From time to time I'll write up a review of a book that i just read or a book that I may have read a while ago but feel the need to mention. Just last night I finished the new Umberto Eco book, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and it reminded me that it’s always interesting to measure the point in the career of an accomplished writer when they realize that they can pitch an idea for a book, write the first half of the book based on that interesting premise, sell the idea to the publisher, and then phone in the second half and collect the checks. Some good examples of this at work can be found in John Edgar Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire and Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution.

The premise of Philadelphia Fire is a novelization of one man’s reaction to the police bombing of a Philadelphia tenement inhabited by a militant group in the early 80’s. There’s even a great passage about the aged narrator taking to a local street basketball court and seeing if his knees still hold up. Great stuff, and no doubt the publishers were more than happy with the first half of the book. Then Wideman phones in the second half, never mentions Philadelphia or tenements; focuses instead on his beach house and cheating on his wife. What happened? It’s ok for him to admit if he just ran out of ideas; there’s no shame in writing short stories. Stretch it into a novel if you must, but don’t let the quality suffer.

The Final Solution has perhaps an even more interesting premise: an aged and reclusive Sherlock Holmes is sought out by a deaf mute Jewish refuge and his number spewing parrot during WWII. Does the parrot have some secret code involving the war effort that only the great detective can explain? Great premise. The bird then goes missing and the police solicit Holmes’ help with solving the theft, leading to a classically great passage where Holmes examines the crime scene and immediately clears the prime suspect. The book then completely falls apart. Instead of cracking Nazi code, Holmes sleuthing consists of making a trek to a pet store. An unbelievable train wreck from one of my favorite authors.

I mention all this to establish the theme of my review of The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Once again, an interesting premise – an elderly Italian man, a dealer in rare books, is in an accident and loses all memory, but can instantly recall every word he has ever read (and apparently every movie he ghas seen and every song he has heard, although this aspect isn't explained too well). As the protagonist seeks out his lost memory, the reader is presented with literary memories ranging from comic books that he read as a child to the fascist propaganda he was subjected to as a student in Italy during WWII. The book is even stuffed full of pictures related to his literary memories, making it at times read like a comic book or graphic novel. Then, just as the protagonist has his first epiphany, related to an unrequited high school crush that clearly is effecting this man far too much (he is married to a presumably wonderful women, has kids and grandkids, and even a few mistresses, so why should a girl who wouldn’t talk to him in high school haunt him so much?) it all falls apart. He apparently suffers a stroke, lapses into a coma, and begins telling stories from his childhood that may or may not have existed. As though he were running out of paper, Eco then kills him by having him climb a staircase toward a door that leads into a well-lit room (no cliché there), passing on the stairs all of the fictional and literary characters he recalled earlier in the book. (So long Clarabell Cow… thanks for the good times Josephine Baker… Take care Cyrano… See you in hell Dr. Zarkov…)

What could have been an amazing examination of literature (and mass media in general) and it’s influence on the memories and the shaping of an individual's psyche is instead used by Eco to lament the loss of a pretty 16 year-old girl who any normal guy would have moved past long ago. Eco clearly has issues, and I like to think that he has spent the past few months begging his wife to not read too much into the book, that he’s not some elderly schmoe lusting after the memory of a girl who didn’t even know he existed. But he probably is, and unfortunately he feels the need to unburden his soul on his audience.

Overall, not a bad read, but it could have been so much better. If you’ve got a few weeks to kill and like books with pictures, it’s not bad, but wait till it’s out in paperback.