said what did he say and I said for you he will give it for twelve thousand dollars and then the man you know it then he would say well in fact I'll give it to you for eleven and then I had my father said what did he say and when he said right for you he'll give it and we undid I mean peeling away we undid that man absolutely completely he didn't anymore know any of his tricks because they didn't work here about two two months ago I had occasion in New York to interview the filmmaker Errol Morris who wrote a book recently called believing is seeing and this is what he says and I think it's very apropos of what you've written he says if we want to believe something then we often find a way to do so regardless of evidence to the contrary believing is seeing and not the other way around yes remember a Brewster as everybody knows that Odette the crazy as a as a wick morality and swung is the only one who wants to believe that it is untrue it goes through two volumes of the research it is untouched by by every revelation was evidence he wants to believe that or that is a perfect woman is that because love makes us blind yes usually but also hater I would like to go to something that isn't addressed enough which is a structure of the book the three voices I don't want you to reveal too much because I want the people revealing their water yes it was a friend of mine club team agrees that interview in me is said but it is very strange that people speak of your book always according apropos the content on the story and not a prop of the structure it is more than evident because the content is so violent and so evident that people is interested by that a second in order to understand the structure of a complex book at some time you need some years that's why the immediate reviews cannot for because the reviewer is obliged to read the book in three days and then to write the articles why to to to explore the structure the inner structure of a book you need the three four five five readings in this book I was taken by it by a trifle three three three property structural problem because they are first vertically speaking three voices they are the Journal of Simoni now the Journal of the output the Pecola the reader doesn't is never sure if they are the same person with with a split personality of if they are two person also because of the certain moment there is an order aboard ala Pecola enter in the story and then r8o the narrator's should represent a meta-narrative instance so to speak but it is so very prudently in other cases I used the meta-narrative narrator as in the island of the day before always judges what is happening and what the character says or do he cannot accept that they are speaking in a baroque way and so they there is a sort of continuous quarrel between the narrator and these in the characters here the narrator has only a summary function in order not to to to publish 40 years of a journal and he summarizes certain element but in doing that he pronounced asserting judgments on the card so is the three levels vertical structure then there is a horizontal structure by which they are the event are known to the narrator there are the events known to Simone Nene who ignores what happens to the l'épée colored events no to della piccolo ignores what happens to see Bellini at the end and then there is let's say a transversal structure made by the flashback and flash-forwards so it was great very tiring also for meto to to keep under control all those complex structure and sings in six years I was also blood too to move certain episodes from the last chapter to the first moment at that point I lost I've lost the dee dee dee dee the sense of what was happening and happily one of my translators and before I had to publish the Italian this show that stopped because of that gray chapter Simoni knee goes down in the cellar and founds three corpses but two of them will be killed later oh my god that's true and move the chapter and forget E just because of the complexity of this tribal structure that's why I put at the end those explanations as I was as I were stored Gilbert making a salt the bodega for the unisys but do you create difficulties for yourself yes difficult for myself and for the reader because the easiest of my novels contemporary times not a radition playing language was the mysterious flame of Queen Lola it was the one which has sold less so probably I I write for a bunch of masochist and this is the very first time that anyone believes that complexity settles better yes I think so because people is started by simplicity they eat people is sold every day for simple things one thing one should explain before people actually read your book is that the three voices also have three different type sets well does is it an indulgent move on my part to make it easier for the reader sometime I feel a certain implicitly and you compassion for I I think that's rather kind of you I have to say your wife read the book in its first iteration where you didn't do that where the typeset hadn't yet been set as it were and that was very difficult it was extremely difficult to follow yes that takes young so do you do this in the same way with the illustrations in the book is that other illustrations there to ease the reading or no although they are a kind of a calendar since you were talking about demonstration have several functions several function well is that since my book is little imitating the popular novel of the night eccentric all those novels were illustrated okay and not only the popular one or the novels of the nineteenth century and the one of the of the 18th century were Illustrated from the front from the beginning and so a second is that I like to illustrate the books by previous one Queen Levana is completely Illustrated and the previous one have always a map diagram something because I believe that so when somebody told said ah you imitate the c-bucs able to know I started it with the name of the rose world there is the the map of the up day probably because I worked in a publishing house making illustrated books and so on I feel this sort of multimedia multimedia pleasure the illustration have the function at the first glance to give the reader that I am telling a