Travels in Hyperreality

Unevenness is the standing complaint here: the pieces were written as newspaper and magazine columns across years rather than built toward one argument, and it reads that way. Eco assumes a reader already fluent in medieval history and semiotic vocabulary, and one reviewer says he “writes as if his audience just graduated summa cum laude.” A sharper gripe follows: he restates an already-obvious point at exhausting length, so that, as one reader puts it, “the conclusions start to lack while the pretention grows.” Another reader goes further, calling him “in love with his own ability to draw obvious conclusions.” The essays on contemporary Italian politics are the ones readers admit to skimming or skipping outright, favoring the pop-culture and media pieces instead. A few give up entirely, saying the book “manages to include so much information whilst saying very little.”