In short, he would have had nothing to complain about being part of that patrol, while we readers know very well that he is in their company not for his countless essays, milestones and essential reference points in semiology, appreciated and studied in every university on the planet, but for his very famous Name of the rose and for subsequent novels.
A global success
The Mandarin edition of “The Name of the Rose”. A real global best seller. At the beginning no one had foreseen such a success for this debut novel by Umberto Eco.
Il rose's name it was a book of incredible fortune, several million copies (from 4 to over 6) in Italy alone, and dozens more in the rest of the world (estimates here range from 20 to 65 million). A resounding success, one of the greatest ever in our country, superior to the most acclaimed homegrown novels, such as The Leopard, Go where your heart takes you, I kill and very few others.
And to say that everything happened in an absolutely unpredictable and unexpected way. The book came out in 1980, the first printing was about 80.000 copies, and it was not known if it would sell out. In the world of cinema, where they notoriously have a long eye on what could work, they immediately sensed its potential and acquired the film rights for a paltry sum compared to what it would have yielded, while the first foreign countries that asked to translate it, the text was sold at a very low price, so little was believed in the success of a historical novel set in the Middle Ages. Late XNUMXth century feuilleton stuff, they said! A novel that probably, if it hadn't been written by the man who had directed the Bompiani publishing house for almost twenty years and who still continued to collaborate with it, might not even have been published!
And instead the book, whether it was a medieval thriller, whether it was a multi-level work of reading, whether it was a veiled metaphor of our times, whatever it was, grew day by day and proved to be a success of such a magnitude as to amaze the insiders themselves: a novel capable of gripping the reader page after page all the way down, the only real secret of the best seller, almost as if he were an addict towards his drug.
The author composed it almost for fun, in his spare time, first writing it by hand, then with the computer, one of the first to do it, without any pressure, without feeling the breath of the readers on his neck, the urgency and the requests of the editor, the critics' curiosity. He wrote in total freedom. And the best seller of best sellers came out, appreciated and idolized all over the world and screened in cinemas all over the planet.
The difficulty of repeating success
Foucault's Pendulum Georgian Edition. The translation of Umberto Eco's impressive novel was completed in 2017.
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The story didn't end there. Eco in fact, after the resounding success, had no intention of putting away the computer keyboard, and immediately got back to work on a second work. It was inevitable at this point that there was agonizing anticipation for the next birth of his brilliant fantasy, which would be released eight years later, in October 1988: Foucault's pendulum.
But here things went completely differently. The clamor for the second novel was such that there were phenomena of fanaticism and idolatry never seen in publishing, but possibly only for the great stars of football, music and cinema.
On the very day of the book's release, the entire book community in the country was mobilized to manage the super event of the year, preceded by an advertising campaign of unprecedented dimensions, which was accompanied by the frenetic wait of the readers. The piles of the novel, very high in every library, even in the most remote villages, dwindled by the hour. It even seems that on the morning of the book's release there were already vu cumprà around to sell fake copies in the squares, like any pair of imitation shoes.
The initial success was such as to make you pale and by a lot The name of the roseto. The first edition was 300.000 copies and was running out rapidly, so much so that in the same month of October a second of the same size was prepared, pending a further reprint for the Christmas period. Initial sales reached 700.000 copies within a couple of months. Unheard of! But then the book stopped. Or rather, it did not progress with the same intensity as the previous one. At the distance were not the 4–6 million copies of the Name of the rose, but about one and a half million in Italy, much less than half! And the same happened in the rest of the world, with about 9-10 million copies. Why? What was happening?
What was happening was that the second novel, even though it took off like a rocket on the wave of the first resounding success, once the driving effect was exhausted, when the book had to stand on its own legs, it didn't stand the test, and sales slowed down a lot. And this is because the book did not arouse in readers the stimuli that the previous one had aroused. The story of the young Casaubon, who goes with two friends in search of the central point of the world, theumbilicus telluris, from which to control the planet, to then realize that there is no navel of the world and no secret plan implemented by the Templars and taken up by the Rosicrucians, was proving boring and unattractive for the great mass of the public. Had he not had the tow of the previous one, he would have made little progress alone.
Other Narrative Evidence
The same phenomenon was repeated with the following works, with circulations decreasing further: The island of the day before, baudolino, Queen Loana's mysterious flame, Prague cemetery, Number zero. Yes, all of them sold in some hundreds of thousands of copies, which is always exceptional in a country with scarce readers like ours, but not in millions! Proof of the fact that the best seller is almost always unpredictable, difficult to diagnose in advance and to repeat with subsequent works. And it's impossible for it to reach stratospheric figures if it doesn't fully meet the readers' expectations.
