More from The Paris Review’s vaults–a 2008 interview with Umberto Eco—
INTERVIEWER: Have you read The Da Vinci Code?
ECO: Yes, I am guilty of that too.
INTERVIEWER: That novel seems like a bizarre little offshoot of Foucault’s Pendulum.
ECO: The author, Dan Brown, is a character from Foucault’s Pendulum! I invented him. He shares my characters’ fascinations—the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.
Biblioklept 