Gustave Flaubert Books

This is a disappointing biography of Flaubert. It discusses neither Flaubert's intellectual development nor his books in any depth. The author makes much of the silliest and must vulgar aspects of Flaubert's personality (as if he felt a special affinity for these topics) while skirting any serious aesthetic or literary issues. Flaubert was certainly a peculiar, irritating man, but Wall, like most celebrity biographers of our day, stresses these aspects to try to squeeze some cheap laughs and prurient snickers from his subject matter. Flaubert's strange love affair with Louise Colet is narrated so sophomorically that it's practically unreadable. The book ends abruptly, summarizing Flaubert's last few years in a few paragraphs, as if the biographer couldn't stand it anymore himself. The best thing about the book is the sprinkling of excerpts from Flaubert's letters. The worst thing is the biographer's low-brow, childish, psychobabbling voice trying to make sense of a literary genius he had no business trying to write a life of. It's as if Seinfeld tried to write a book about Homer.

Flaubert was a difficult man: arrogant, anal, irascible, a lonely bear of a fellow with a special gift for making enemies. Yet Geoffrey Wall manages to make him human and sympathetic. This is a first-rate biography, quick, smart, dramatic and often very funny. The MADAME BOVARY years might be handled better by Francis Steegmuller in his excellent double bio of the author and his masterpiece, but Wall's account of Flaubert's later career cannot be improved on. Giving special life to those chapters is his account of Flaubert's friendship with the immensely likable George Sand. If she can connect with this prickly man, why can't the rest of us? Their exchange of letters is one of the great literary dialogues and Wall tells this story beautifully.

I began this book disliking the man despite my love of his novels. I finished it feeling fond of the man, identifying with his faults, and wanting reread everything.

Peter Gay has taken three lectures and turned them into Savage Reprisals. Each of these essays looks at a different novel from the realist genre of the nineteenth century from three different countries; Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks. The essays are connected by the Peter Gay's examination of the usefulness of these books to historians and by the authors of these novels' anger against their society and the revenge they take against it within their novels. It is easy to see how these essays were brought to life as lectures but they work quite effectively as written works as well. This book will even be of interest to those who have not read the particular novels in question. The epilogue is the crowning achievment of the book and well worth the price of admission. A short, quick, fun spin through the world of novelists, historians and the nineteenth century.

Peter Gay has over the past five decades gotten a reputation as a leading moderate liberal historian, writing on Voltaire, the Enlightenment, Freud and the sexual life of the 19th century middle class. He has shown himself as a moderate, common-sense historian with Freudian interests. This book, part of the Norton Lecture Series, asks to what extent is great literature reliable history? He looks at three major realist masterpieces: "Bleak House," "Madame Bovary" and "Buddenbrooks". Why these three were chosen, instead of, say "Middlemarch," "The Sentimental Education," or "The Maias," is never made clear. Nevertheless by looking at the pyschological problems of Dickens, Flaubert and Mann, he gives a negative verdict for the first two and a more positive one for Mann. He then spends a conclusion arguing against postmodernist nihilism and then praises "The Autumn of the Patriarch."

Unfortunately, this book does not do much credit to either Gay's critical skills or his historical abilities. Indeed, it confirms the worst opinions of European liberalism as being too unimaginative to appreciate the extremes of human behavior. Gay also uses Freudian theory in its most unimaginative way, as a simplistic supporter of order who reduces all differences to someone's abnormality. For a start, Gay's understanding of the books is not all that firm. His discussion of "Bleak House" starts with the death of the non-existent character Richard Carstairs, whom he has confused with Richard Carstone. Miss Flite does not expect an imminent judgement in her endless Chancery case; in fact she confuses judgement with the Final Judgement. It is not quite true that Mrs. Snagsby thinks her husband is having an affair; she actually thinks, utterly wrongly, that Jo is his illegitimate son. Flaubert does not jump in one famous passage from 1848 to 1867, but from 1851 to 1867. The gap, from the beginning of the Second French Republic to its end, is not a minor one, either historically or in the novel. It would be mistaking a gap in American novel from 1861 to 1880, when it is actually starts from 1865.

