An Unsatisfying End (The Name of the Rose "Fifth Day" to "Last Page")

TMBC Week 5

John’s Comments:

I’m sorry to say, but we’ve failed you for the second book club pick in a row. The Name of the Rose is finished, but we lost Melissa, lost a few of you, and I finished with a longing for more. I had a brutal time reading this book. I understand now that that’s because our push to complete this in a timely fashion to keep our book club alive resulted in me excruciatingly flipping through page after history-dumping page to get to the end, rather than taking my time and truly appreciating the effort Eco took in crafting such a book.

Is it the best thing I ever read? No. Would it have been my all-time favorite book had I took the time to soak it all in? Definitely not. Would I have left with a feeling of admiration and having learned something new had I taken the time to do so? Definitely.

I can’t tell you if I would have liked Umberto Eco as a person. Some chapters went by with him slapping you in the face with his medieval history prowess, and it seemed his goal was to shit on religion and God—which is taking it a bit far in my opinion. However, I can’t say that his book sucked just because I couldn’t get it. That isn’t fair at all. This thing should have been read slowly, over the course of six months, instead of cramming the whole book in a month to get to the end.

At first I was mocking the mystery, having correctly guessed the culprit in the first 1/5 of the book, and was patting myself on the back when Jorge was finally revealed as the evil behind the events of the novel. Then I finished the book and realized that I totally missed the point. The mystery was part of it, sure. But for me to criticize the book as being a shitty mystery when in fact it was a piece of historical fiction that used a mystery to carry itself to the end shows I’m not as smart as I had initially credited myself to be. When I got to the end I immediately wanted to pick up another Eco book and take it all in as best I could, to see how different my reaction and enjoyment would be without having time constraints associated with it.

So what was the point of the book? My best guess is summed up in the final exchange between William and Adso, as they leave the abby and eventually part ways:

“You have no reason to reproach yourself: you did your best.” (Adso said.)

“A human best, which is very little. It’s hard to accept the idea that there cannot be an order in the universe because it would offend the free will of God and His omnipotence. So the freedom of God is our condemnation, or at least the condemnation of our pride.” (William said.)

I dared, for the first and last time in my life, to express a theological conclusion: “But how can a necessary being exist totally polluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between God and primigenial chaos? Isn’t affirming God’s absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist?”

William looked at me without betraying any feeling in his features, and he said, “How could a learned man go on communicating his learning if he answered yes to your question?” I did not understand the meaning of his words. “Do you mean,” I asked, “that there would be no possible and communicable learning any more if the very criterion of truth were lacking, or do you mean you could no longer communicate what you know because others would not allow you to?”

To me, this is the conclusion of all of William’s debates scattered throughout the book. He was allowed to study by going into the Franciscan order. Through his learning he deduced that God did not exist. Had he then started teaching that, he would have promptly been executed for his heresy. Instead, he continued the quest for his own truth through his order, and tried to help others get to that same understanding, like Adso did at this point.

I think it’s a very black and white way to look at our reality. To me learning and atheism do not need to be tied together, but some people, like Eco, would tie the two as inseparable outcomes.

So what was The Name of the Rose? A murder mystery, or Eco trying to show us the contradictions of the church and the wasted knowledge that was kept hidden by Jorge and monks like him? Even with them hiding everything in the library, the unread pages of those books didn’t conceal a hidden truth which would turn people from God. Truth will always prevail, there isn’t a book that would change that. And like all of the books lost in the burning of the library at the end of the novel, new ideas and discoveries will always be made and people holding others back from learning will learn that they had only wasted their own lives to gatekeeping the truth.

Thanks for following along throughout this whole journey. This was a rough one. While trying to get through this, I started to read Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield, and it’s been absolutely incredible to start. If there’s one thing this book club pick should come out with is for you to read that book instead. Speaking of Steven Pressfield…

Our next book club pick is a suggestion to all of you to read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It’s a short book that has changed both Melissa’s and my own life many times since discovering it. We truly believe that anyone could read it and have a similar impact on their creative or spiritual journey. Whether you’re a creative or not, the book will undoubtebly have a positive impact on you. The goal is for everyone to read it by June 6th, which will resume our standard Thursday book club updates. The plan is to discuss the book on June 6th, get everyone’s reactions, and then move forward with the next fiction book, The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, on June 13th. This was decided after the discussion left on my Philip K. Dick post last week (your voices are heard!). Thanks again and see you in The Deep End!