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 NO, I DON'T WANNA CRACKER April 23, 2008
In 1876, writing his last completed novel, Flaubert borrows a stuffed parrot from the Museum of Rouen to grace his desk. The parrot figures in "A Simple Heart," but its glowering presence soon irritates him and he sends it back. Today, there are two stuffed parrots in Rouen, each claimed to be the one. So begins Julian Barnes' extended riff on his favorite French author. The very promising spine of this narrative is a detective story about undiscovered letters between Flaubert and his English mistress, involving a Pnin-like academic worthy of Nabokov. But Barnes drops this ball after only two brief segments, and for the rest of his book offers a miscellany for Flaubert buffs: trivia, chronologies, riffs on obscure text points--the content of any famous-author website. In the end, as with the parrot, this reader said: so what? The result is anemic and precious, not compelling or illuminating, and has been greatly over-praised.
For a better sense of Barnes' caliber within this new collage genre, compare it with "Was" by Geoff Ryman, a lesser-known masterpiece from 1992. Like Barnes, Ryman riffs on a famous author and his work (Frank Baum and the Oz books) but instead of Barnes' lazy doodling, Ryman offers a stunning multi-strand tapestry filled with cinematic drama and complex characters, a book that really takes off, not once but repeatedly. In Barnes, a wan little smoke signal rises above Oxbridge; in Ryman, a fictive tornado sweeps us away.
 A review of Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes November 23, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes is a book I have had queuing up to read for some time. I don't know why I have never got round to reading it. Perhaps it's because of the overtly "literary" tag that was attached to it when it was short-listed for the Booker Prize. I am not against "literary" fiction. Far from it: indeed I aspire to write it, after a fashion. My avoidance of Flaubert's Parrot was never conscious, but was probably a result of thinking that I knew what to expect - word play, experimentation with form, biography, dissection of the writer's role, relationship between art and life, in fact all the mundane things that your average novelist has for breakfast. The less than average ones, by the way, always have corn flakes. It is their convention. Having just finished the book, I can declare that I found all I expected and much, much, much more.
Julian Barnes has his character, a doctor called Geoffrey Braithwaite, consider various literary ideas. One, which only really applies to writing prose fiction, is the relation between form and content. Most novels, certainly most pulp fiction, never address this, since the authors usually present apparently literal material merely literally or, perhaps even more commonly, fantastical material literally. Generally within some recognisable genre, these offerings tend to preoccupy themselves with simple narration. In effect, most novels are presented in pictorial form, like a comic strip running a frame at a time through the author's mind, with only minimally extended commentary. Their presentation is invariably linear, with the writer's aim to spoon-feed the reader with bite-sized chinks of easily digestible plot in a context aimed at simplifying the experience.
Flaubert's Parrot is the polar opposite of this. The only plot is Flaubert's life, both physical and intellectual, alongside that of his enthusiastic intended biographer, the doctor, Geoffrey. Geoffrey's research, notes, speculations and musings provide the book's utterly original form. Since the adultery of Flaubert's fictional Madam Bovary provided the scandal that created his fame, evidence of his attitudes towards women and sex in his own life provides a fascinating backdrop against which we can assess the author's motives and desires. The death and revealed adultery of the narrator's own wife provides motive for his obsession with Flaubert and his femme fatale, and, quite unexpectedly, this culminates in a truly moving moment of emotional empathy that the author, Barnes, not Flaubert, not the narrator, evokes in his reader.
This emotional intensity developed as a real surprise towards the end of the book. Through it, Julian Barnes achieves a perfect marriage of form and content, the finest I have ever encountered. No matter how much we analyse the creative process, it is our emotional lives that provide the stuff of art. The writer moulds it, contextualises it, formalises it, but eventually the rawness of the experience, the chasm of bereavement, the hollow of betrayal, the consonance of love that makes us laugh or weep as we read, and Julian Barnes provokes both responses in this beautiful book.
There are some stunning moments of virtuosity. There are, for instance, three concatenated chronologies of Flaubert's life - an encyclopedia of success, a record of failure and a personal diary. This is a masterstroke, effectively answering the rhetorical question of why we remain interested in the author, even when we consider a work as iconic as Madame Bovary. The narrator's dissection of "correctness" in fiction is utterly poignant, especially so when we cannot even agree on the detail of reality. And so what if the writer decides to change things around? Isn't it supposed to be fiction?
But the enduring memory of Flaubert's Parrot is that masterstroke of marrying motives via Falubert's real life, whatever that was, the imagined world of his femme fatale and the apparently real life of Geoffrey Braithwaite, with its own experience of adultery and bereavement. And then, of course, we have Geoffrey's obsession with Flaubert, through which we reflect on the ideas of the self and its selfishness. Stunningly beautiful.
And the parrot? Probably a fake. Or perhaps just faked. Or then again....
Brilliant! My J Barnes Fav! October 25, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I wish I had enough of that literary critic vocabulary and style to convey how wonderfully rich FLAUBERT'S PARROT is. Then again, given how critics are taken to task in FP perhaps I'll simply say BRAVO! LOVE IT! And, of course, WOW! TOTALLY AWESOME!
I recently read MY NAME IS RED (Orhan Pamuk), fabulously fun from the "multiple point of view" perspective. Well I gotta tell ya, FP goes even further. Breathtaking.
