by Umberto Eco
The Socratic Strip you read the articles on stripping that enrich some of the publications on sale in the leading theaters, you realize that the nude dancer typically exercises her profession with strict diligence, dedicating herself in her private life to domestic affections, to the young fianc who accompanies her to her job, or, totally submissive, to a jealous husband within impervious walls. Nor should this be thought merely a cheap device. In the bold and more innocent Belle Epoque, however, managers went to great lengths to convince the customers that their divas were insatiable mon- sters in private as in public, devourers of men and wealth, priestesses of the most unspeakable refine- ments in the boudoir. But the Belle Epoque staged its sumptuous sinful- ness for a well-to-do ruling class, to whom the theater and the after-theater had to bow, a class who enjoyed the total possession of objects, the inalienable privi- lege of money. The striptease you can see for quite reasonable sums and at any hour of the day, even in your shirt sleeves--no dress code--and even twice, because the spectacle is nonstop, this striptease is addressed to the average citizen. And in offering him those min- utes of religious concentration, its theology is im- plied, introduced in she form of hidden persuasion and displayed through quaestiones. The essence of this theology is that the faithful worshiper can admire the luxurious goods of female plenitude but cannot make use of them, because such dominion is not his to command. He can use, if he wishes, the women 29
MISREADINGS that society grants him and that destiny has assigned him. But a crafty notice at the Crazy Horse warns him that if, when he goes home, he finds his wife' unsatisfactory, he can enroll her in the afternoon courses in deportment and mime that the manage- ment organizes for students and housewives. It is not certain such courses actually exist of that the cus- tomer would dare make such a suggestion to his better half; what matters is that the seed of doubt is planted in his mind, the suspicion that if the strip- teaseuse is Woman, then his wife is something else, whereas if his wife is Woman, then the stripteaseuse must be something more, the Female Principle or sex or ecstasy or sin or glamor. She is, in any case, that which is denied him, the spectator; the basic element that eludes him, the goal of ecstasy that he cannot achieve, the sense of triumph that is arrested in him, the fullness of the senses and the dominion of the world that he knows only from hearsay. The typical striptease relationship demands that the woman, who has offered the definitive spectacle of her possibilities of satisfaction, is absolutely not for consumption. A booklet distributed at the Concert Mayol contains a wearily rakish introductory essay, which concludes, nevertheless, with a revealing intuition. It says, roughly, that the triumph of the naked woman in the spotlights, as she exposes herself to the gaze of a frustrated and yearning audience, consists of the art- ful awareness that at that moment they are comparing her with their familiar fare, and so her triumph consists also of the humiliation of others, while the 30
The Socratic Strip pleasure of those who watch consists mainly of their own humiliation, felt, suffered, and accepted as the essence of the ritual. If, psychologically speaking, the striptease rela- tionship is sadomasochistic, sociologically this sado- masochism is essential to the educational rite that is being fulfilled. The striptease unconsciously teaches the spectator, who seeks and accepts frustration, that the means of production are not in his possession. But if sociologically it introduces an undeniable hierarchy of caste (or, if you prefer, of class), meta- physically the striptease leads the spectator to com- pare the pleasures at his disposal with those that by their very nature he cannot have: his reality compared with the ideal, his women compared with Woman- hood, his experience of sex compared with Sex, the nudes he possesses compared with the hyperuranian Nudity he will never know. Afterward, he will have to go back to the cave and be content with the shadows on the wall: those are granted to him. And thus, with unconscious synthesis, the striptease re- stores the Platonic situation to the sociological reality of oppression and other-direction. Sustained by the fact that the command buttons of political life do not belong to him and that the pattern of his experiences is sanctioned by a realm of ideas he cannot alter, the striptease spectator can peacefully return to the responsibilities of every day, after the cathartic ritual that has confirmed his posi- tion as a fixed and solid element in the existing order; and locales less ascetic than the Crazy Horse (mon- 31
MISREADINGS astery for Zen monks, last stage of perfection) will allow him to carry away the images of what he sees there, to console his human condition with the wicked practices that his devotion and his solitude will sug- gest. 1960 32
