Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and an English Brother, William of Baskerville, is sent to investigate. His delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre murders that take place in seven days and nights of terror. One monk is found dead in a cask of pig's blood; another is discovered floating in a bathhouse; still another has been crushed to death after falling from a window. Rumors hum throughout the abbey, and people piously cover their tracks, hiding clues. Brother William turns detective, and a uniquely deft one at that. His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon - all sharpened to a glistening edge by wry humor and ferocious curiosity. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie secret labyrinth of abbey life. Before his task is completed, Brother William witnesses crimes beyond his imaginings and meets an enemy with the awesome features of the Antichrist...
So that was... unenjoyable. I spent a goodly sum of time on this book, and I really wish I had it all back. The book is a six hundred page monster about heresy in 1327 Italy and by golly, I soldiered through it, but I'll be gosh darned if I'd do it again. It was a frustrating and slow read. I read this over a period of seven days (well, six, really), partly because the book takes place over seven days, and there's nothing I like so much as a gimmick, and partly because each day takes up about 100 pages and 100 pages a day is all I could take. Oh, my god, I would re-read sections over and over again trying to make heads or tails of it and come up with nothing. For example, this description of the church:
And beneath the feet of the ancients, and arched over them and over the throne and over the tetramorphic group, arranged in symmetrical bands, barely distinguishable one from another because the artist's skill had made them all so mutually proportionate, united in their variety and varied in their unity, unique in their diversity and diverse in their apt assembly, in wonderous congruency of the parts with the delightful sweetness of hues, miracle of consonance and concord of voices among themselves dissimilar, a company arrayed like the strings of the zither, consentient and conspiring continued cognition through deep and interior force suited to perform univocally in same alternating play of the equivocal, decoration and collage of creatures beyond reduction to vicissitudes reduced, work of amorous connecting sustained by a law at once heavenly and worldly (bond and stable nexus of peace, love, virtue, regimen, power, order, origin, life, light, splendor, species, and figure), numerous and resplendent equality through the shining of the form over the proportionate parts of the material—there, all the flowers and leaves and vines and bushes and corymbs were entwined, of all the grasses that adores the gardens of earth and heaven, violet, cystus, thyme, lily, privet, narcissus, taro, acanthus, mallow, myrrh, and Mecca balsam.What, I ask you, is "consentient and conspiring continued cognition through deep and interior force suited to perform univocally in same alternating play of the equivocal, decoration and collage of creatures beyond reduction to vicissitudes reduced"? It's like Jabberwocky, except without order or sense. Also, it takes itself a lot more seriously than Lewis Carroll.
Be forewarned, I fell asleep after reading TNotR and I had the worst dream, all monks and monsters, and people going up like firecrackers, and Alec Baldwin from 30 Rock and the voice of Christopher Lee the way he plays Saruman in The Lord of the Rings. And no, not all of that is TNotR's fault (I'm looking at you, Alec Baldwin), but fyi, this may give you nightmares.
Anyway, it's pages and pages of utter nonsense, interspersed with latin (rimshot!), and let me tell you, I participated in the Latin Olympics as a child, when I was young and foolish, and easily talked into doing things I didn't want to do by teachers who held my academic future in their hands, and I still did not understand a tenth of what was being said (in latin. I understood at least half of what was being said in English, although mostly I didn't care). There is a whole section about how people are sederunting and all I got out of it was that sederunt can be used as a verb even though it's a type of chant, which still doesn't make sense, like saying "Let's go hymn!"
Okay, to the plot! It's narrated by Adso of Melk, and here I was super excited when I first cracked this book, cause I was all, "Melk! I have totally been there and will be able to picture everything!" and then I found out that none of it takes place in Melk, and thus I suffered the first of many disappointments. Adso is looking back on the events of his misspent novitiate youth, where he tagged along with the 14th century Sherlock Holmes, aka William of Baskerville.
They arrive at mysterioso abbey, where someone is dead and the abbott wants William to investigate. William gets into a lot of arguments about heresy, most of which sound utterly ridiculous to me: whether or not it's okay to laugh, and whether or not monks should be allowed to take a vow of poverty. One of these is the impetus behind seven deaths and the burning of the abbey. I will let you guess which one (hint: why am I so pissed about the ending?).
