- Hardcover: 192 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd; First edition edition (20 May 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0224030698
- ISBN-13: 978-0224030694
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 11.9 x 3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 616,693 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Product Description
This is a collection of parodies by the author of "The Name of the Rose" and "Foucault's Pendulum". Professor Anouk Ooma of Prince Joseph's Land University addresses his colleagues on recent archaeological findings that shed light on the poetry of Italy before the Explosion, Columbus' landing in the New World is covered by TV reporters and structural analysis of the art of striptease as performed by Lilly Niagara of the Crazy Horse.
Book Description
In an upside-down Lolita, Umberto Umberto pursues a granny with ‘whitely lascivious locks’. Professor Anouk Ooma of Prince Joseph’s Land University addresses his colleagues on recent archaeological findings that shed light on the poetry of Italy before the Explosion. Columbus’s landing in the New World is covered by television reporters, commentators and guest experts. We are permitted to see in-house publisher’s readers’ reports, most of them unfavourable, on such submissions as The Odyssey, Don Quixote, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and the Five Books of Moses; and we hear a diatribe, in ancient Greece, against the vulgarity of such upstarts as Herodotus, Thucydides and Plato. ‘For sheer exuberant good humour, nothing could surpass Misreadings, a collection of parodies and squibs that began appearing in the 1950s and 1960s, but whose panache has not faded one bit’ Marina Warner, Books of the Year, Independent on Sunday ‘Made up of vintage, good-humoured games – parodies of think-pieces, spoof essays and carnival pranks’ Lorna Sage, Books of the Year, Observer
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Haute-Satire, not bedtime reading
13 Feb 2007
Format:Paperback
This is a collection of short stories which are most definitely satire for the intelligentsia. Eco's mind is a database of cultural references, linguistic foolery and razor-sharp wit.
The stories include "Granita," a retelling of Nabokov's famous tale with a geriatric object of desire and "The Discovery of America" which chronicles Columbus' 1492 landing on terra firma via the newscasting techniques used for man's first walk on the moon.
Eco's creativity knows no bounds. As with his other works, an understanding of topics as diverse as Adorno's theories and a Who's Who in the Greek pantheon of classical philsophers is definitely helpful, but not required. Even if the reader does not recognize all the references, she will undoubtedly recognize the talents of one of the greatest authors of our time. If you like to think and read at the same time, try some Eco.
The stories include "Granita," a retelling of Nabokov's famous tale with a geriatric object of desire and "The Discovery of America" which chronicles Columbus' 1492 landing on terra firma via the newscasting techniques used for man's first walk on the moon.
Eco's creativity knows no bounds. As with his other works, an understanding of topics as diverse as Adorno's theories and a Who's Who in the Greek pantheon of classical philsophers is definitely helpful, but not required. Even if the reader does not recognize all the references, she will undoubtedly recognize the talents of one of the greatest authors of our time. If you like to think and read at the same time, try some Eco.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
An entertaining compilation of short stories
13 April 2000
Format:Paperback
Eco, as is his form, provides a series of entertaining and poignant stories covering topics such as blue-jeans, media reports from the discovery of America and conversations with God. If you enjoy the range and depth of Travels in Hyperreality, then you will enjoy this book.
A Must Read: Misreadings
4 July 2009
Format:Paperback
This is a mirthful little volume by Umberto Eco, author of some very long novels, including The Name of the Rose. Misreadings is a collection of fifteen small pieces of fun. Eco was hired, in 1959, to write a monthly column for Il Verro, an Italian literary magazine. He began submitting parodies of the ponderous contents of the magazine to the magazine itself. It says something of the editors that they published them all. One is a set of internal critiques, supposedly from a publishing company, on why they're rejecting certain books as unsuitable, including the Bible ("I must say the first few hundred pages of this manuscript really hooked me...sex (lots of it), murders, massacres and so on...but as I kept reading, I realized this is actually an anthology, involving several writers...I'd suggest getting the rights to just the first few chapters, but using a different title. How about Red Sea Desperadoes?"), Homer's Odyssey ("...remember in his first book, how the Achilles-Patroclus story, with its not-so-latent homosexuality got us into trouble?"), and a dozen or so others, including refusal letters to Cervantes and Dante. Another piece is an account of Columbus discovering America, accompanied by modern-day news media and their attendant host of experts, in this case including Leonardo da Vinci, who gets short-shrift from the reporters when he becomes too technical.
Any of the selections can be read in ten or fifteen minutes. The satire is rich, at times thick, written to mock scholarship which labors on the ephemeral and a society which concerns itself with the trivial. But I read it with such pleasure partly because the satire and mockery isn't bitter or angry or malicious. Eco's Misreadings holds up a mirror and lets us see ourselves; he helps us see how silly we can sometimes be when we make more of things than they are. I'm going to put this book on the bookshelf in my bedroom, so I can pick it up frequently for a refreshing sip.
Any of the selections can be read in ten or fifteen minutes. The satire is rich, at times thick, written to mock scholarship which labors on the ephemeral and a society which concerns itself with the trivial. But I read it with such pleasure partly because the satire and mockery isn't bitter or angry or malicious. Eco's Misreadings holds up a mirror and lets us see ourselves; he helps us see how silly we can sometimes be when we make more of things than they are. I'm going to put this book on the bookshelf in my bedroom, so I can pick it up frequently for a refreshing sip.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
