I’ve discovered another problem with my list of 50 Books Every Woman Should Read Before She Turns 40. The first problem was including Fifty Shades of Grey–no explanation needed. The second was including Madame Bovary (1856) by Gustave Flaubert, which requires a little more explanation. The introduction states that “this list celebrates female writers who wrote coming-of-age classics as well as modern page-turners.” There is no doubt that Madame Bovary is an influential classic that is worth reading, but the problem is that Gustave Flaubert is not a female writer. I […]
Love in a moving carriage, living it up while you’re feeling down.
I think I am done for awhile on the whole Flaubert kick. Sorry Julian Barnes. When I was in high school I had a huge obsession with a girl who mostly liked me back but also had a boyfriend. In study hall she would read Madame Bovary in French and pass me notes from it. It’s weird because a combination of this weird history of it and it’s reputation as smut (in that it was banned publicly etc) I got the impression it was basically Tropic of […]
Man the French are not funny
The Dictionary of Received Ideas by Gustave Flaubert
So this is kind of like The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, which I also don’t think is funny. So I definitely didn’t think this was funny. Even the editor of the collection was like “Look, it’s hard to translate humor sometimes and also this isn’t a really funny book.” Apparently Flaubert said something to the effect that the goal was make a super hilarious book that went on and on and on was hilarious at every hilarious turn. Instead, here’s some samples: “Ice Cream: Eating […]
The One with the Parrot
Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert
I have to admit that even though I went to church when I was a kid and I kind of understand some forms of American (Protestant) Christianity, stories of faith, especially Catholic faith are, not exactly lost on me but, a bit of a struggle for me imaginatively. This collection is sort of like the Simpsons episode with the triptych of Bible stories. The first story involves an understanding of visions of faith and symbols in the material world, the second story is the telling […]
If you have sex, you will get pregnant and you will die
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Victorian-era woman who gets her hoe on will get her divine comeuppance. 19th century literature is like an 80s horror movie-you have sex, you die. It doesn’t matter if the woman is cheating on her husband, or straight-up raped by her boss-extramarital hanky-panky must be punished. I decide to combine my reviews of Madame Bovary and Tess of D’Urbervilles, rather than spending two reviews covering a lot of the same ground. *spoilers for some really old books* […]