Immediately after graduation, working in RAI since its early experimental years, Umberto Eco is able to study the mechanisms of the new medium from within. From this direct experience one of the best known and most cited essays by the Piedmontese writer was born: Phenomenology by Mike Bongiorno today in Diario minimo (in the photo with a competitor of his quiz games and Totò)
The life
Umberto Eco was born in Alessandria in 1932, from a modest family, father employed by the railways and mother a housewife. He attended high school and university, approaching Catholic action groups, until he reached managerial levels at a national level. He graduated at the age of 22, with a thesis on St. Thomas, during the preparation of which it seems that he received the opposite grace: that is, from a believer he became an atheist. Immediately afterwards he enters RAI for competition, where he remains for a few years, during which he collaborates in the preparation of various broadcasts, including those that determine the fortune of Mike Bongiorno, to whose phenomenon he will also dedicate pages that have made history.
In the XNUMXs, having left RAI, he began teaching at university, first in Milan, then in Florence, then again in Milan, before arriving in Bologna, as a full professor, where he will remain for a long time and where he will first contribute to creating the DAMS (art, music, entertainment department) and after the degree course in communication science. But his academic and cultural initiatives in various national and foreign universities and institutions are many others.
Entry into publishing
In 1975, Valentino Bompiani called Umberto Eco to run the publishing house. As general manager he will remain there for twenty years, contributing in a decisive way, also with his books to the success of Bompiani
In 1959 there is the meeting with Valentino Bompiani, the aristocrat, the gentleman, the self-made publisher: the one who began his career in 1929, leaving the Unitas publishing house for refusing to publish the scandalous parody of Betrothed carried out by Guido Da Verona, which the owners instead wanted to publish at any cost, given the extraordinary fame the author enjoyed at the time. With the money from the liquidation Bompiani opens his tiny publishing house, formed by himself and a secretary. And book after book, success after success, initiative after initiative, among which the most conspicuous is undoubtedly the Dictionary of works and characters of all times and all literatures, Bompiani made his name.
Now he needs a general manager, Eco seems to give him the best guarantees and the job is his. He remained there for almost twenty years, until 1975, and then continued to collaborate in various capacities. His activity contributes decisively to the development of the publishing house, of which he becomes the deus ex machina.
His non-fiction works also contribute, Minimum diary, Apocalyptic and integrated, The structure is absent, Treatise on general semiotics, open work, How to do a dissertation, The superman of the masses, Reader in fabula and many others, as well as the many big names that come out under the types of "his" Bompiani, which then, thanks to the Name of the rose and to his other novels, he knows a further and extraordinary growth.
Academic research and major publishing achievements
Eco was also a great cultural impresario and an experimenter of new formats for the communication and dissemination of culture. He was in fact the architect of some of the most important initiatives in the field of new media, within which he has experimented a lot. Here the cover of a volume of one of the many multimedia works conceived and directed by Umberto Eco
Then there are the great editorial achievements that see Eco in the capacity of both director and co-author, such as History in 9 volumes, The history of European civilization in 18 volumes, The great story in 28 volumes, Encyclomedia and others.
Countless are the honorific titles that are assigned to him in all the universities of the world, as well as the courses that he holds, proof of a study and research activity that has no equal in the country. The collaborations with universities, research institutes, national and supranational bodies, as well as with Italian and foreign newspapers and periodicals is equally impressive, almost as if to suspect that due to some spell the days for him did not last 24 hours.
A fixed and essential presence also in journalism
The cartoon by Tullio Pericoli that Eco used for his column "Le sachets of Minerva" on L'Espresso
Eco is always at the forefront of the country's political, social and cultural debate. Starting from the analysis of the world of signs and mass communication, he has widened the scope of his research to every further aspect of culture, the media and the world in general of yesterday and today.
He is consulted on any topic and never backs down, always has his say, writes essays and articles on everything. Among these, "Le bustine dei minerva" are of particular importance, published in l'Espresso weekly from 1985 to 2016, until a few weeks after his death, from 1998 alternating with Eugenio Scalfari.
He died in 2016 at the age of 84, from cancer, after a very industrious life dedicated to study, university teaching, journalism, research, dissemination, fiction.