Regretfully, We Are Returning Your Readers' Reports Anonymous, The Bible I must say that the first few hundred pages of this manuscript really hooked me. Action-packed, they have everything today's reader wants in a good story. Sex (lots of it, including adultery, sodomy, incest), also murder, war, massacres, and so on. The Sodom and Gomorrah chapter, with the transvestites putting the make on the angels, is wor- thy of Rabelais; the Noah stories are pure Jules Verne; the escape from Egypt cries out to be turned into a major motion picture . In other words, a real blockbuster, very well structured, with plenty of twists, full of invention, with just the right amount of piety, and never lapsing into tragedy. But as I kept on reading, I realized that this is actually an anthology, involving several writers, with many--too many--stretches of poetry, and passages that are downright mawkish and boring, and jere- miads that make no sense. 33
MISREADINGS The end result is a monster omnibus. It seems to have something for everybody, but ends up appealing to nobody. And acquiring the rights from all these different authors will mean big headaches, unless the editor take cares of that himself. The editor's name, by the way, doesn't appear anywhere on the manu- script, not even in the table of contents. Is there some reason for keeping his identity a secret? I'd suggest trying to get the rights only to the first five chapters. We're on sure ground there. Also come up with a better title. How about The Red Sea Desperadoes? Homer, The Odyssey Personally, I like this book. A good yarn, exciting, packed with adventure. Sufficient love interest, both marital fidelity and adulterous flings (Calypso is a great character, a real man-eater); there's even a Lo- lita aspect, with the teenager Nausicaa, where the author doesn't spell things out, but it's a turn-on anyway. Great dramatic moments, a one-eyed giant, cannibals, even some drugs, but nothing illegal, because as far as I know the lotus isn't on the Nar- cotics Bureau's list. The final scene is in the best tradition of the Western: some heavy fist-swinging, and the business with the 'bow is a masterstroke of suspense. What can I say? It's a page turner, all right, not like the author's first book, which was too static, all concerned with unity of place and tediously over- plotted. By the time the reader reached the third 34
Regretfully, We Are Returning Your . . . battle and the tenth duel, he already got the idea. Remember how the Achilles-Patroclus story, with that vein of not-so-latent homosexuality, got us into trouble with the Boston authorities? But this second book is a totally different thing: it reads as smooth as silk. The tone is calmer, pondered but not pon- derous. And then the montage, the use of flashbacks, the stories within stories. . In a word, this Homer is the fight stuff. He's smart. Too smart, maybe . I wonder if it's all really his own work. I know, of course, a writer can improve with experience (his third book will proba- bly be a sensation), but what makes me uncomfort- able and, finally, leads me to cast a negative vote-- is the mess the question of rights will cause. I broached the subject with a friend at William Morris, and I get bad vibes. In the first place, the author's nowhere to be found. People who knew him say it was always hard to discuss any changes to be made in the text, because he was blind as a bat, couldn't follow the manuscript, and even gave the impression he wasn't completely familiar with it. He quoted from memory, was never sure exactly what he had written, and said the typist added things. Did he really write the book or did he just sign it? No big deal, of course. Editing has become an art, and many books are patched together in the editor's of
fice or written by several hands (like Mommy Dear- est) and still turn out to be bestsellers. But this second book, there is too much unclear about it. Michael says the rights don't belong to Homer, and certain 35
MISREADINGS aeolian bards will have to be paid off, since they are due royalties on some parts. A literary agent who works out of Chios says the rights belong to the local rhapsodists, who virtually ghosted the book; but it's not clear whether they are active members of that island's Writers' Guild. APR in Smyrna, on the other hand, says the rights belong exclusively to Homer, only he's dead, and therefore the city is entitled to all royalties. But Smyrna isn't the only city that makes such a claim. The impossi- bility of establishing if and when Homer died means we can't invoke the '43 law regarding works pub- lished fifty years after the author's death. At this point a character by the name of Callinus pops up, insisting not only that he holds all rights but that, along with The Odyssey, we must buy a package including Thebais, Epigoni, and The