I had a chance to meet up again with Umberto Eco last night; I was surprised and more than a little delighted to find that he remembered me. (Spacebunny wryly notes that when you follow someone around for 17 hours, accompanied by a film crew, they only wish they could forget you.) Even better, he said that he had no objections to my using an old essay of his in the anthology I’m currently editing.
It’s not a done deal yet because I still have to get permission from the publisher, but the lady with whom I spoke didn’t seem to feel that would be a problem. We’ll see. I’m not going to start counting any chickens yet.
And yes, it was pretty funny when midway through the conversation, it suddenly hit him that we were speaking Italian.
Spacebunny may mock me for being such a fanboy, but at least I’m not writing derivative fan fiction. That would be Dan Brown.