“That is why I responded sharply to Maia.
– My love, can’t you see that, step by step, even Italy is turning into the lands of your dreams that you want to escape to? If we have managed first to accept, and then to forget all the things shown by the BBC, that means we are slowly getting accustomed to losing our sense of shame. (…) All we have to do is wait: when it definitely becomes just like a third world country, our country will turn into a lovely place, a real paradise, a veritable Copacabana everywhere you go, the place where ‘a woman is a queen, a woman is a dream’.”
Instead of a summary
As we have already detailed, Numero Zero talks about the events in the more recent Italian history, focusing more on the political and criminal events of the 20th century, though containing echoes also of the 19th century when the modern Italian state was formed. Due to this fact, all the events and plots in the book might seem distant and obscure to the ordinary Macedonian reader, especially the one unacquainted with political events in the 20th century. The translator Maria Grazia Cvetkovska has done solid work in providing explanations in footnotes, though the scope of names and events prevents any attempt at full clarification. Still, Eco wouldn’t be the master of his craft if he didn’t imbue his work with multiple layers of complexity which helps the novel rise form the level of a run-of-the-mill historical detective novel. Macedonian readers can draw quite a number of interesting parallels with the current situation both globally and at home. First, we can find the close relations between media, business and politics in their attempt to manipulate public opinion, especially through the massive use of propaganda methods for the purpose of distorting reality. Furthermore, Eco with Numero Zero provides his readers with a manual on how methods of manipulation are used by today’s media, examples of which we can find on a daily basis in our newspapers and on our screens. The awareness that we are under constant surveillance and control by the secret services echoes throughout the novel, symbolized by the ominous presence of the police informant Lucidi, a feeling which has become ever more present for Macedonian readers with the latest scandals in our country. Finally, the depiction of the presence, even one can say the contamination of the public sphere and discourse with the omnipresent conspiracy theories both on the global and the national level is one of the hallmarks of Numero Zero. This phenomenon has been greatly aided by the explosion of new media in the modern digital age and society, media that constantly hunger for new content and whose needs are best met by the process of creation of new and recombination of old conspiracy theories, an unending source of new content. They help feed the monster – the internet and the media universe – which then continues to distort our sense and perception of reality.
In conclusion, we must say that we don’t find Eco in the best writing shape of his life in Numero Zero, but that doesn’t make this a bad novel. It’s just not the master piece that we are accustomed to receive from him. One can even look at the novel as a stylistic exercise in how a novel by Umberto Eco should look like. As we have already pointed out, he goes back to all of his well-known topics, the characterization and the plot feel oddly familiar from his previous novels, as well as his encyclopedic knowledge and sense of humor, satire and irony. However, all of these elements are joined together in somewhat elementary fashion when compared to his previous works. Maybe it was the local nature of his topic or his rather old age that prevented him from delving deeper or put more thought in the development of his latest book, we cannot be sure. To a certain degree, Numero Zero represents a version of all his previous texts, which makes this novel a good read or introduction into his oeuvre for a novice reader. Or, maybe you can see it as a fun read, a book to accompany you on a trip, on holiday or before you go to sleep. Eco, as a writer who has always maintained that literature should primarily be fun, I would think would be pleased with that, too.