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Ooh, too much responsibility! Especially now that school has started, but I LOVE the idea as long as we didn't get all didactic and highfaluttin'!

Ill probably travel to the states in a month or two and Ill buy PP.

Flaubert is a realist in the sense that the omniscient narrator rarely buts in or comments on the action, and his genius is that this never turns into something like a laundry list.

POS: pice of sh%t. Stranger in a Strange Land made me feel dirty for having read it. The first half was fine and funny, but the second half made me want to rip apart the book.

Hey Pat, we should start a Lit Blog!

O.K. You've sold me, I'll re-read Flaubert, but in exchange you -must- bump Jane Austen to the top of your pile. Flaubert's structural elegances pale in comparison to hers, and her abiltiy to describe the human character just doesn't have an equal. And when you compare her to Flaubert, remember, she did it first.

Although I was taught that Flaubert was a 'realist' I never bought it. As you read you can see the strings attached to all of his characters and to many of his plot points.

I adore magic realism. I was exposed to so much depressing Spanish lit. (En el Ardiente Oscuridad, Blood Wedding, the picaresque novels, god, I can't remember most of them) that Marquez came as a dazzling, horrifying joy to me and Allende as a comfort--LOVE those guys!

What is a 'pos'? There was a time I thought of Heinlein as a guilty pleasure, but I don't anymore. He's an honest, straightforward storyteller of great charm and a bit of a philosopher. But, God, don't judge him by his late work. I think he must have been suffering from dementia.

You should read the essay first and then go on to the novel again, its quite an eye opener.

I think you are seeing the novel from a very particular point of view. Flaubert wrote that he thought that literature shouldn't have a particular moral pov, so the doctor isn't punished, its just what happened because he was rather complacient and mediocre, and Emma wanted a romantic love that no one could satisfy, least of all him. And again Madame Bovary is a realist novel, so it has no heroes to speak of, its a novel about mediocrity and pettiness, but also a complex human life. You should definitely pick it up again, the technical and formal achievements of it are humbling.

I have yet to read Pride and Prejudice, I have mainly read XIXc French and Russian literature as well as all kinds of Spanish and Latin American, but Ill probably get to Austen soon. I read Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" and thought it was a pos, I'm told many people have this reaction to that book, I have Star Ship Troopers awaiting review, Allende I read some of the earlier stuff, but in general I shy away from magical realism, even García Marquez, Its really not the best the continent has to offer.

Maybe, Nixomatos. I'll admit my answer was rather flippant, and god knows Emma Bovary brought on plenty of her own descruction. I'd have to give it a careful re-reading to feel I could stand up to my side of a debate, but what I remember being so striking is that the doctor is punished for being a 'weak' husband and Emma for selfishly wanting love.

My perfect book is _Pride And Predjudice_. It's been dismissed as 'fiction of manners' but it is so much more and does its job without demeaning its heroes.

I have some writerly aspirations of my own, and Austen, and Ursula LeGuin are my biggest influences. There are a stack of other influences (esp. Isabelle Allende, Atwood, Heinlein) but those two are my gods.

No updates all weekend? What a total waste of a good blog. For shame.

Edited by author 09-02-2002 04:06 PM
Being a Madame Bovary fanatic your comments obviously left me ready to pounce, hehe, but anyway I won't. You should read the essay, I think you aren't getting all you could from Bovary. She really isn't seduced, she seduces others and prostitutes herself (she does pay her lovers for sex with gifts). She's a tragic heroine, but she's also petty and vain and materialistic. She's a romantic who had to die a romantic death.

The subtexts, the overall roundness of the narrative and the literary devices are wonderful. I have writerly aspirations myself and I keep two books by my computer, the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy and Madame Bovary. In fact all of Vargas Llosa's books are influenced greatly by Flaubert and Stendhal. If you take the scene of the dog's mutilation in Time of the Hero and compare it to the one in Bovary where they amputate the leg of Hipolyte youll see that the technique is very similar.

I just wouldn't dismiss the book as "Typical 19th century mysogeny" that's a very narrow way of looking at it. And in fact that's one of the reasons the book was taken to court at the time, because "the bad guys" weren't punished in the end.

I'll bet that's fascinating. I'll have to look it up.

But _Madame Bovery_ , ugh. Typical 19th century mysogeny. She is seduced and dies a hideous death, the seducer goes completely unpunished either by society or fate. Same with _Anna Karenina_, etc.

But to be fair the romantic novel gets us a little of our own back--to be fit to live with, the hero gets emasculated. _Jane Eyre_(hero blinded), _Wuthering Heights_ (hero dies--yes, you'd have to kill a guy like Heathcliff to be able to live with him), _Rebecca_ a late entry in which the hero is litterally castrated during the fire. Check out the last chapter---'..there will be no children...'

I wonder what Llosa would think?

Nope, Its the same guy (Time of the Hero, Feast of the Goat) its a study on Madame Bovary which I just re-read a couple of weeks ago. Its also in an indirect way a primer on how to write a good novel.

!! I never heard of that, which surprises me, since I thought I knew my classic Spanish-language classics a little bit, or am I confusing this guy with someone else? Must be good to be so distracting.

I should be finishing up some readings and studying for school, but instead I'm pretty hooked with "The Perpetual Orgy" by Mario Vargas Llosa.

Slashdot I suppose.

So what are you doing this week-end? I'm ironing my clothes and talking to telemarketers.

isn't there a support group for boing boing deprivation syndrome?

alone... all alone...

Oh, didn't remember burning man. Of course! And the S.F. worldcon is this week-end.

ah burning man.

I was thinking the same thing… I NEED MY FIX!

Boy, I've seen boingboing dead before, but I've -never- seen it THIS dead!