Reviews
i gave this book so little of myself and it gave me so much in return. i found this so incredibly warm and true-frederic is human and despite it all he is rewarded for it. can’t wait to reread, this book is incredibly special
taxing. refreshing and reassuring: cosmopolitanism really hasn’t changed all that much. also — for those exact reasons — extremely unnerving. depending on where you are in life, be it with work, love, political growth, or age, this book could be very funny: “these idiots!” but it could also be frightening: “oh god… am i… ?” could also be totally irrelevant, esp passages with a seemingly superfluous depth of detail about provincial nature scenes, or the accoutrements of Parisian bourgeois. but thru learning about these details (there’s lots of helpful contextual notes throughout) you could also, theoretically, learn a lot about Paris as a place, and a particular moment in French history and cultural development. and you could probably see how little has changed from then until now, and how much has changed.
** spoiler alert ** Firstly: Flaubert's intent in writing this book is critical and ironical. The negative aspects of his characters are constructed exactly to the end of showing the flaws of that generation, of the Romantics who did not act upon their wishes. The only redeeming quality of the book is the beautiful language, which is musical to the highest point. That said, it's impossible to truly love this book for me. I may not be objective because I am really tired of reading about young, privileged, whiny, white, inactive men and their "love" for women. Frédéric doesn't love Mme Arnoux, he doesn't even know her. The woman he does get to know, La Maréchale, he isn't capable of loving. This is coherent with the rest of his personality: he isn't capable of doing anything except sitting passively back and letting things happen to him.
Little premature cause I’m 30 pages from the end. There were some delightful bits, and I can’t say I recommend reading this book just a couple pages at a time like I did, lost track of a lot of the characters but does feel like an honest take on the pulling apart of the self as a result of dabbling in ill-conceived affairs rather than committing yourself to any particular ideal…though there’s plenty of takes on the disaster of the singular ideal as well…
As I'm copying down notes and quotes from Lisa Robertson's "Boat," I come across this, which feels summative in regards to this book: "we learn to temper/resistance with desire / to temper desire/with resistance / so neither disse/mbles into force"
Encore un classique qui me tombe des mains, ce qui m'arrive très souvent avec les romans de Flaubert...
