Umberto Eco - How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN BY WILLIAM WEAVER

A HELEN AND KURT WOLFF BOOK
A HARVEST BOOK HARCOURT, INC.

SAN DIEGO NEW YORK LONDON

1992 Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri, Bompiani, Sonzogno, Etas S.p.A.
English translation copyright 1994 by Harcourt, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or
any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work
should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department,
Harcourt. Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

This is a translation of II Secondo Diario Minimo.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eco, Umberto.
[Secondo diario minimo. English]
How to travel with a salmon & other essays/Umberto Eco;
translated from the Italian by William Weaver,
p. cm.(A Harvest book)
"A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book."
ISBN 0-15-600125X
I. Weaver, William, 1923 II. Title.
PQ4865.C6A28 1995
854'.912dc20 95-16885

Designed by Lori J. McThomas
Display type set in Spectrum and Alternative Gothic

Printed in the United States of America
First Harvest edition 1995

M O Q P N L

Preface

How to Travel with a Salmon

How to Replace a Driver's License

How to Eat in Flight

How to Go Through Customs

How to Travel on American Trains

How to Take Intelligent Vacations

How to Use the Taxi Driver

How Not to Talk about Soccer

How to Use the Coffeepot from Hell

How to React to Familiar Faces

How to Be a TV Host

How Not to Know the Time

Stars and Stripes

Conversation in Babylon

On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1

How to Eat Ice Cream

How It Begins, and How It Ends

How to Justify a Private Library

How to Compile an Inventory

How to Spend Time

How to Buy Gadgets

How to Follow Instructions

How to Become a Knight of Malta

How to Deal with Telegrams

How Not to Use the Fax Machine

How Not to Use the Cellular Phone

Three Owls on a Chest of Drawers

Editorial Revision

Sequels

How to Use Suspension Points

How to Write an Introduction

How to Write an Introduction to an Art Catalogue

How to Set the Record Straight

How to Watch Out for Widows

How to Organize a Public Library

How to Speak of Animals

How to Play Indians

How to Recognize a Porn Movie

How to Avoid Contagious Diseases

How to Choose a Remunerative Profession

The Miracle of San Baudolino

Between 1959 and 1961 I was responsible for a regular column entitled "Diario minimo" in the literary magazine II Verri, edited by Luciano Anceschi. The very existence of the column represented an act of courage on Anceschi's part, because cultural reviews in those days took themselves very seriously indeed, and the "Diario," on the other hand, consisted of droll observations on contemporary life, bookish parodies, fantasies, and various lunacies by a number of contributors, among them many of Italy's most gifted younger poets, critics, philosophers, and novelists. We also ran clippings from newspapers, eccentric quotations, and so on, which, as I recall, various contributors to the magazine turned in occasionally, to enrich the column. Since I was in charge, I contributed more than anyone else: at first, moralities, then, increasingly, literary pastiches.

Around 1962 the editor and poet Vittorio Sereni asked me to collect these pieces of mine in a volume for the publisher Mondadori, and as the column no longer existed and "Diario minimo" had become virtually a generic term, I used this title for the book that came out first in 1963 and was reprinted in 1975. For this later edition, which eliminated many of the moralities (some of them were too closely linked to transitory events), I favored the pastiches, including several more recent pieces. Some years afterwards, the volume was adapted into English and entitled Misreadings.

That first Diario has had quite a history; it has gone through several editions, and I know that the students of several architecture departments are required to ponder the "Paradox of Porta Ludovica," and a department of classical philology created a seminar to discuss whether scholars of the ancient world look on the Greek lyric poets in the way my Eskimos of the next millennium looked on the contents of a tattered collection of popular song texts. Parisian friends, founders of Transcultura, an organization that imports African and Asian anthropologists to study European cities, say that their program was inspired by my "Industry and Sexual Repression in a Po Valley Society," in which Melanesian anthropologists analyzed the primitive Milanese by sophisticated phenomenological parameters.

But, that little volume aside, I have written other "minimal diaries." They appeared in other guises or remained in a desk drawer after I subjected friends to them, frequently co-authors or, at least, prompters. Indeed, after almost apologizing for the first little volume, as if it were less than serious to pursue the pathways of parody, I have since continued with righteous boldness, convinced that it was not only a legitimate procedure but actually a sacred duty.

Almost thirty years went by, the desk drawers became crammed with abandoned manuscripts, and friends kept asking me what had become of certain pieces that only an oral tradition had kept alive. So now I have published a second Diario minimo, still convinced of what I wrote in concluding the preface to the first, in 1975: "For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smileand without a blushin steadfast, virile seriousness."

I should add only that not all the pieces here are in the vein of parody. I have included also pure divertissements, with no critical or moralistic intentions. But I feel no need for ideological justification.

This introduction does not include any acknowledgments: I refer the reader to the piece entitled "How to Write an Introduction" on .

Milan, 5 January 1992

According to the newspapers, there are two main problems besetting the modern world: the invasion of the computer, and the alarming expansion of the Third World. The newspapers are right, and I know it.

My recent journey was brief: one day in Stockholm and three in London. In Stockholm, taking advantage of a free hour, I bought a smoked salmon, an enormous one, dirt cheap. It was carefully packaged in plastic, but I was told that, if I was traveling, I would be well advised to keep it refrigerated. Ha. Just try.

Happily, in London, my publisher made me a reservation in a deluxe hotel: a room equipped with minibar. But on arriving at the hotel, I had the impression I was entering a foreign legation in Peking during the Boxer rebellion: whole families camping out in the lobby, travelers wrapped in blankets sleeping amid their luggage. I questioned the staff, all of them Indians except for a few Malayans, and I was told that just the previous day, in this grand hotel, a computerized system had been installed and, before all the kinks could be eliminated, had broken down for two hours. There was no way of telling which rooms were occupied and which were free. I would have to wait.

Towards evening the system was back up, and I managed to get into my room. Worried about my salmon, I removed it from the suitcase and looked for the minibar.