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Article: Profile: Umberto Eco: The brain with a label
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- October 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1995 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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WHEN UMBERTO ECO started out as a scholar, at the University of
Turin in the early Fifties, he decided to maximise his study time
by living his non-academic life a third quicker than everyone else.
He taught himself to walk faster, eat faster, shave faster. Forty
years and 30 books later friends pant along behind Eco on the
pavements of his hometown Milan, but he is still not satisfied with
his efficiency: "I could work in the shower if I had plastic
paper."
Despite his failure to solve the shower problem, Eco is now
probably the most famous intellectual in the world. With Roland
Barthes and Michel Foucault dead, his beard and glasses and beady,
mocking eyes have become the international ...