There are at least two reasons to continue discussing Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose nearly half a century after its publication. The first is that it is a novel centered on a library. Imagination, without memory, is impossible, and the form of human memory is, without a doubt, closely tied to the book. Libraries, therefore, are places of imagination—of the future, of desire. The second reason, however, concerns the relationship between power and the comic. Power does not like the comic; it prefers the tragic. Power does not like it when people laugh at themselves or at power itself. Power does not like laughter and the comic because they cause disorder. In a present where memory is considered a burden, where we’re growing unaccustomed to alphabetical order because we spend our time typing words into search bars, and where laughter is increasingly seen as unbearable—everything must be solemn, serious, joking is out of place in times of tragedy—to Chiara Valerio, rereading The Name of the Rose on the occasion of a new library opening seemed the only possible choice.