Cyprian Lays. Apart from the fact that these aren't worth a dime, a number of experts think they're not even by Homer. And how do we market them? These people are talking big bucks now, and they're seeing how far they can push us. I tried asking Aristarchus of Sam- othrace for a preface; he has clout, and he's a good writer, too, and I thought maybe he could tidy the work up. But he wants to indicate, in the body of the book, what's authentic and what isn't; we end up with a critical edition and zilch sales. Better leave the whole thing to some university press that will take twenty years to produce the book, which they'll price at a couple hundred dollars a copy, and maybe a few libraries will actually buy it. Bottom line: If we take the plunge, we're getting 36
Regretfully, We Are Returning Your . . . ourselves into an endless legal hassle, the book will be impounded, but not like one of those sex books, which they then sell under the counter. This one will just be seized and forgotten. Maybe ten years from now Oxford will buy it for The World's Classics, but in the meantime you'll have spent your money, and it'll be a long wait before you see any of it again. I'm really sorry, because the book's not bad But we're publishers, not detectives. So I'd say pass. Alighieri, Dante, The Divine Comedy Alighieri is your typical Sunday writer. (In every- day life he's an active member of the pharmacists' guild.) Still, his work shows an undeniable grasp of technique and considerable narrative flair. The book, in the Florentine dialect, consists of about a hundred rhymed chapters, and much of it is interesting and readable. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of astronomy and certain concise, provocative theo- logical notions. The third part of the book is the best and will have the widest appeal; it involves subjects of general interest, concerns of the common reader-- Salvation, the Beatific Vision, prayers to the Virgin. But the first part is obscure and self-indulgent, with passages of cheap eroticism, violence, and downright crudity. This is a big problem: I don't see how the reader will get past this first "canticle," which doesn't really add much to what has already been written about the next world in any number of moral tracts and treatises, not to mention the Golden Legend of J acopo da Varagine. 37
MISREADINGS But the greatest drawback is the author's choice of his local dialect (inspired no doubt by some crack- pot avant-garde idea). We all know that today's Latin needs a shot in the arm--it isn't just the little literary cliques that insist on this. But there's a limit, after all, if not in the rules of language then at least to the public's ability to understand. We have seen what happened with the so-called Sicilian poets: their pub- lisher went around on bicycle distributing the books among the various outlets, but the works ended up on the remainders counter anyway. Further, if we publish a long poem in Florentine, we'll have to publish another in Milanese and another in Paduan: otherwise we lose our grip on the market. This is a job for small presses, chapbooks, etc. Per- sonally I have nothing against rhyme, but quantita- tive metrics are still the most popular form with poetry readers, and I doubt that a normal reader could stomach this endless sequence of tercets, es- pecially if he comes from Bologna, say, or Venice. So I think we'd do better to launch a series of really popular titles at reasonable prices: the works of Gil- das or Anselm of Aosta, for example. And leave to the little avant-garde magazines the numbered edi- tions on handmade paper. "For there neid faere, naenig uuirthit. "The linguistic hash of the post- moderns. Tasso, Torquato, Jerusalem Liberated As a "modern" epic of chivalry, this isn't bad. It's written gracefully, and the situations are fairly fresh: 38
Regretfully, We Are Returning Your . . . high time poets stopped imitating the Breton or Car- olingian cycles. But let's face it, the story is about the Crusaders and the taking of Jerusalem, a religious subject. We can't expect to sell such a book to the younger generation of "angries." At best we'll get good reviews in Our Sunday Visitor or maybe The Tablet. Even there, I have doubts about the reception of certain erotic scenes that are a bit too lewd. So my vote would be "yes," provided the author revises the work, turning it into something even nuns could read. I've already mentioned this to him, and he didn't balk at the idea of such a rewrite. Diderot, Denis, Les bijoux indiscrets and La Moine I confess I haven't unwrapped these two manu- scripts, but I believe a reader should sense immedi- ately what's worth devoting time to and what isn't. I know this Diderot; he makes encyclopedias (he once did some proofreading for us), and he's involved in some dreary enterprise in God knows how many volumes which will probably never see the light of day. He goes around looking for draftsmen to draw the works of a clock for him or the threads of a Gobelin tapestry, and he'll surely bankrupt his pub- lisher. The man's a snail, and I don't really think he's capable of writing anything amusing in the fic- tion field, especially for a series like ours, which has some juicy, spicy little things like Restif de la Bre- tonne. As the old saying goes, he should stick to his last. 39
