Saturday, August 27, 2005

Madame Bovary

Here is a lovely letter reprinted from Salon:

I have run into at least four people who are randomly revisiting "Madame Bovary" this summer. I don't know whether there's been a vast sale of Bovaries or some sort of Bovary giveaway, but Flaubert's classic seems to be on a lot of people's minds. I just finished the book last week, and now I'm encouraged to do something I never thought I could: read more French literature.
Like most people, I didn't think I would like or even be able to stand "Madame Bovary." As a recent college graduate who's freed from the reading requirements of professors, I've found myself pursuing classics on my own as a sort of punishment for not studying more in school. "Madame Bovary" was supposed to be an exercise in academic masochism -- a part of a summer regimen where I've whipped myself with the tasseled ends of Baudelaire, Tolstoy, Genet and now Flaubert.

What instantly drew me in were the novel's details. Flowers, trees, window curtains, crenelles -- what the hell is a crenelle, why does it sound so nice, how come nobody uses it around me? Reading "Madame Bovary" makes you want to be a better reader, a more educated person, a speaker with a greater vocabulary. I felt the thrill of a book that actually challenged me to pay attention, to follow the minute, the seeming infinitesimal shifts in the breeze. If you read the book at even 50 percent attention capacity, which for contemporary readers is an achievement, you get a vivid sense of the world. As a writer I felt embarrassed, humbled and challenged. As a product of the American college and high school system I felt anger that I haven't been reading more books like this, or even had them assigned or recommended to me.

Coming down from "Madame Bovary" I made the mistake of jumping into contemporary novels. The difference is startling. Gone are the details, accumulating character traits and psychological insights. Most contemporary classics don't stand up. It felt like I went from eating filet mignon to McDonald's. That's why I went back to the library and stocked up. I've finished three Tolstoy novellas and have now begun Flaubert's "Sentimental Education" and "Three Tales." I've also started -- since I'm a contemporary, multitasking man -- F. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" and the beginning of Flaubert's "Salaambo."

Running into recent Madame Bovary converts, I feel like I've become a part of a secret club. Our eyes widen in amazement at finding another camouflaged member on the subway, in the office or at a restaurant. We nod to each other, realizing another person has opened the passage to what could be a new way of looking at reading, writing and the very act of thinking about the details of the world. Most of the time I smile and say with intentional understatement, "Good book."
-- Aurin Squire

Not a perfect letter- a bit too much of the "it must be good- other people are doing it too" school of comment. But, what a great thing to behold- the resurrection of attention. It gets at what I love about Proust- you have to read slower and pay attention- but Proust notices everything, and he has something sparklingly clever to say in every paragraph. Great writing forces us to notice all the things that we've become accustomed to ignore. It alters the way we think and even live. It changes us.

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