MEANING IS WHERE YOU FIND IT

Re Richard Eder’s review of “Foucault’s Pendulum” (Book Review, Nov. 5): Is that what it’s about, structuralism, deconstruction, and other lit-crit games?

I thought the book was a bizarre and hilarious parable about the search for a meaning--the one fixed point--in a world in which the answer, ultimately, is No. If you’re searching for meaning, you find connections everywhere, and a few faded words on a scrap of paper contain the clues to a mystery.

From that perspective, the Brazilian voodoo ceremony and the Piedmont occultists’ ritual (not my idea of an orgy) aren’t leaden and wearying at all--in fact, the point of the voodoo interlude was (may have been) that you can stumble over meaning even when you don’t know you’re looking for it.

On the other hand, if you’re not searching for meaning, the faded words on the old paper are simply a laundry list. (Eder “could have used more” of a character who saw all meaning as springing from her womb, but I had quite enough of her. I could have used fewer revelations about the end of the story, but Eder doubtless believed he was doing a favor for all those readers he thought wouldn’t finish it.)

My advice: Enjoy the book, and don’t get bogged down in details that aren’t meant to be taken seriously.

In an early scene, Col. Ardenti adds 666 to 1344, comes up with 2000, and no one catches it. I tucked that away for reference, certain the error would pop up again. It doesn’t--although Casaubon comments about 100 pages later that in mystical addition and subtraction, you come up with whatever answer you want.

Wait a minute--about the connection to lit-crit theories. . . .

JUDITH GARWOOD

LOS ANGELES