Imagining other worlds

I’m close to finishing up Baudolino by Umberto Eco. The book is fantastic and the fourth I have enjoyed by him. Some people find it hard to get through anything he writes but I savor every page, often forgetting that I am reading him in translation. He plays with words, he plays with our minds, and he conjures up such amazing images, characters, and historical gems that not only are all his works re-readable but almost beg a second round to reassemble the pieces he throws at you. When I read Eco, I feel like he is giving the reader equal doses of revelation and deception. It is like he is playing a game, but unlike most authors who play the game with their book’s story and characters, Eco seems to love playing directly with the reader’s sanity.

Anyways, more on that some other time. Two quotes from Baudolino which I added to the quote database for this site. In isolation they may seem puzzling, but each one reminds me of one of the long moments of introspection his book instigated,

“I am not asking you to bear witness to what you believe false, which would be a sin, but to testify falsely to what you believe true – which is a virtuous act because it compensates for the lack of proof of something that certainly exists or happened.” p56

“I devoted my nights to imagining other worlds…There is nothing better than imagining other worlds, to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I had not yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one.” p99