Flaubert

[jenks]

Don't know if there will be any takers for this but here we go, nonetheless.

I have just finished James Woods' latest book 'How Fiction Works' in which he places Flaubert as the founder of modernism with the invention of free indirect style.

I just wondered what the readers on this board think of him. For me, he is one of the most essential writers, combinig that phenomenal ability to tell a story with a total commitment to the art of prose. But I can imagine others might find him a bit bloodless and rather mannered.

Also he kind of invents the stereotype of the artist sweating over every last comma, which for many is also seen as a kind an imposture.

Finally he is a representative of that great English love affair with a certain kind of French writer - Stendhal but not Hugo for example. A world view which priveliges the old world writers of the nineteeenth century over all newcomers.

Anyway - if you're interested...

 

[woops]

Dunno about style indirecte libre, but i think flaubert is well modern.

The sex in Madame Bovary got him into obscenity troubles.

Bouvard + Pecuchet abandoning their encyclopedic project always strikes me as a 'modern' thing. Just me though.

Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes is a novel with lots of information about Flaubert's life and a good read on its own terms too.

 

[IdleRich]

I'm afraid that I've only read the short story with the parrot and a few others. Madame Bovary I've just never got round to shockingly - maybe later in the year.
I've read the Julian Barnes thing but I didn't really enjoy it that much - seemed readable enough but at the end I felt that there had been little in the way of point to it. Maybe I would have got more out of it if I'd read more Flaubert.