Baudolino by Umberto Eco

Is it me or is there a copy of this novel in every used bookstore in the country? I see it on discount racks everywhere. That’s never a good sign. The medieval font points towards the likelihood of archaic boredom, like shopping at an antique store with your mother-in-law. I’d rather go to the mall and beat up a handful of Goth kids. Who wants to read about some long-ago dead guy in a Chef Boyardee hat blowing a trumpet? Unless this Chef Boyardee is also blowing coke and banging waitresses in the walk-in, I say don’t bother with Baudolino.

The artwork looks like Fra Angelico illustrating Led Zeppelin’s “Battle of Evermore,” which could be cool, but given that the author’s name is three times the font size as the book’s title, I can only assume that this is the lesser work of some hotshot literary author. Umberto Eco sounds like a made-up name to me, some sort of stuffy, post-modern nom de plume. It’s a name signifying a highly self-conscious narrative, one that calls on its own neurosis with some sort of contrived “echo” effect. The book surely ends with the protagonist (Baudolino I presume) drowning in a shallow pool of narcissism.

I spend most of my time between hipster-ridden Providence and khaki-clad Boston. Baudolino ain’t selling in either demographic. Eco tried jumping on the Harry Potter craze a while back by offering literary Goths a sort of Dungeons & Dragons, choose-your-own-adventure novel. Obviously, the cover is not resonating with the intended target market. The reason is simple. Baudolino is too handsome. He looks like a FIFA star not an androgynous nerd. You couldn’t give this book away, not even at a Tolkien convention.

The publishers must have known the book was going to flop. At the bottom of the cover it informs potential buyers that Eco is also the author of The Name of the Rose. This must be the literary prequel to the Romancing the Stone trilogy starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. I didn’t even know those were books. Terrific, maybe Cameron Douglas can play the lead role in the eventual film adaptation when he gets out of prison.

Baudolino isn’t worth a second glance. If I were the publisher, I'd re-issue the book with a new cover. Maybe something depicting a beer wench's cleavage, perhaps a vampire or two.