In his fiction, Eco always runs the risk of exhausting his readers' patience with the labyrinthine complexity of his narrative, the sheer weight of his erudition, and the open-endedness at which he aims. These issues become especially problematic with Foucault's Pendulum, at once the most challenging and the least obviously satisfying of Eco's novels. Thus, discussion will naturally focus on his success in persuading readers to make the required effort and to accept the unconventional characteristics of the novel.

1. Casaubon devotes his considerable talents for many years to the study of what he considers to be nonsense; so do a number of other bright people. Does this investment of time and intellectual energy somehow lend dignity to the subject? Has Casaubon squandered his life?

2. The characters are continually finding that what they think they have invented is true, after a fashion; at the same time, their...