I forgot to mention this earlier but there was actually something funny in the Sunday Times Magazine questions column last weekend. Normally it's just Deborah Solomon sounding like an ass. In fact, I've read that a couple of people (including Ira Glass) have accused her of editing their answers in a way that changed the meaning of what they'd said and of making up new questions to answers they'd given. Anyway, Sunday's subject was Umberto Eco. The high point of the interview was when he responded (ostensibly) to a question about the DaVinci Code by saying that Dan Brown was like a character from Foucault's Pendulum. First time I ever heard of DaVinci Code I remember thinking it sounded like Foucault's Pendulum for morons. But it never occurred to me that Brown actually was one of Eco's characters come to life.