Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)

I left my reading about ten pages before the end of this incomplete novel. It ends arbitrarily, so on a whim, or a plan, I ended it. I haven’t given the last pages another thought. I read Flaubert’s ‘plan’ that comes afterwards. But that fittingly too is incomplete and in keeping with the non-‘end’.

At the beginning, I thought Bouvard and Pecuchet would wander around Paris together. But that lasted only for a few pages. I followed where they went on google maps to no end, either. show more I thought I might be reading the earliest version of Samuel Beckett's Mercier et Camier. But I was wrong. B & P moved to the country and physically stayed put. Intellectually, they sort of move in circles.

They pursue human knowledge systems. Though in reality that is a grandiose description of their idiotic pursuits, which are grandiose in approach, too. They try everything, philosophy, palaeontology, medicine, etc etc. Their approach starts in one place and abruptly changes, they are incomplete learners. Their entire experience reminds me of spending an evening searching for something on the web, only to end up in dark places, or places I didn’t expect. No knowledge gained, but much time lost.

My favourite is agriculture. I could see the disasters and read with one hand covering my eyes peaking through the gaps in my fingers at this cerebral slapstick.

The tone is comic, or heightened to focus on the folly of B & Ps mission. Along the way, we know some of their ideas are stupid, only because we know they are false - as history has told us. They argue regularly with the town’s curé when their inclination goes to matters of religion. They espouse nonsense they just read, and half understood, from books. But the curé’s answers are just as daft anyway. Imagine people espousing stupid ideas to each other across an intellectual abyss. Sounds familiar. Sounds modern.

Some of the writing is wonderful. Here is a comic moment following an argument in the rain:

The water ran along his spine into to his boots, his ears, his eyes, despite the peak of his Amoros cap, the curé picked up the skirts of his cassock with one arm, baring his legs, and the points of his tricorn gushed water over his shoulders like gargoyles in a cathedral

Arguments come and go, started enthusiastically, easily derailed. Little time is spent mastering a system of knowledge:

‘Oh! You are sophist!’ And Pecuchet was so vexed he sulked for three days… They both confessed that they were tired of philosophers. So many systems only confuse you. Metaphysics is useless. One can live without it.

But their quest goes on regardless. Another human knowledge system is pursued yet again. And then again. They must attempt it at least. Do they die? I’ll never know. I didn’t finish, nor did Flaubert. But I can imagine the two of them dancing their way to heaven, having refuted it. Perhaps only changing dance steps along the way. show less

Flaubert is mostly known for Madame Bovary, but when I first heard of Salammbo I was instantly intrigued. A sword-and-sandal epic set in Carthage during the Mercenary Revolt after the First Punic War? Sign me up! While reading I could see how it influenced later fantasy stories such as Conan the Barbarian and Elric, despite being a work of historical fiction. All the ingredients were there: larger-than-life warriors, sensual priestesses (with the essential accessory of a pet snake), decadent show more empires, lurid descriptions of battle, lavishly described feasts. Though Salammbo eschews psychological insight in favor of evocative descriptions of a fantastical Carthage, I found it unputdownable once the action got going and devoured the novel over the course of a few hours. show less

Finally getting my first taste of Flaubert in the original French, and I decided to start with something shorter to build myself up to finally getting to read Bovary (which is part of the final motivation for me to begin this attempt to learn to read French to begin with). Mémoires d'un fou is a strange little tome - Flaubert wrote it when he was 17, and once you know this you find it unmistakably the work of a teenage boy... and yet already there were the first shoots of what was to become show more a great talent.

The book is structured quite oddly - there's a main story of sorts, a first (and frustrated) love that shapes the first person narrator indelibly, yet this also contains plenty of other remembrances/reflections on youth that feel more like something from a personal journal, as well as some adolescent philosophy along the way. The last of these three is definitely the worst of the structures and moods the story explores, sometimes becoming quite tedious or trite even though the core mode of thinking is one Flaubert would more or less stick to for the rest of his life with much more development and nuance (and if you ever doubt the extent to which Emma Bovary was in good part a personalisation of Flaubert himself, and his own scathing and mordant wit a kind of self-criticism, you can find it here in barrels). The more nostalgic and melancholic sections on the other hand feel oddly as if they're in an early lineage with what Nerval would do in Sylvie 20 years or so later and which would eventually form the basis of Proust's project, a commonality it's difficult to find between the two great French writers elsewhere.