A more serious problem is Gay's superficiality. Given the revolution in literary criticism over the past three decades it is somewhat alarming to have Gay believe that Marxist criticism ends with George Lukacs. He is prone to making sweeping statements about Dickens, such as that Gradgrind and M'Choakumchild are merely caricatures, or that Leigh Hunt wasn't really like Harold Skimpole, or that the portraits of mothers are mere lampoons. There is no evidence or argument to support these statements: just flat assertion. There is a certain psychological superficiality as well. There is an interesting discussion of Esther Summerson's and Agnes Wickfield's excessive virtue arising out of extreme guilt. But Gay ignores the fact that of the unambiguously middle-class characters in "Bleak House", almost all are horrible parents. Mrs. Guppy is merely silly and Mrs. Woodcourt slightly foolish in her Welsh nostalgia. But Skimpole, Turveydrop, Smallweed, Mrs. Jellby and Mrs. Pardiggle are uniformly repulsive. Vholes incessantly mentions his daughter and father to justify his vampiric behavior, Carstone's foolishness kills himself before his son is even born, while Mrs. Chadband is a cold surrogate mother to Esther. Ironically the one middle-class parent who truly loves her child had her out of wedlock. What would a Freudian analysis make of all this, or the distorted families of Clennam and Dorrit? But Gay has no interest.

Instead he sees Dickens governed by rage, personally irritated by the Law over an unsuccessful lawsuit, and somewhat suspicious of his mother (he does not point out that Skimpole is a more malevolent Micawber, and therefore a more malevolent version of Dickens' father). "For all his protestations to the contrary, Dickens's commitment to the Reality Principle was at best intermitten." he says patronizingly. His main complaint against Dickens is that he underestimated the reforming intentions of good liberals like Gay himself. It therefore rather severely undercuts his case that Gay says that the Second Reform Act of 1867 gave the vote to most men when, in fact, it did not. He also criticizes Dickens for ignoring reforms that were starting right when he writing the novel, as if their success was assured and didn't need Dickens' polemic. It certainly takes a certain lack of imagination to say that there were no Bounderbys, Vholes, Dedlocks, Barnacles, Mrs. Clennams, Podsnaps or Veneerings in Victorian England. Gay's discussion of Flaubert is little better, and views his anger at the bourgeoisie as phobic rage. Allowing for certain self-dramatizing moments on Flaubert's part, this strikes me as obtuse. The July Monarchy was a narrow, illiberal oligarchy, notwithstanding its "liberal" elite; the Second Empire started out as a bloody dictatorship before it ended in ignomious defeat. Here is a man who writes one of the masterpieces of world prose and instead of being honored by his country is put on trial for obscenity. A certain contempt and indignation is all too well deserved. In trying to refute Flaubert's picture of provincial Rouen, Gay notes that one man (out of 100,000) bought impressionist paintings. Well, this is certainly a step up from Abraham, who had to prove five good men so as not to have Sodom incinerated. Here one good man refutes "Madame Bovary."

Kaplan's thesis arise from her definition of "perversion." But given her wide definition of perversion, what use can we make of it, for almost anything will be, and can be, encompassed within this definition?

A work most distant from reality. A work of sophistry.

Although this book has some interesting ideas, the author's perspective is limited by a narrow focus on freudian theories on penis envy and castration fear. The overall work is also tinged with an outdated 80's feminism that blames the evil patriarch for enslaving helpless women. The author seems to have a contempt of all traditional femininity. At one point she refers to parent's teaching children to act in feminine or masculine ways as 'soul murders.' The book ends with the words "..normal femininity..a perversion, if you will." If you are looking for progressive thinking you will find this book quite conservative.

I'm currently reading this book for a women's studies class on psychoanalysis and gender. The author succeeds in posing critical questions to psychoanalytic theories of perversions such as fetichism, sadomasochism, etc. However, I think her arguments were clouded sometimes by what seemed like moral judgements, for example in saying that "Perverts don't make love, they make hate". It has really interesting case studies. It also helps to analyze one's own behavior in terms of sexuality and its intersection with how we gender our actions in every day life. I would recommend it to anyone interested in re-thinking psychoanalysis.

I'm currently reading this book for a women's studies class on psychoanalysis and gender. The author succeeds in posing critical questions to psychoanalytic theories of perversions such as fetichism, sadomasochism, etc. However, I think her arguments were clouded sometimes by what seemed like moral judgements, for example in saying that "Perverts don't make love, they make hate". It has really interesting case studies. I would recommend it to anyone interested in re-thinking psychoanalysis.

