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Title: Bouvard and Pecuchet (The Penguin Classics) by Gustave Flaubert, Alban J. Krailsheimer ISBN: 0-14-044320-7 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: June, 1976 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (4 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Strange stuff
Comment: I thought that this was a strange book. The most obvious thing to say about it, I suppose, is that it's incomplete, but that doesn't detract from the fact that what there is of it is very curious.
Bouvard inherits a fortune, enabling him and his friend Pécuchet to indulge whatever interests they might develop. Bouvard and Pécuchet are in many ways Laurel and Hardy-like figures, whose projects are all doomed to failure. They are not fully-rounded characters - rather, Flaubert uses them as a means of examining a host of subjects, ranging from agriculture to religion.
Flaubert satirises attempts to understand these subjects via superficial book learning. Yet, paradoxically, there is an open question whether anything is actually worth learning - in history, for example:
"...in choosing documents a certain spirit will prevail, and as it varies according to the writer's conditions, history will never be fixed."
True enough, but Flaubert seemed to me to be saying either that learning is essentially worthless or that the search for ultimate truths (in whatever subject) is seeking the impossible, as "truth" is essentially subjective. Could it, if one were charitable, be seen as an early chaos theory?
At the end, I was left with a feeling that Flaubert felt an overwhelming sense of futility regarding human endeavours. As such, this is not an uplifting book, and as Flaubert's message is received or appreciated quite early in the book, I felt that it was unnecessary for him to go on reiterating it by the use of further examples. Very much an acquired taste!
Rating: 4
Summary: Sharp satire, fuzzy edition
Comment: Bouvard and Pecuchet is one of the funniest books ever written, and remains every bit as telling in its attack on bourgeoise society as when it was first published. The "Dictionary of Received Ideas," which is included in this edition, is sort of a "Devil's Dictionary" of middle-class stupidities; astonishingly, almost all of its satirical bite still holds true. I dock this Penguin edition one star because it doesn't have any notes, which would have made Flaubert's nineteenth-century context far more easily graspable.
Rating: 1
Summary: Angry that I had to give it even one star
Comment: "Longwinded. Tedious. Impossible to finish (there was a reason Flaubert never finished this either).
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Title: Salammbo (Penguin Classics) by Gustave Flaubert, A.J. Krailsheimer ISBN: 0140443282 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: September, 1977 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Modern Library Classics) by Gustave Flaubert, Lafcadio Hearn, Michel Foucault, Marshall C. Olds ISBN: 0375759123 Publisher: Princeton Review Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert, Robert Baldick ISBN: 0140441069 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 1961 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert, Robert Baldick ISBN: 0140441417 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: October, 1991 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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Title: A Sentimental Education: The Story of a Young Man by Gustave Flaubert, Douglas Parmee ISBN: 0192836226 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: February, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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