Industrial Strength Writers' Block

It is difficult, even tonight, to write.  It is only the pressure of having to return weeks-long over due books to the library that compels me to write.  That and reading a book about Catholic guilt, The Name of the Rose.  Yes, I still believe everything is connected.  So, Eco's book both reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 for the flaming destruction of the abbey's library and for what I am enduring at work:  namely, wearing "ears" to drown out the sound of yet another secretary who is addicted to the phone and would talk to a busy signal.  I have been listening to Gregorian chants and Latin Masses, fearing that I would be too apparently enjoying more contemporary music.  In fact, the Masses are therapeutic and have underlined Eco's book.

I am hard-pressed to find the ur-theme of this endeavor.  I know it has won international accolades but I cannot decide what it is about.  It is hardly a murder mystery.  It is a difficult national or religious history book.  I guess it is a personal apologia:  What does it mean to be a contemporary author who acknowledges the classical and religious foundations of his education and culture.  How does one shift through the banality of religious factionalism and propaganda,  How does one reconcile a classical foundation versus one that is based in Catholicism.

I have been reading, a lot, despite my neglect of my blog.  Two other books impinge and intermingle with The Rose:  The Closing of the American Mind and Intellectuals and Society.  I will attempt to get caught up and blog about both of them.  But, today as I was trying to finish Closing as well as The Rose, I was struck by the emphasis on Socrates.  How incendiary he is to both Eco and Bloom.  How important both authors maintain it is to think independently about human defining thought.  What I find cheapening about Eco is dear old William of Baskerville.  Maybe if I watched the movie and linked with Sean Connery as William I'd be more sympathetic, but in the novel he seems unfocused, smart by serendipity, aloof from catecatical controversy, lucky in his mystery-solving.

I dog-eared many pages, but tonight as I ignore the network propaganda about election results, I am left with my residual impressions about the book.  First, let me be perfectly clear that without my scholarly son, I found all the paragraphs of Latin tedious.  Even if I attempted to translate all the sections, I hardly believe it would have clarified or advanced the plot.  Toward the end, I felt Eco was more self-disclosive about why he wrote the book.  The discussion of the need for humor in literature and human perception of dogma is introduced late in the story but stressed at the end.  The absurdity of religious factions stands allegorically for politics as well as Catholic schisms ... in fact who outside Vatican historians care anymore.

So why is this book so well regarded?  It is a struggle.  I probably spent more time reading it than I will reading Gone with the Wind, once I gird my loins and do it.  And with probably much less satisfaction. 

I am left with thoughts about censorship (back to Fahrenheit) and admiration for champions of foundations in classics of philosophy and the humanities.  I hope my brain can do justice to Bloom and Sowell  .. I resolve to get them blogged by the weekend, as well as The Disappearing Spoon, aka the disappearing book.