Flaubert's brilliant, and incomplete, final work (he died without completing its final couple of chapters, which exist only in outline form) has been long overdue for a new translation, and new packaging. While earlier versions always made the work look musty, the new Dalkey Press release looks great (although my cover is different from the one pictured above) with a new translation by Mark Polizzotti (author of a good biography of Andre Breton, pope of surrealism) and a reprint of an earlier preface by Raymond Queneau, as well as an appendix including "Dictionary of Accepted Ideas" and "Catalogue of Fashionable Ideas."
Flaubert's work always hovered somewhere between realism and modernism, which made him the literary equivalent of the Impressionist painters, and in his last work he goes the furthest in the direction of modernism, so much so that one is struck almost immediately by the affinities between this work and the later absurdist literature of Beckett and Kafka. Kafka always spoke of Flaubert in tones of veneration, and his admiration is nowhere clearer, at least for me, than in Bouvard and Pécuchet.
Flaubert's work remains as thrillingly modern as, say, the paintings of Manet, and it deserves to be re-discovered and celebrated. From its seemingly inhospitable soil has grown some of the greatest riches of twentieth century literature.

This book is merely list after list after list after list of the state of knowledge in various fields at the time Flaubert was alive. If Flaubert wasn't a very famous writer, it would not be called a novel. It isn't a novel. Its an unedited scrapheap. Read it if you must real all of Flaubert for bragging rights, or because of OCD. Otherwise, run as if it were the plague. Its that bad.

I thought this book was slow, dull, and all toghter non-entertaining. Madam bovary was a one sided person and through away the important things in life. Very poor novel. Only read it for its very detailed account of French provincial life.

well I just finished reading this book. I still feel overwhelmed by the extreme amount of goings on that occurred in it. The book had me mesmerized for the first half of it. I began to lose a bit of interest when Emma began her niave love affair with the blatent user of women. My interest came back when it showed more depth about him. Throughout the book I was hoping that Emma would 'snap out' of her dream like fake life and begin living the real life presented to her. Unfortunately, this never occurred. She was an escapist and coward in life, and the same in death.

I need to take exception to the one-star review by l.a.seidensticker in which he complains that TEXTUAL HAUNTINGS is in French. It is not. Quotes from Flaubert and Mauriac are in the French original however. For an actual review of my book, readers can consult the March 2007 issue of the FRENCH REVIEW for David O'Connell's very favorable comments on TEXTUAL HAUNTINGS. Ed Gallagher

the idea behind this book (that there are unexpected and remarkable parallels to be considered between bovary and desqueyroux) is intriguing. in fact i would love to read about them. however, i am not fluent in french, and Textual Hauntings absolutely requires quite a bit more than mere familiarity with the language. NO WHERE on amazon is it mentioned that gallagher's study is not in english. it seems to me reasonable to assume that unless otherwise noted a book (from Amazon, with an english title) is written in english unless otherwise described. i have been brooding on this for several months now...and still find it scarcely excusable.

This is a good book and looks good formatted on the Kindle. The problem is the links to the footnotes and endnotes don't work. Since this is a translated piece this makes it highly inconvient to read in this formatt, unless Amazon fixes the links. I have been in contact with them on this, but they have not responded.

I was disappointed to discover that this was not the actual novel - which information was not readily available by just looking at the sales notes. However, if one is looking for serious background information and/or commentary relating to Flaubert and his work and the impact it had on society, then this is the book to get.

"Madame Bovary" is flawed in every way. The plot is one dimensional and not completely developed. Gustav Flaubert could not decide where he wanted to go with his plot - a risqué affair or how debt destroyed a family. With the shifting of the plots, I lost interest in the story, as I thought only the affair was the principal plot. The debt storyline felt like it was just thrown in, without a thought; I found it confusing and tedious. The writing was appalling, and I lost respect for Flaubert as a writer because of it. Such poor grammar and sentence structure! The characters were underdeveloped and lacked motivation. I had no idea why the characters were the way they were, and because of it, I didn't care about them. Chapters were devoted to irrelevant narratives that did not further develop or advance any storyline or character. The entire story was much too long, and I could not see where it was going (even if I did predict the ending). Overall, this so-called "classic" needs to be retired, as it does not stand the test of time, and its author was horrible in his thought process. I do not recommend.