Umberto Eco’s ‘Numero Zero’, the Last Novel

Umberto Eco in 1984. Photograph Bogaerts, Rob / Anefo Public Domain

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by Abraham Chinchillas

The starting point is the point of no return. It is the reaction that germinates while the action is brewing. It is the dress rehearsal with lights and an audience. It is number zero.

First published in English a little over ten years ago, in November 2015, Umberto Eco’s Numero Zero became, as of February 19th, the latest novel by the world’s most renowned Italian writer and semiotician. However, it had already established itself as one of the most important and emblematic novels by this philosopher.

The narrator-protagonist, a man in his fifties named Colonna, suddenly finds himself embroiled in an international intrigue when he agrees to become editor-in-chief of a fledgling print publication, Domani, an “oracular” newspaper that will attempt to report on news as it unfolds, rather than reporting on it after it has already happened; worse still, reporting on it in the way they want it to happen.

Set in the 1990s, in an Italy reluctant to transform itself and shake off corruption, yet simultaneously eager to confront the past and find its place in Europe and the world, Numero Zero is a perfect portrait of a society that had already turned the media into a crystal ball where the past could be analysed, the present transformed, and the future redirected as it saw fit, always responding to self-serving and petty interests.

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Even though the internet and social media don’t even make an appearance in the story, the plans to create a new newspaper serve as the perfect pretext to criticise the absolutist power we have granted to the media, where the boundaries between truth, rumour, and lies are so thin as to seem nonexistent: Suspicions are never exaggerated. To suspect, to suspect, only in this way can the truth be found.

In the editorial meetings where the six members of the team try to put together one or more “issue zeros”, they devise journalistic maxims that, in essence, reveal the cunning nature our profession has acquired: it’s not the news that makes the newspaper, but the newspaper that makes the news; the effective insinuation to discredit someone; the secret lies in what and how to use quotation marks; newspapers teach people how to think, among other gems.

What immediately strikes you about Number Zero is its length, rather brief compared to The Name of the Rose or other novels by the author, only to then realise that it is actually a synthesis of what the author has addressed throughout his books: criticism of the mass media, analysis of history (in this case, the recent history of his country since the end of World War II), pessimism tempered with caustic humour where the future is a perpetual sentence, all while maintaining intelligent storytelling and elegant use of language. A new and thoroughly enjoyable element is the discreet and hopeful love story that unfolds alongside discussions of conspiracy theories involving the CIA, the Vatican, and the fate of Mussolini’s body, alive or dead. Numero Zero is, in reality, Umberto Eco’s first issue; his oldest concerns resurface to show that things in our modern societies, unfortunately (or fortunately, some might say), haven’t changed, and the desire to transform them must remain within us.

The apparent normalcy of the story is suddenly shattered when one of the journalists from Domani is murdered before any of the issues are published, causing misfortune to determine the protagonist’s fate like a published article that foreshadows the event.

A perfect blend of noir, concise journalism manual, public opinion analysis, and recent historical chronicle. A perfect narrative treat to enjoy on a weekend and make Eco our own, who perhaps hid at the end of the first chapter the certainty that his end was near: The fear of dying breathes life into memories.

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Abraham Chinchillas is a Mexican writer, translator, editor, journalist, photographer, broadcaster, and cultural promoter. Born in Mexico City in 1974, he moved to Pachuca, Hidalgo, in 1992, where he studied communication sciences. He is the author of eight books, including the poetry collections Perro que huye (2004), Tráeme la noche, haikus (2006), Zoología indescifrable (2009), Nítido (2012), Diatribas (2013), and Sólo un poco aquí (2015), as well as the narrative works La lluvia probablemente y otros relatos hiperbreves (2008) and Aforismos para caer de la bicicleta (2011). His texts have appeared in a dozen state, national, and international anthologies. He won the Premio Estatal de Periodismo Fundación Latinoamericana 2003, received the Xelhua Artistic Merit distinction in 2012, and has been awarded the Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes de Hidalgo grant three times, in 2006, 2008, and 2013. Since 2007 he has curated the cultural blog Transeúnte Solitario, which received the Dardo 2009 blogging award in Spain. He also helps coordinate the International Colloquium of Poetry and Philosophy, an initiative of Ulises Paniagua Olivares. He is currently Editorial Deputy Director at the Dirección General de Publicaciones e Impresos del Gobierno del Estado de Hidalgo, directs the independent publishing house alb@tros press, writes a weekly literary review column titled La hoja y la mirada for El Sol de Hidalgo, and produces and hosts the radio programme about literature Bibliófono.