Umberto Eco has a new book out called
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Old Folks saw it at the library, but
didn't check it out.
He looked it up in Amazon.com and a review said it was
a novel of ideas that stood beside The Name of the Rose and The Island
of the Day Before as among his, Eco's, most successful novels.
It wouldn't
be hard to write such a book from Parker, Florida. World literature, Old Folks called
it. If you had taught yourself to write such books, by doing it.
But how
would you get such a book published by New York if you were an unemployed technical
writer living in Parker, Florida, who had never had a book published by New York.
Out of 263 tries.
If you told them it was such a book they would write
"delusions of grandeur" in their reporter's notebook, like Meryl Streep
writing that about Chris Cooper, in Adaptation.
They wouldn't even
take a look at it, to see.
Umberto Eco came with a reputation as a writer
of world literature.
Old Folks had no reputation, or he had a reputation
as a world-class nut, or crank. A loony tune.
If he was so good, why hadn't
he been discovered?
It was a question Old Folks had no answer to. A question
he asked himself.
If I'm so good, why haven't I been discovered?