Here, have some morals

I never came across uber-intellectual Umberto Eco in my three years in university. The first time I ever heard of him was in The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, introduced as a demonstrative example of knowledge and anti-knowledge in the opening chapter.

Eco, you see, apparently owns a personal library containing 30,000 books.

Which is all the more odd because I should have at least heard of him mentioned in class considering his powerhouse role as a public intellectual/ philosopher/ literary critic/ popular novelist and professor of semiotics. (Maybe NUS lecturers only like to read chic French semioticians. Eco is Italian, by the way.)

But it's never too late to start. Five Moral Pieces is heavy reading even though they are short essays (111 pages in all). It is written in an academic tone, dwells into ethical considerations and make timeless arguments about war, religion and the state of the press.

Written more than a decade ago, Eco's critique on the state of the press in the world and in Italy, for example, resonates with the state of the press in Singapore. (I felt this bit on the press was the most interesting. It's not all that perfect even from where he comes from.)

His complaints? Too much sensationalism, too focused on inconsequential happenings that distort the perception of news readers and having a business model sustained by the advertising monster.

The best thing about these older works is that I never get to come across the word "globalisation" that often, even though Eco talks about globalisation without really referring to it so assuredly.

For fans of his meaty novels, this book might not be appealing. But for fans who want to catch a glimpse of this renowned academic without going through a mountain of his works (although not so renowned from where I come from), this book is a good place to start.