Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A cousin wanted me to read A Sense of An Ending and so I did and I liked it. Read my review of that, if you like, and when you find this review for Flaubert’s Parrot wanting, apply the other review to this one. They’re much the same. The books I mean, which should reveal for you how woefully unprepared I was for this one.
I wanted to read something good and since Sense won awards and I liked it, and since I’d seen Flaubert’s Parrot in one place or another for several years, I jumped right in. This book was way over my head. I’ve never read Flaubert. I have no idea if the narrator’s treatment of the man’s life and works is accurate or flattering or fictional or even farcical. I’m a fan of “fictional non-fiction” and so the best I could do was assume Barnes had made the whole thing up and that I was along for the ride.
But if he did, then that fiction stands in counterpoint to the truth, and that’s a layer I missed. If he didn’t, then I missed that layer too, and as he spends more than a few lines castigating critics, the irony went right over my head.
Three stars not because the book was bad in any sense or should be considered a lesser work. Three stars because that was the best that I could enjoy it due to my terrible ignorance. But at least three stars because Barnes is a master with the sentence, and I think he’s earned the right to recognize his gift and praise himself for it. “The correct word, the true phrase, the perfect sentence are always ‘out there,’ somewhere; the writer’s task is to locate them by whatever means he can.” Maybe you say he’s not praising himself. But that sentence itself follows “Style is a function of theme. Style is not imposed on subject-matter, but arises from it. Style is truth to thought.” And this in a book which is a about a man looking into Flaubert’s life, including in it lists and a “dictionary” and timelines and slapping on a coda about how his wife cheated on him.
The narrator’s wife, not Flaubert’s. Flaubert was never married. According to the narrator. I don’t know if Barnes is or was married, and like the narrator of Flaubert’s Parrot, and like Flaubert himself, I don’t know if knowing that sort of thing is even useful.