Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
an image of a kind of entrepreneurial mesmerist who
also happens to be mentally ill. However, we also have
Richard Ford’s “Frank Banscombe”, a name redolent
of Updike’s great tragicomic figure Harry ‘Rabbit’
Angstrom: thus a more naturalistic name could be said
to suit the subtler pastiche and ironic métiers of Ford
and Updike.
Names become their strangest when the demarcations
between fiction and reality begin to merge into
one another . Umberto Eco is a case in point. His nonfictional
name is almost too literary, too good, to be
the real name of an author. One of Eco’s short stories
BUY books online from and
from Misreadings is entitled ‘Granita’ and is a twist
upon Lolita, where the subject of desire is an old lady.
In the Nabokovian version the central protagonist is, of
course, Humbert Humbert, the name once again being
indicative of a double or split image. The similarity
of Umberto to Humbert is striking, and “Eco” sounds
like an allusion to the fact that the first name is an echo
of the first. Before knowing any better I found myself
thinking that perhaps Will Self was a sly allusion to one
of his mentors (and mates) Martin Amis. But that would
be to confuse art with life. And we all know where that
gets us… �
362
More
Spike
email
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z