How To Travel With A Salmon & Other Essays (Harvest Book)

How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays by Umberto Eco and translated from the Italian by William Weaver is a collection of essays, "diario minimo" or minimal diaries, that are light, funny, and entertaining. They are "droll observations of contemporary life" or "pure divertissements, with no critical or moralistic intentions." Just look at the essay titles in the collection: How to Eat Ice Cream, How to Become a Knight of Malta, How to Replace a Driver's License, etc. But Umberto Eco is Umberto Eco. Even when he seems to be talking about mundane things in a droll manner, he could not help being profound. The title essay is a classic tale of adventure and misadventure about buying an enormous salmon, dirt cheap, in Stockholm and bringing it in his suitcase to London. What a circus of misunderstandings and wrong connections along the way. Ask for a lawyer and get an avocado. Hilarious.

This is my second book by Umberto Eco, the first was The Name of the Rose, which I read on my first Kindle almost two decades ago, a polar opposite to this. Eco is not a writer I am familiar with, and only realized what a hilarious essayist he was when I came across his article, How to Play Indians, on Gilbert Adair's Movies a few months back. Naturally, I grabbed the book from which that piece came from, first chance I got.There are 41 essays covering Eco's pet peeves, ridiculous mishaps, and random musings, written from the mid-eighties to the early nineties, and they range from the hilarious, to funny, to amusing. I breezed through the book in 24 hours, and wondering what wicked, delightful pieces he could have written about today's social phenomena: internet, social media, Tinder, and Tiktok. Below are my top picks--from hilarious to funny, from this collection:1. How to Play Indians (Still the most hysterical of the lot!)1) Never attack immediately: make yourself visible at a distance a few days ahead of time, producing easily observed smoke signals, thus giving the stagecoach or the fort ample time to send word to the Seventh Cavalry.2) Leave clear traces of your progress: hoofprints, smoldering campfires, and amulets allowing identification of tribe.3) Restrain your mustangs, notoriously faster than coach horses, so you won't outstrip the vehicle.4) Never attack at night when the settlers might not be expecting you. Respect the tradition that Indians attack only in daytime.5) Insist on making your presence known by giving the coyote cry, thus revealing your position.6) If a white man gives the coyote cry, raise your head immediately to offer him an easy target.7) Attach by circling wagons, but never narrow your circle, so that you and your companions can be picked off one by one.8) In preparing to attack an isolated farm, send only one man to spy on it at night. Approaching a lighted window, he must observe at length a white woman inside, until she has become aware of the Indian face pressed against the pane. Await the woman's cry and the exit of the men before attempting to escape.9) In shooting from a distance, assume a clearly visible position on the top of a peak, so that you can fall forward to be shattered on the rocks below.10) On capturing an enemy, do not kill him immediately. Tie him to a stake or confine him to a tent, awaiting the new moon, by which time others will come to free him.2. How to Travel With a Salmon3. How to Replace a Driver's License (In Italy. Almost like the Philippines, only worse!)4. How to Buy Gadgets (had me Googling for metal detectors)5. Conversation in Babylon6. How to Justify a Library7. How Not to Use the Fax Machine (I need to find me an essay on what he thought of the internet!)8. How Not to Use the Cellular Phone9. How to Use Suspension Points10. How to Write an Introduction11. How to Set the Record Straight12. How to Organize a Public LibraryThree and a half stars.

I grabbed this as a "time to read some to this guy" and it wasn't really my cup of tea. There were some highlights in insight and a few humorous bits though overall it left me feeling rather nonplussed. Didn't hate it, didn't love it, just an experiment in reading someone I've never read before.

Truth be told I have read this book before. If you have read no Eco this is the prefect primer. The stories and essays give you a nice glimpse into his writing and his humor. Next time I'm in Bologna I have to remember to look him up. One of my favorites is "How to justify a private library" but no fellow traveler can't find at least a smile in "How to travel through customs". It is a great little volume with numerous short bits, pick it up, open at random, enjoy.

Bottom Line First: How to Travel with a Salmon is not a good introduction to Umberto Eco. It is a relaxing, mostly good humored collection for his fans. Some of these pieces are dated to the point of being quaint others have to limited audiences. This is the work of a man capable of very sophisticated and complex work. Here he is having some fun. It is best read in that same frame of mind.Having been entangled and over my intellectual head in some of Umberto Eco's more serious essays, I find his How to Travel with a Salmon to be a pleasant read.In this post 9/11 sensitive to security issues world his title essay about the problems of getting a fish onto an airplane, is almost quaint. I had some of the same feelings reading about his bureaucratic snarls in attempting to replace a stolen driver's licenses. Going back to his problems with the salmon, blaming his hotel bill on staff with poor language skills might have been funny before the issue of immigration into Europe became politicized. Now those same hotels tend to count any removal of the contents of an "honor bar" as the same as consumption of those contents. So his intention to preserve his salmon and the staff's lack of lingua franca aside, he would still be out of pocket for refilling the in room ice box.His essays about making a 1:1 map of a country is a lovely skewering of academia and "logical" argument, but not as much fun as his pastiche of academese about the 3 owls poem. I do not have enough background to pick up all the barbs at the various writers mentioned but the overall effect is a humorous shot across the bow of a class of desperately pretentious, trivial papers.Many of the other short pieces in this short collection come off as grumpy old guy complaining about have to travel to too many conferences where he will be a star attraction. Hardly a common enough problem to be as sympathetic as intended. His essay about the cell phone in public needs only slight updating to apply to folks who can only be recognized by the tops of their heads, as they are always bent over texting into their smart phones.