How a history of ugliness became a thing of beauty

On Ugliness

STANDARDS of beauty change with time — it seems strange to some that anyone could have regarded the flabby, untoned bodies of 1970s films as beautiful. But ugly is easy, isn’t it? It’s misshapen, repellent, snagging on something instinctive in us. Ugliness is yeuch.

Umberto Eco shows that it isn’t so simple. It is 30 years since his first novel, The Name of the Rose, propelled the then middle-aged academic — he will be 80 next month — to worldwide fame. He has been a prolific writer ever since. Meanwhile, he has pursued his academic studies — albeit in the grand manner of one whom wealth has liberated from the publish-or-perish treadmill. He is in the fortunate position of being able to follow his interests.