fictional story because they are clearly nutrition coming from the books of that era that a book but suddenly the the reader jumps over a real document it is one page of the develop a whole mall at Porto Nevada and so there it is my god so it was true it was not a story it was - so is discombobulated and ambivalent he feels an ambivalent feeling yes it doesn't know how much - believe it or not and so step by step he starts to believe that everything was true even though because sometimes he meets names that are so recognizable I can Garibaldi or Napoleon the third of the Israeli that obviously he the reader understands that it is dealing with with real real events what do we more no ammonia is ignored by no it's not you cannot stop on the street French bank asking do you love me more they don't know - more and less then no taxi taxi was completely forgotten at a certain moment rather more not only only the specialist okay because it was dominating the French politics also in LA fair confusing so the Panama the Panama scandal he was having big influence as a anti-semitic reactionary writer with an important Journal magazine and so and so forth then he became a new what in the equity diono and okay he became a daily daily paper a button it has been forgotten doing more but it was an interesting verse of that the illustrations to go back to them for a moment is this also a way because these these books mattered to you as a child to return in some way to an earlier self or certainly that was more evident with the Queen Levana which obvious M bald all the memories of my my childhood or the image that are there were from the 30s to the 40s and no more so that was really my my lost and Andrey conquered past here he was the pleasure of using all this material that fascinated me when I was a young reader or the adventures okay remind particular ah but even the things are not there like she'll there no saenggagi and so the fictional material is comes from early early readings are used to playing an instrument unfortunately I played it too many of them every kind of instrument for a short time but if you remember in the book Foucault's Pendulum there is the story of the young man with a trumpet the trumpet paid a very important role in my imagination dundun the dollar sense childhood adolescence and even is my Madeleine it's my mother trumpet is your mother yes but length but hum fidelity but comfort doesn't ecology but since of fifty years I am playing the block flood soprano recorder I play very badly professional professionals course there are people who play perfectly reduced scores for for amateur now I play badly the professional one so again you you challenge yourself oh yes if not there is no no amusement you've created a very ambitious novel here you agree with that comment I think that the most stupid writer when starting writing believes to become homer then most of them do not succeed in reaching this point but it is a once always even though to be sincere with that book I was more uncertain that with the previous one yeah I was not sure that it could work this way so that it happened what I did only in the beginning with the beginning with the name of the roles that I gave it to read to at least ten persons I didn't I didn't do that with the other with the other books with the name of the rose it was the first time so I wanted to have some reactions and by the original negative really but the difference I don't know this is too long that maybe they're nice yes it can make 2,000 copies in so you've learned not to take the comments of your friend seriously well I think that the writer has never to take the comment seriously if not is a he he loses his balance mental balance because they're they are so controversial I was educated by the story that my grandmother told me of the old man with the little child and and the donkey and they were going and the child said the grandfather you are so all the Sun mountain on the Mount of the donkey and people were saying look that man is killing the donkey and making the young boy to walk and they heard it and said decide to put the child on the dome clear and people said look that the how ago I got egg listicle is that the child why the poor man so they decide to to mount both of the dog today they say local so they decide to leave the donkey free and to to walk both and people said I'm stupid there they have a donkey and they don't use it and to write a book is the same situation at certain point to say okay I do what I want and but you don't only do what you want because also you know by ambition I mean you also create situations where your characters have to encounter for instance Freud er now this is another it's a very in tradition of roi de yes it's written like that because if it were written in the right way the French would have said fold and since I Malini meets Freud in Paris but it doesn't see his name written but the inter point so it writes it as a friend could write it in order to pronounce it fraud and not not fired while you are asking another another question which yes we when we said before and I avoid the answer I always put in my novels constrictions situations that I am not obliged to put there and then oblige me to change radically the whole story example in Baldoni no I decided that it had to start with the siege of Constantinople which is a sort of suicide because Baldoni no rise in my fiction the letter of Prester John at the middle of the 12th century the siege of Constantinople is 1204 so that I had the 45 years in which I didn't know what to do and what to make Baldoni know to do why I want to put Constantino because I had never visited Constantinople and so I since I am NOT a tourist I needed an alibi to go to Costa t nobody and the book to write was it an alibi and so I went to Constantinople and so and they used costantino but I didn't know what to me what Baldoni know had to do in those 54 years you know that before going as well to in the search of the kingdom of prestige oh and returning to stopped Acosta T knob if I had to invent a lot of reason for delaying its departure and it created the spasm of desire in boundary no I hope in some readers and certainly in the structure of the noble in this novel I wanted