Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Italian semiotician and novelist, best known for his bestselling novel The Name of the Rose.
On the island
Eight records
the first record that you'd play when you got there
Goldberg Variations (variation 22)
a perfect merging of musical complexity and of complete friendliness for the listener
Carlos Gardel / Alfredo Le Pera
one of the great tangos sung by Gardel
Daphne (De Daphne, de schoonste Maeght)
it has become one of the characters of my new novel
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:05Do you like being called the world's most famous intellectual?
Not particularly because uh fame uh doesn't mean merit.
Presenter asks
2:17After the success of The Name of the Rose, did you go back into academic life and say that your novels should not be mentioned?
I succeeded in it. In my university nobody mentions my novels. There is a sort of uh silent agreement … Probably most of them read my novels and I'm happy of that.
Presenter asks
3:49Your most famous book has sold fifteen million copies – what's your explanation for its success?
There are at least fifteen millions upon five billions people in the world that are tired by easy messages. … Everything is made too easy, computers, T V, radio They want something challenging.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
contains all the names of the world, and there you can imagine an infinite series of stories with infinite characters and is the only way to be active on that island. Every other book could be finished in a while. That is is a sort of humane hypertext.
The luxury
with the phone book uh to give me inspiration and the computer I can write uh stories uh when I don't swim. And that would be a way to stand uh the solitude uh for a long time.
Did you just sit down one day and think 'I've written twenty academic tomes, I'm sure I could write a bestseller – let's have a go'?
A friend of mine who worked for a weekly magazine came to me and said I got an idea uh to ask uh various people in politics, in academia and so on to write a short uh criminal story and to publish one per week in our magazine. … And I said, No, no, I have no time. Um I th I think uh I I cannot write the stories because I am unable to write the dialogues. And and then I suddenly say, If I had to write uh the text of story would take place in a medieval monastery and it would uh be five hundred pages long. And she said, No, it's not what I am looking for. Stop. I went home. … And I and I said, Why not?
Presenter asks
30:17As a survivor, will you manage to keep yourself alive on this island?
I hope it is not an uh Antarctic uh island, but a South Seas island with coconuts. And easy fish to fish.
Presenter asks
30:35Would you not wither away for lack of company? You're obviously gregarious.
I like very much to be alone. Maybe because my life obliges me so frequently to interact with other people, but uh I am looking more and more for moments of uh solitude. So perhaps I could stand it.
“uh fame uh doesn't mean merit.”
“If you mean to be recognized as a no, I don't. I would prefer to have a more private life. But in a sense, uh my my books are my children. So I have to work for my books and if I I have to pay a certain price in losing my privacy, that is done for my books.”
“The readers are like dogs. They understand that you felt at your ease in writing this book and you enjoyed it. They take part in your enjoyment.”
“To write uh a novel for me is a great uh secret uh pleasure. That's why they last uh so long, eight years and six years. I wouldn't like to finish them because the real the real enjoyment is to write them. One once they are finished. They belong to somebody else and I feel orphan.”
“I think that an author that uh argues with his critics is vulgar and impolite.”
“[A solitude can be a] form of freedom.”