As it turns out, the first monk committed suicide, apparently because he read a book? I'm still not really clear on that one. There's a big reveal at the end, but I guess the readers are already supposed to know why Adelmo died, because it does not come up. Oh, and FYI, there be spoilers ahead, because I have to get this out of my system.
So, okay, Jorge is eeeevil, and he brings this book back from his hometown or wherever, which disagrees with his most deeply held beliefs about how EVERYONE MUST BE SERIOUS ALL THE TIME, but instead of getting rid of it, he puts poison on the pages so people reading it will lick their fingers and slowly die. WHAT A GREAT PLAN! Except it IS, because everyone licks their goddamn fingers. So then, I guess, uh, Berenger, who was the Assistant Librarian, and who is shtupping Adelmo, decides he wants to impress Adelmo, so he shows him the book, and then... Adelmo checks out, somehow. And then Venantius, who may or may not have been having sex with Adelmo too (by the time I got to the end, I forgot most of what happened in the beginning) finds out about this magic book, and reads it, licking his fingers all the while. Then Berengar finds Venantius, who has collapsed in the kitchen, and he drags the body over to the pigsties and dumps him in a cask of pig's blood. What in the name of all that is holy is going on here?! They explain this by saying that Berengar does this "thinking everyone will be convinced Venantius drowned."
NO, REALLY. Berengar dumps a monk headfirst into a cask of pig's blood, thinking everyone will just assume this guy drowned.
Because that happens all the time! I can't tell how many times I've gone out for a midnight snack of semi-congealed pig's blood and wound up almost drowning. Too many to count, that's for sure!
Moving on: Berengar reads the book in the infirmary, licking his way through it, and winds up actually dying in the baths. Severinus, the infirmary man, finds the book, and tells William, but then William indiscreetly blabs this to everyone within hearing, so Jorge gets Malachi (the head librarian) to kill Severinus, by telling Malachi that Berengar (who had also been having sex with Malachi, in addition to Adelmo) was sleeping with Severinus, making Malachi jealous, and getting him to steal the book back. Whatever, man, there is a lot of sex in this book, especially considering it takes place in an abbey. Then Malachi reads the fucking thing, licking his fingers like there is no tomorrow, and he dies. Then William finally tells the Abbott (conveniently named "Abo") what the hell is going on, and the Abbott, who knows about this book...uh, somehow... goes to confront Jorge and winds up suffocating in the tower after Jorge cuts him off. Then William and Adso confront Jorge and wind up managing to not only not save the Abbott, or the book, but also kill Jorge, and get the entire abbey burned to the ground. Whole thing.
I can only describe my feelings by comparing it to that scene, in the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar, when he picks up the phone to give a burglar client some legal advice, and he screams, "Quit breaking the law, asshole!" I want to shake these guys and scream, "Quit licking your fingers, morons!" Even if the pages weren't coated in poison, that is a nasty habit, and continually moistening the pages will damage them. Although not, obviously, as much as setting the whole damned library on fire. Well played, William and Adso.
Meanwhile, the book which sets everyone off is a long lost copy of Aristotle's treatise on why it's okay to laugh. First of all, what the fuck? Second of all, why is Aristotle the end-all be-all of authority on comedy? Jorge acts like once everyone realizes Aristotle said it was okay, it would, like, destroy the church. Buddy, I have news for you: you can shit all over the peasants all you want for laughing, but that will not stop them from doing it. It's like the most futile battle in the world. Maybe it's meant to be ironic, but mostly I just felt annoyed that I read 600 pages to find out Jorge is the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.
Okay, maybe not the biggest: what is up with that "beautiful girl"? Let me explain: Salvatore, who is ugly, procures hot young ladies from the village to have sex with Remigio, who runs the larder, in exchange for food. Adso is running around the library late at night (by himself, no less, despite the fact that 1) the last time he was in the library he had a psychotic breakdown, 2) he has no idea how the library is laid out, and even with William "Sherlock" of Baskerville, they were wandering around in there for hours and 3) he has shit for brains) and runs into this girl and Salvatore and scares Salvatore off, and this girl is so wowed by Adso, and so grateful that she doesn't have to sleep with Remigio for food, that she promptly fucks Adso, then leaves her meat behind. Listen, if your family is so hungry that you are willing to sleep with an old nasty monk for some tripe, and circumstances conspire so that you are left with the food, and released of the obligation to whore yourself out, why would you then fuck someone else and leave empty-handed? It boggles the mind. Then, naturally, Adso moons about her for the rest of the book, going on and on about how much he is in love with her, and the ways that he could try to fall out of love with her (interestingly, I believe "get a grip on yourself" is mentioned, but not elected).