MISREADINGS Sade, D. A. Francois, Justine The manuscript was in a whole pile of things I had to look at this week and, to be honest, I haven't read it through. I opened it at random three times, in three different places, which, as you know, is enough for a trained eye. Well, the first time I found an avalanche of words, page after page, about the philosophy of nature, with digressions on the cruelty of the struggle for survival, the reproduction of plants, and the cycles of animal species. The second time: at least fifteen pages on the concept of pleasure, the senses and the imagination, and so on. The third time: twenty pages on the question of submission between men and women in various countries of the world I think that's enough. We're not looking for a work of philosophy. Today's audience wants sex, sex, and more sex. In every shape and form. The line we should follow is Les Amours du Chevalier de �aublas. Let's leave the highbrow stuff to Indiana. Cervantes, Miguel, Don Quixote The book--the readable parts of it, anyway-- tells the story of a Spanish gentleman and his man- servant who roam the world pursuing chivalrous dreams. This Don Quixote is half crazy (the character is fully developed, and Cervantes knows how to spin a tale). The servant is a simpleton endowed with some rough common sense, and the reader identifies with him as he tries to deflate his master's fantasies. 40
Regretfully, We Are Returning Your . . So much for the story, which has some good dramatic twists and a number of amusing and meaty scenes. My objection is not based on my personal response to the book. In our successful low-price series, "The Facts of Life," we have published, with admirable results, Amadis of Gaul, The Legend of the Graal, The Romance of Tristan, The Lay of the Little Bird, The Tale of Troy, and Erec and Enid. Now we also have an option on The Kings of France by that promising young Barberino, and if you ask me, it'll be the book of the year and maybe even a book of the month, because it has real grass-roots appeal. Now, if we do this Cervantes, we'll be bringing out a book that, for all its intrinsic value, will mess up our whole list, because it suggests those novels are lunatic ravings. Yes, I know all about freedom of expression, political correctness, and what have you, but we can't very well bite the hand that feeds us. Besides, this book seems a one-shot deal. The writer has just got out of jail, he's i
n bad shape, I can't remember whether it was his arm or his leg they cut off, but he certainly isn't raring to write something else. I'm afraid that in rushing to produce something new at all costs we might jeopardize a publishing program that has so far proved popular, noral, and (let's be frank) prof- itable. I say no. Manzoni, Alessandro, I Promessi sposi These days the blockbuster novel is apparently the rage, if you have any faith in print-run figures. But 41
MISREADINGS there are novels and there are novels. If we had bought Doyle's The White Company or Henty's By Pike and Dyke, at this point we'd know what to put in our paperback line. These are books people read and will be reading two hundred years from now, because they tug at the heart, are written in simple and appealing language, don't try to hide their re- gional origin, and they deal with contemporary themes like feudal unrest and the freedom of the Low Coun- tries. Manzoni, on the contrary, sets his novel in the seventeenth century, a period that is a notorious turn- off. Moreover, he engages in a very dubious linguistic experiment, inventing a kind of Milanese-Florentine language that is neither fish nor fowl. ][ certainly wouldn't recommend it as a model for young creative-writing students. But that's not the worst. The fact is that our author sets up a lowbrow story, the tale of a poor engaged couple whose marriage is prevented by the conniving of some local overlord. In the end they do get married and everybody's happy. A bit thin, considering that the reader has to digest six hundred pages. Further, while ostensibly delivering an unctuous sermon on Providence, Man- zoni actually unloads whole bundles of pessimism on us (he's a Jansenist, to call him by his right name). He addresses the most melancholy reflections on human weakness and national failings to today's pub- lic, who want something quite different, more heroic yarns, not a narrative constantly interrupted to allow the author to spout cheap philosophy or, worse, to paste together a linguistic collage, setting two sev- enteenth-century edicts between a dialogue half in 42
