SOURCE: “Umberto Eco,” in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 236, No. 17, October, 1989, pp. 50-1.

In the following essay, Smith focuses on Foucault's Pendulum, relating Eco's comments about its publication history and methodology.

In 1979 Umberto Eco was a professor of semiotics who had just completed his first novel, with some exceptions The Name of the Rose, a 500-page metaphysical mystery, set in the Middle Ages, crammed with arcane historical and philosophical material as well as a good dollop of plain old suspense and a fiery finale. His Italian publisher, which had achieved modest success with Eco's scholarly titles, including with some exceptions The Theory of Semiotics and with some exceptions The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, was enthusiastic about his extracurricular effort and assured him that, based on his reputation, it could probably sell 10,000, maybe even 20,000 copies of his fictional debut.

Just under a decade later, Eco's second novel, Foucault's Pendulum, was greeted...