OK, I'm forcing myself to do this, to spend the next half-hour or hour writing another journal entry because I've neglected this blog for the last 10 days. And, I'm afraid if I keep ignoring it, I'll have another June 2004 on my hands. Plus, I've still got the heart (or is that anus?) of a comic book collector, who just has to have Daredevil numbers 158, 167, and 189 in order to complete a 200 in-a-row run: I don't enjoy seeing gaping holes between "issues."

There are a couple of reasons for my absence.

The beginning of the Spring 2005 semester is ground enough. I swear, I think one could liken the whole experience to pregnancy/giving birth: While I'll thankfully never experience childbirth firsthand, I've been told that it's incredibly painful, strenuous, and...have I already said painful?...painful. Thing is, this very same physical agony rarely deters mommies from pressing out two, three or - if they're devout Catholic - 15 little bundles of joy. While I cannot honestly compare my last week and a half to a woman's priviledge, I do tend to forget just how demanding UNC faculty, staff, and students can be at the beginning of an academic term. Otherwise I'd seriously consider goat herding as an alternative...

...or becoming a professional book reader.

I've also been trying to get through Umberto Eco's most recent book Die geheimnisvolle Flamme der Koenign Loana in German translation. (The original Italian title of the book is La misteriosa llama de la reina Loana, -- and I would translate the title as The Mysterious Fire (German)/Call (Italian) of Queen Loana.) The book itself is huge, consisting of over 500 densely printed pages sprinkled through with images, reproductions of art, old magazine covers, pictures of everyday household objects from the 30s and 40s, etc., etc. Basically, a sort of menagerie of Eco's childhood.

Here's my quickie review, after having read the first 137 pages: Eco, whom I have always enjoyed reading, should have relegated this one to the personal never-to-be-published projects pile. The first section of the book, roughly its initial 100 pages, were fantastic, as an accident victim who has lost all personal memory (mostly that connected to emotion) tries to recapture his past. The protagonist, for instance, no longer knows his name and personal history, wife, or family, but retains recollections of a vast reading knowledge, including that from literature, politics, and art history. (Curiously, he's surprised to learn that JFK is dead, a reaction the doctor and his wife chalk up to the emotional strain the assassination caused him.)

I blew through the book's exposition, quite fascinated by the topic of lost memory and the "mists of the mind." It's when Yambo (the main character's nickname)decides to proactively clear his brainfog, returning to his childhood home in order to dig through old memorabilia, toys, and printed materials, that I lose interest. Unfortunately, the book forgets its own personality at this point and immediately turns into the author's personal laundry/grocery list of memories -- each one to be checked off with a dry, overly long description of why it piqued the author's boyhood imagination and/or curiosity. When I first opened the book and began whiffiling the pages, I was excited to see hundreds of color and black & white plates scattered throughout, waiting for me. Now, I dread these little "gems" because, for each one, I know the author will go off on yet another historical, yet meaningless-to-the-reader, tangent.

Unless Eco changes course sometime soon after page 137, continuing to read the remaining 400 pages of his novel is going to be like umpteen-odd hours of protracted and unproductive childbirth.