Umberto Eco: Professional Badass

Photo: Maurice Weiss / OSTKREUZ

Umberto Eco might be my favorite living author. Foucault’s Pendulum is a must-read for anyone with an interest in conspiracies, history, or life itself, and The Name of the Rose is a great philosophical treatise disguised as a ripping mystery novel.

Now he’s curating an exhibit at The Louvre on the theme of “The Infinity of Lists,” which sort of runs counter to my opinion of the top ten lists which seem to grow on the internet like maggots in a rabbit carcass. In an interview with Der Spiegel, he says:

The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries.

And he’s right… about some lists. But I still contend that most web lists (those on cracked.com in particular) are nothing more than cheap and easy ploys to get traffic.

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