The other big plot point (if "plot" encompasses a lot of stuff that actually has nothing to do with moving the plot forward) is about the pope and the emperor and a bunch of monkish factions arguing about whether or not it's okay to take vows of poverty. I guess the pope is really against this idea, since it spreads the message that maybe monks shouldn't be sitting around in their fancy gold-covered abbeys counting all their money. They have clearly never heard of "live and let live". I found this to be the more tense argument about heresy, because I thought both sides had good points, but this is mostly grounded in historical events, and I have only the faintest idea of what historical events of the early 1300s were. There's a lot of infighting, and a lot of names, some whose significance is not explained for a good chunk of the book, so that the arguments were taking place without relevance to me, since until I found out who "Dolcino" was, arguing about him meant nothing to me.
So, picture all that going on, and then read this conversation between William and Adso, in which William is explicating his thought processes:
"[S]olving a mystery is not the same as deducing from first principles. Nor does it amount simply to collecting a number of particular data from which to infer a general law. It means, rather, facing one or two or three particular data apparently with nothing in common, and trying to imagine whether they could represent so many instances of a general law you don't yet know, and which perhaps has never been pronounced. To be sure, if you know, as the philosopher says, that man, the horse, and the mule are all without bile and are all long-lived, you can venture the principle that animals without bile live a long time. But take the case of animals with horns. Why do they have horns? Suddenly you realize that all animals with horns are without teeth in the upper jaw. This would be a fine discovery, if you did not also realize that, alas, there are animals without teeth in the upper jaw who, however, do not have horns: the camel, to name one. And finally you realize that all animals without teeth in the upper jaw have four stomachs. Well, then, you can suppose that one who cannot chew well must need four stomachs to digest food better. But what about the horns? You then try to imagine a material cause for horns--say, the lack of teeth provides the animal with an excess of osseous matter that must emerge somewhere else. But is that sufficient explanation? No, because the camel has no upper teeth, has four stomachs, but does not have horns. And you must also imagine a final cause. The osseous matter emerges in horns only in animals without other means of defense. But the camel has a very tough hide and doesn't need horns. So the law could be . . . "
"But what have horns to do with anything?" I asked impatiently. "And why are you concerned with animals having horns?"
"I have never concerned myself with them, but the Bishop of Lincoln was greatly interested in them, pursuing an idea of Aristotle. Honestly, I don't know whether his conclusions are the right ones, nor have I ever checked to see where the camel's teeth are or how many stomachs he has. I was trying to tell you that the search for explicative laws in natural facts proceeds in a tortuous fashion. []"Tortuous is right. I like how William is going on and on about teeth and horns and stomachs, and in the end, he's all, I have no idea what conclusion is right! I just like long-winded examples! Dude, I know.
I will admit, there is a lot of description and symbology in the book that went right over my head. Maybe my experience would have been a richer, rewarding thing, if I had understood these symbols and signs. Then again, maybe not. It's not that I find people's actions inexplicable, merely stupid. I understand very well those who desire learning and knowledge, and those who desire censorship. There is a passage in the TNotR in which William talks about insatiable curiosity and intellectual pride, when he says, "The good of a book lies in its being read. . . This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them. This is why it has become a sink of iniquity."
TNotR is a thoughtful, exhaustive treatise on heresy, learning, knowledge, lust, politics, and monkhood. A good murder mystery....well, maybe not so much. Certainly a lot of people are very enthusiastic about it, but for me, well:
"I have many fine hypotheses, but there is no evident fact that allows me to say which is best. So, rather than appear foolish afterward, let me renounce seeming clever now. Let me think no more, until tomorrow at least."
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