SOURCE: “Expert of the Everyday,” in Times Literary Supplement, September 26, 1986, p. 1061.

In the following review, Adair discusses Eco's methodology in Faith in Fakes, noting that the collection's unifying principle lies in its interpretation of the common stuff of life.

The English-language title of Umberto Eco's foray into the semiology of the quotidian [Faith in Fakes] is a rather misleading one, only partially applicable to the twenty-six essays of which it is made up. To be sure, the first, lengthiest and most seductive piece, “Travels in Hyper Reality”, which whizzes us from Hearst's San Simeon castle to Lyndon Johnson's personal mausoleum, from the Ca' d'Zan, a half-Venetian, half-Venusian palazzo erected by the Ringling Brothers (of three-ring circus fame) in Florida to the concentration kitsch of Southern California's Madonna Inn, provides a panoramic, zigzagging overview of the United States' somewhat chilly “philosophy of immortality as duplication”. In it, Eco demonstrates...