Already the core elements of the kind of romanticist/realist blend Flaubert would master are in evidence and if at times this made me double-take or roll my eyes, I found that in the closing chapters I was quite moved and that at points the great writer who could turn a phrase as if wielding a dagger into your heart was already in evidence this early on. As much as this is juvenilia, a first draft of a confessional novel that feels very obviously a first draft, it's times like this I'm reminded that however good my own writing may one day get I'm operating a thousand leagues below what Gustave was capable of before he was even fully an adult... depressing for me but at least we all got to experience the benefits.

Also if you're into psychoanalysis you'll get a lot of grist for the mill out of all the sexual elements at play here. Be prepared.
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Found this a really gentle read that I completed in a single day - had to do some word look-ups but this came close to extensive reading. show less

I came to Madame Bovary bearing in mind two quotes: author Dan Simmons' claim that it "separated the history of novels into two categories — Before Madame Bovary and After Madame Bovary"; and what Henry James said, that this novel "has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone". The consensus is that Flaubert exhibited himself as a master of style in writing this novel, employing Realism in its detail of commoners' lives, his exacting word choice and show more descriptions. Letters written by Flaubert at the time speak to his frustration and despair at ever achieving the perfection he was aiming for ("Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles."), but posterity has since brushed away those fears and Madame Bovary is found, over and over again, on lists of the best novels ever written in any language.

I'm a poor scholar who could not have recognized any of these facts if I'd not been hit over the head with them beforehand. The book I read appears fairly straightforward, simple. That may be its deception. The sentence structure, as Mr. Simmons has pointed out, is purposely perfect throughout for reading aloud, in its lengths and pauses. I did admire the wonderful choices of detail in describing a scene or characters' actions, and the way Flaubert expertly described difficult-to-capture feelings through metaphor. I'm extremely curious how much of the novel's vaunted perfection is lost in translation from French to English, but still I can be appreciative of what comes across. My final impression of the novel's style is that, while I can't point to exactly what its perfection entails, I sense the evidence sufficiently well to accept the opinions of my scholastic betters at face value.

I've not yet addressed what the novel is about. A woman married to a country doctor becomes dissatisfied with her present circumstances, comparing it always to an alternative of which she dreams. Her fatal flaw lies in believing happiness is delivered to oneself as a package with a particular setting, with particular accoutrements. She lives in her dreams of a fantasy life that is expressly free of all domestic concerns, thoughts for others, practical matters. Her desire for its attainment becomes her only goal of worth, to be had at any cost, for which she begins to excuse herself any action. It is her fascination with the fantasy life she dreams of obtaining that continuously places more distance between her and reality, until she becomes susceptible to those who would take advantage. With even so little external validation as that, she loses all ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality and becomes lost thereafter.

What does it all mean? It's unlikely to simply be a commentary on the immorality of adultery. I've gathered Flaubert was no fan of the bourgeoisie, and this novel may summarize his views: their fascination with haute-culture, their equating it with happiness, and how very far from happiness this attitude taken to its extreme might lead. The flip side interpretation is that Emma's flights of fancy are in fact condoned by the author as insightfulness into beauty, which the staid bourgeoisie community surrounding her is entirely blind even to imagining. Either way, bourgeoisie get the shaft.

I'm going to dare a criticism and say, what I felt missing was Madame's inner thoughts and feelings which led her into marriage. They are so quickly mentioned and then put behind her, I barely grasped what placed her in her predicament. It would have been more satisfying to me had more of the initial story been told from her perspective, so we could witness and better understand what her impressions and expectations of Charles had been. Perhaps Flaubert felt this was irrelevant to his story, or sufficiently described and/or implied as it stands, and perhaps a million critics before me have agreed with him - but I wonder at it. In spite of that, what I won't dare is to give this novel a less than perfect score. show less