Literary Crushes
Day 6. I’ll be posting one a day for the next ten days–a list of my top ten completely platonic and not in any way obsessive literary crushes. Here follow my all-time favorite cerebral, brooding, and sometimes tragic heroes in my very favorite books about them.
William of Baskerville. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Brother William is a medieval Sherlock Holmes, his surname a tribute to the great consulting detective and his given name an allusion to William of Occam, of Occam’s razor. He and his “Watson,” a novice named Adso, have been sent to an Italian monastery to take part in a theological debate on poverty; but, calling upon William’s history as an inquisitor, the abbot privately asks William to investigate the death of a monk. What William uncovers are the monks’ dark histories, the tales always caught up in the twisting halls of the monastery’s labyrinthine library.
Key points: labyrinth, murder, detective, cerebral, library, monks
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