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A review by leelulah
Bouvard and Pecuchet by Gustave Flaubert
5.0
This is my second approach to a “full” (?) if it can be called that way, work of Gustave Flaubert, of whom I had read a few chapters of Madame Bovary and the Dictionary of Received Ideas previously, so with that and the critique, I thought I was ready to sink my nose in this book.
And it couldn’t have been more precise. Much like Don Quixote, when you think they have done badly enough to feel furstrated abnd quit, they just don’t.
It’s a bit difficult not to enjoy this and wonder what would have been different if Flaubert would have finished this book, or what would have happened if he lived in a more contemporary setting, but it’s clear that the actuality of this book remains intact and as captivating as Don Quixote, or Pantagruel.
It’s considerably shorter, but not less exciting in the least. I think that it shows the dangers of wanting to apply pure knowledge that we do not understand to reality, with hilarious and sadly true results.
Obviously, Don Quixote has idealized fiction as a starting point. And Pantagruel is the smart one in a world of idiots. I’d say that Bouvard and Pécuchet are even more miserably treated by his author. They’re almost too similar until the major disagreements start. Still, there’s a lot of references to contemporary events, and essential questions of human nature.
It makes us question how do we receive that knowledge and how much of it can we trust, after all we organize it on systems for a better understanding, and it makes us question things we take for granted.
Probably all of our wisdom, repeated from books, isn’t anything but folly in the end. We have to consider the problem of knowledge more seriously, and fight the inner contradictions of being exposed to multiple theories, and it’s something I always have wondered, yet Flaubert manages to put it so easily.
In Borges’ article, Vindication of Bouvard and Pécuchet, he explains that Flaubert became a bit like them, by trying to learn about all these things so quick, to depict all the phases they went through, or maybe it was the other way around, wasn’t it?
I wish I hadn’t read it so quick, but the time is running.
And it couldn’t have been more precise. Much like Don Quixote, when you think they have done badly enough to feel furstrated abnd quit, they just don’t.
It’s a bit difficult not to enjoy this and wonder what would have been different if Flaubert would have finished this book, or what would have happened if he lived in a more contemporary setting, but it’s clear that the actuality of this book remains intact and as captivating as Don Quixote, or Pantagruel.
It’s considerably shorter, but not less exciting in the least. I think that it shows the dangers of wanting to apply pure knowledge that we do not understand to reality, with hilarious and sadly true results.
Obviously, Don Quixote has idealized fiction as a starting point. And Pantagruel is the smart one in a world of idiots. I’d say that Bouvard and Pécuchet are even more miserably treated by his author. They’re almost too similar until the major disagreements start. Still, there’s a lot of references to contemporary events, and essential questions of human nature.
It makes us question how do we receive that knowledge and how much of it can we trust, after all we organize it on systems for a better understanding, and it makes us question things we take for granted.
Probably all of our wisdom, repeated from books, isn’t anything but folly in the end. We have to consider the problem of knowledge more seriously, and fight the inner contradictions of being exposed to multiple theories, and it’s something I always have wondered, yet Flaubert manages to put it so easily.
In Borges’ article, Vindication of Bouvard and Pécuchet, he explains that Flaubert became a bit like them, by trying to learn about all these things so quick, to depict all the phases they went through, or maybe it was the other way around, wasn’t it?
I wish I hadn’t read it so quick, but the time is running.