If I had more time I'd "review" FP by selecting quote after quote. Alas, too busy. Suffice it to say, the writing is DELICIOUS!
Oh, haven't mentioned: FP is a great belly laugh too. Side splitting. Wet your pants. (Wear DEPENDS.)
Now... gotta see if this is on CD... would love to HEAR it too...
Kirtland Peterson
 A great novel, or a great piece of lit crit? October 11, 2007
Barne's 'Flaubert's Parrot' does not strike one immediately as a conventional piece of literature. It seems to be more a fascinating work of literary criticism, held together by the journey of Barnes' narrator, who delves deeply into the life and works of his idol Flaubert. There are even several chapters that support this idea, such as the various chronologies of Flaubert's life, and, especially, the mock examination questions near the end of the book.
Yet, despite this analytical emphasis on Flaubert's works, it is really the French writer's personality that is analysed and interpreted here. It is this suggestive, fictive element that I found most fascinating - the way that Barnes tries to work out the essence of this complicated, brilliant man through his own character. It is as if, despite all the facts that one can gain from his books and letters, the truth is that all efforts to work out a writer's life is just like creating a work of fiction.
And that is exactly what Barnes does in this novel. A clever, witty, really enjoyable read.
flaubert's parrot July 26, 2007
I embarked on Flaubert's Parrot not having read any Flaubert. The back cover hinted that the narrator's own life is as much the topic of the book as the famous French writer, but until the end, there was very little about the narrator. We learn early on that he's a retired doctor called Geoffrey Braithwaite whose wife is dead, and that he has grown-up children. His obsession with Gustave Flaubert is evident, and the book is a trawl through Flaubert's life, with the narrator visiting Flaubert's home town,exploring Flaubert's family life (privileged, surgeon father, overbearing over-protective mother, beloved sister, many dead sibs), seeking out the stuffed parrot that Flaubert borrowed from a museum and that perched on his desk during the writing of one of his books(in fact, there are two parrots claiming that honour) and even staying in the hotel where Flaubert used to meet his lover, the poetess Louise Colet. Braithewaite's homage to his idol is interspersed with facts about Flaubert and extracts from his writing, mostly pithy aphorisms and sardonic comments. Many of these are irreverent, refreshing and witty enough to be of interest even to readers unfamiliar with Flaubert.
The reader gains real insight into Flaubert's personality - his refusal to compromise his independence by marrying or even living with his lover, his disregard for convention, his casual infidelity with men and women, his loyalty to friends, and even his playfulness, the latter depicted in an anecdote about how he marched a five-legged sheep through his ill friend's apartment to cheer him up (he failed - the sheep left little mirth and copious droppings in its wake).
It is only at the end that we find out more about Braithewaite and how, despite his admiration for Flaubert, his own emotional life could not have been more different from his hero's flamboyant promiscuity and inability to commit.
Although the facts about Flaubert are interesting and his cynical, witty condemnations of the bourgeois fun to read, I found myself wanting to hear more of Braithewaite's life - after all, I had chosen to read a novel by Julian Barnes, not a biography of Gustave Flaubert. The parts of the novel dealing with Braithewaite show such potential for Barnes's sparkling wit and trenchant ability to tell a tale that I felt disappointed that they were so few. One of the most entertaining scenes is the one where Braithewaite receives notification from an acquaintance, Ed Winterton, that Winterton has some material that might interest Braithewaite about a woman called Juliet Herbert, who acted as governess for Flaubert's beloved neice. There is some discussion in academic circles about whether Flaubert and Herbert were lovers, and Braithewaite is almost apopoleptic with excitement, planning the papers he can write on Flaubert's relationship with Herbert. The lunch over which Winterton and Braithewaite meet to discuss Winterton's findings - a cache of letters between the two - is an understated comic masterpiece. Braithewaite's quiet seething through gnashing teeth is a wonderful study of the riled Englishman, as sharply droll a caricature of a repressed, neurotic, unreasonably furious Englishman as William Boyd's loveable protagonists in A Good Man in Africa and Stars and Bars. Barnes could have created copious copy from the rich mines of his protagonist's character, but chooses not to spin more such gems from his raw material. Without giving anything away about the conversation over that lunch, here is Braithewaite's uncharitable thought before meeting the low key American academic Winterton:
'Had Ed really discovered some Juliet Herbert material? I admit I began to feel possessive in advance. I imagined myself presenting it in one of the more important literary journals; perhaps I might let the TLS have it. 'Juliet Herbert: A Mystery Solved, by Geoffrey Braithewaite', illustrated with one of those photographs in which you can't quite read the handwriting. I also began to worry at the thought of Ed blurting out his discovery on campus and guilelessly yielding up his cache to some ambitious Gallicist with an astronaut's haircut'. As with much comic genius, the hilarity is in the detail - the horror of being pipped to the literary post by the clean-cut blandness of a pudding bowl shorn American hunk.
Elsewhere, Barnes's known affection for France comes to the fore in Braithewaite's eulogy to the country. Like Boyd in Bamboo, Barnes lists random facts about the culture of his adopted country which make its scents, tastes and smells come alive.
All in all, Flaubert's Parrot is an interesting stroll through the life of a great French writer folded into intriguing glints into the life of a fictional character. The promising sparks of the latter could have been ignited into an explosive blaze of a novel.
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