FOUCAULTS PENDULUM by Umberto Eco

Written several years prior to the genre attributed to Dan Brown , Umberto Eco had already debunked the myth of the conspiracy theory , examining the self-prohesising momentum , not unalike the swings of the Pendulum described by the scientist Foucault ,in which every piece of evidence counter to the conspiracy is simply dismissed as the
insincere machination of an enemy that can only be resolved by the righteous elimination of the evil entity.

The reader is at first led to laugh , in a manner in which the laughing with or laughing at is clearly spelt out , with the almost pathetic attempt of the author to draw one into the semi-hypnotised dogma trying to masquerade as a convincing rational explanation of reality , we even get to a point on page 138 in which a simple glaring arithmetical error is imputed into a bizarre kabbalistic quasi-mathematical formula , yielding to a completely incorrect sequence of numbering leading to a cataclysmic wrong numerical answer from which the whole sum of history past and present is computed to the end game of a number.

If you have the patience to stick with this farce one will be rewarded in the last 20 pages or so by a conclusion in which the reader realises it is the author who has been taking the complete mickey and laughing at the reader all along.

Umberto has the perfect antidote to the conspiracy theory hiding behind faux mathematics as a veneer of legitimate science , it is the simple and crystal clear concept of Occam's Razor , namely the simplest non-complicated explanation is more likely to be true than a vast complicated mushrooming ever-conspiring theory.

An especially illuminating side story is one about two Italians from the same village during world war 2.One is fighting on the side of the partisans , the other is under the employ of the nazi supporting fascists.After hostilities the two meet up , the partisans asks the fascist why he participated in a violent assaults on the village ordered by the nazis , the fascist ( now an ex-fascist in the classic way of the Italians authoritarians post -45) states he was under orders on pain of harsh reprisals from his overseers thus having little choice in the repressed constrained times.The partisan chides the fascist that he should have made a deliberately botched and clumsy attempt to commit the reprisal , thus allowing the villagers ample warning to evacuate themselves from harms way , and allowing the fascist to "fulfill" his mission as far as the masters were concerned whilst also allowing the damage to the villagers on the ground to escape the worst excesses of the atrocity.Contained within this anecdote is the story of Italian bureaucracy and the role it has played for the past centuries in curbing the worst excesses of the competing ruling blocks on the local regional populaces , something which is misconstrued , even today , as an inefficient and blatantly corrupt practice.And with Berlusconi in charge today , with a barely re-constituted Fascist of the old school primed to take over if anything happens to the number one , who is to say that the painfully derided Italian Bureaucracy is not the best ally Italy has at the moment.