Quote of the week No. 21 : On postmodernism

Woken at six this morning by a thunderstorm, torrential rain and the cat hiding under the bed.

"The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, 'I love you madly,' because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, 'As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly'."

So who could it be that can leap fearlessly from modernism, to Barbara Cartland Queen of trash, to the postmodern wooing of women?

Umberto Eco (1932-), medievalist, semiotician, novelist and author of works as diverse as : The Name of the Rose, A Theory of Semiotics, The Limits of Interpretation, Serendipities : Language & Lunacy, Baudolino, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna, and The Gnomes of Gnu (The Gnomes of Gnu? The Gnomes of Gnu!).

I like old Umberto Umberto - he always has something startling up his sleeve.