/lit/ - Literature

Who are the best historical fiction writers?

What is peak middlebrow literature?
asking because im a midwit and i want to genuinely read it

Just finished The Name of the Rose last night and had previously read Foucault's Pendulum
A lot in both of these books probably went over my head although I did find myself catching a lot of Foucault's Pendulum's literary references which didn't seem particularly deep to me beyond them being what I imagine a publisher/academic would have pop into their head in a particular moment
While reading both of these books it felt like I had made a few friends and a mentor and I'm going to miss them, I'm missing Belbo and Casaubon and Diotallevi and Aglie already and somehow even Amparo has stuck with me
It felt sad to know what happened to William and with Adso's life when you consider that the novel is supposed to be the recollections of an old monk, reminiscing over his master's praise and some particular experiences that he had to repress his entire life

>>19598159
How can a man who's so erudite have the most banal opinions? Speaking of which, why do sois love wearing paperboy hats?

>luddite boomer pseud obsessed with the dark ages who regularly dunked on new technologies because LE INTERNET BAD lol
he was everything that's wrong with Italy, good riddance, his fanfictions are shit too

I've never read Umberto Eco. Are his books just genre schlock or do they have literary merit?

Thoughts on Umberto Eco? Especially in regards to his novels after The Name of the Rose and Foucalt's Pendulum. Everyone already knows those are good.

I want to read something medieval. How is he?

Umberto Eco's list of 14 common features of Fascism

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
7. The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”