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Article: Foucault's Pendulum.
- Article from:
- The New Leader
- Article date:
- January 8, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 American Labor Conference on International Affairs. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Foucault's Pendulum
IMAGINE YOURSELF a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna and the author of The Name of the Rose. That first novel happened to work Ovidian wonders on your bank account and entered your name in the register of world literary figures. True, the book lacked every felicity a story has to offer. Buy you wrote it, as they used to say in Paris, authentically, to prove a point about language--meaning is arbitrary--not for profit or gain. If people praised the book for qualities you knew it didn't possess, it wasn't your fault. Meaning is arbitrary. You were right.
So here you are sitting in the castle you bought outside ...