simony to visit the Salpetriere hospital in Paris where Jaco was at the time the great brilliant mind why because have been being always interested by Jaco but I didn't have time to do to read something about him and so in order to write and all he had six years at my disposal and could pile up boots on Jaco and his researchers of hysteria that gave me a lot of material to create two cases of double personality split personality and in the same years in which for bodily no arriving to Paris go to the goes to the circuit here there was Freud visiting shaco's why not to put Freud indeed in the story Simon II mean about a lean body synchronously and Freud what was interesting that Friday at that time was thinking only to his fear say he was not interested in sexual interpretation he had not invented psychoanalysis he was mainly interested in cocaine he believed that cocaine can could cure every disease even even children disease there is his marvelous image I found by mere chance on Internet in which there is a real advertising cooking for children to cue to take drop there to take drops cocaine iStent aeneas cure for and they are to playing children so cocaine was given to children and so it was interesting to make for it to speak about these fancies and I was entitled to to make him to say I think that they will be never interested in sex study starting psychiatry disease because of different stories and and I saw so he met find dr. Foley mother always wondered and I want to ask you now in public how important only poor and particularly some writers like Josh Peck were for you because in a way I recognize in you in this particular instance a kind of Iraq move you make me a stranger question because I met Dooley PO very early in 61 when in a Congress I met Oswald Leone Eber che they started telling me about Aleppo and then I translated accesses the steel by Cano so it was really inside that the report and I was a good friend of Calvin and Calvino was concerned with only Poor's also I should say the last one I came across was just break and leave just two days ago in Toronto a friend of mine was wasted a lot of his time in writing about me he told me that is on the verge of finishing along let's say essay in which shows the continuous parallelism between my work and perec and if so I would say all the people of Aleppo Parekh was the one was less influenced me but it seems that you know they are also unconscious influence you are influenced by books you have read fifty years before was one of my friend after the name of the Rosa said but you should have been influenced by Dimitri Meera skorsky is like taxis nobody knows any longer who he was it was a decadent Russian writer between the end of knighting of the beginning of the twenty same to hold historical so Leonardo julienne the pasta and so I read Miroslav see at the age of 12 so you do yes so probably a certain inference worked or maybe not it was my friend but sometime I discovered to be largely influenced by book I had not read at all but I mean and this is probably in closing this is we are we have discussed we have three years ago with Maya we handled it this conversation at the library about three years ago if you haven't read this book I highly recommend it or maybe you don't need to read it Sirte but yeah I am written a book on the fact that we are speaking continuously competently of the books we have not read so it's the book is called how to talk about books you haven't read and there is a chapter on Umberto Eco and in my impishness I believed it would be interesting to bring Umberto Eco together with care by yog and I remember the very first line I uttered you corrected me immediately I won't make that mistake again I said Umberto Eco who has a library of library of 30,000 books and she said no fifty times I mean and I mean and this this phenomena teacher girls I mean and this phenomenon of the books battening I mean the really what what Binyamin talks about when he talks about the sex appeal of the inanimate this is something you're under the influence greatly when you walk around your library described Umberto Eco walking and looking at his shadows now it gives a new sense of confidence and continuity not only with your past but with the universal past okay you you feel very confident saying that all the wisdom you need is there you couldn't find you couldn't feel the same feeling having a box full of USB that would be that would be different the same way in which can be moving to finding your seller the addition of Pinocchio you read at the age of six with your scribbles the the mark of your thumbs and if you found that the iPad or USB of Pinocchio you didn't feel any any emotion so it is very beautiful too to walk around the corridors of your library but a typical case is the one in which you have not read the books in your library that is the majority of the books or the worst way to keep a library only to store the books you have already read no you have a library as a place in which you can find every time you need that book to to read and it happens that certain books are looking at you for years and years with a sort of reproach and you feel and you feel embarrassed and ashamed and finally after 30 years you have that book on your shelf you pick it up you open it start read it even not it and you discover that you know perfectly what you are saying reason one is a little little akut istic since I believe I belong to the skeptical Association against the abnormal experiences but it seems that something passes by the book through your fingers to your brain and so you absorb a part of the wisdom audible the second one is every time in thirty years you picked up the book even though only for polishing it or to displace it to find another book without realizing it you open it and you had some you read something and the third reason the most scientific that in those thirty years you have read many other books that were speaking of that one and so when you open it is you discover so it is at the moment you have depression to have read all of your books which is false but it's very consoling thank you very much

Channel: Intelligence Squared

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Published: Wed Nov 23 2011