Now, take a
book like Madame Bovary, painfully and laboriously constructed--it
seems obvious enough, yet the more one reads it the more one
becomes aware how every stroke and detail tell. What almost appals
me about that book is the way in which the end is foreseen in the
beginning, the way in which Flaubert seems to have carried the
whole thing in his head all the time, to have known exactly where
he was going and how fast he was going."
"That is perfectly true," I said. "But take an instance of another
of Flaubert's books, Bouvard et Pecuchet, where the same method is
pursued with what I can only call deplorable results. Every detail
is perfect of its kind. The two grotesque creatures take up one
pursuit after another, agriculture, education, antiquities,
horticulture, distilling perfumes, making jam. In each they make
exactly the absurd mistakes that such people would have made; but
one loses all sense of reality, because one feels that they would
not have taken up so many things; it is only a collection of
typical absurdities.
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