Six Walks in the Fictional Woods by Umberto EcoMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Always an immense pleasure to read Eco's essays, or in this case apparently speeches. Originally in English, these 6 essays are an easy read. Highly recommended for anyone interested in narrative, languages, writing, storytelling, or Umberto Eco.
Some of my highlights:
There is no imperfect tense in English
"a flashback seems to make up for something the author has forgotten, whereas the flashforward is a manifestation of narrative impatience"
Poe said "a literary work should be short enough to read at one sitting, for it two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere"
Whenever I'm asked what book I would take with me to a desert island, I reply, "The phone book: with all those characters, I could invent an infinite number of stories"
In a work with obscenity, if discourse time coincides with story time, then it is pornography.
(Re: The Three Musketeers): If he is on the street that today we call Servandoni, he must know that he is on the rue des Fossoyeurs, the street on which he lives. So how can he think that it is another street, the one on which Aramis lives?
Casablanca was shot day by day without anyone knowing how the story would end.
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