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“Gustave Flaubert: I’m With Stupide”

A review of Bouvard and Pecuchet, Gustave Flaubert’s final and unfinished novel. Very funny title for this essay. Hitchens describes the book as 19^th century version of the movie Dumb and Dumber. His main issue seems to be that the book is unfinished, unplolished, hugely formulaic and predictable - not up to the standards of the author of Madame Bovary. Hithcens says that “Jorge Luis Borges was of the opinion that Flaubert, the craftsman of the first truly realist novel with Madame Bovary, was also, with Bouvard and Pecuchet, the saboteur of his own project." For all of his issues with the book, he also makes it sound hilarious. I think I’ll add it to my reading list.

New learning: Flaubert was compiling a dictionary called The Dictionary of Received Ideas (Le Dictionnaire des idées recues) satirizing the clichés of French Society. It’s unclear if he intended it to be an appendix to Bouvard and Pecuhet. It was ultimately published posthumously in 1911. An example: “Laurels: keep one from resting.”

New phrase (French): le mot juste = the exact word