Of Interest

The Village Voice has an interview with Eco about his book, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. I don't usually think of books as being hypertextual, but Eco does:

In the Eco-ian universe, books aren't merely stand-alone islands to be traversed in linear fashion; they are nodes in an exponentially expanding extranet. To read one book, you sometimes have to pass through several others, accumulating countless references and subtexts along the way. "We've been reading books in a hypertextual way ever since Homer," Eco says. "We read a page and then we jump, especially when we're rereading it. Think of the Bible. When people read it, they're always jumping here and there, constantly connecting various quotations."

I am about halfway through Mysterious Flame and have not come upon any more new vocabulary words. Nor has Queen Loana made an appearance. And Yambo's pylorus has not been very active lately. There is, however, an illustration from a story about Yambo, the real fictional character Eco's fictional protagonist is nicknamed for, and Yambo has a very large quiff. It sticks out straight and is very large. Yambo must have had access to some good hair products to keep his quiff so well tamed.

Nobody cares about the shoes, it's the naked celebrites people are buying the book for.