Eats, Writes, and Leaves

Some days, it’s good to be a geek:

Umberto Eco named the rose (well, guest curator) of the Louvre

Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum followed me all over Paris the winter I was a student there as my Metro book. Much of the novel is set in Paris. One week my dad came to visit me there, and we spent days chasing down the “locations” in the book. Our major failure in this project was the Musee des Arts et Metiers–it had just closed for renovations. Said renovations lasted for about seven years, but the Musee is finally open. It’s been rearranged, but the creepy old tracks and weird old vehicles still provide atmosphere in the room where the Pendulum sways.

We did learn that Eco pays attention to detail in his research–the street address in the bad neighborhood that’s described in the novel as a secret door to the tunnels under the city where the mystical telluric currents run. In real life, the door leads into an RER substation. That is, it’s a not-very-secret door (with little brass plaque) that leads to the tunnels under the city where the commuter trains run.

It’s obvious that I’ll need to head back to Paris sometime in the next twelvemonth. So sad!