Flaubert's Postmodern Parrot

Where to begin to unpack this book. After reading Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending last year I was anticipating a thoughtful read with Flaubert's Parrot and was not disappointed. The novel comes in just shy of 200 pages and revolves around the narrator's fixation on Gustave Flaubert as he copes  with his wife's suicide. Centrally, which exact parrot was used by Flaubert as a model for one of his books? I.e., the search for historical truth. Along the way Barnes experiments with form, uses literature to criticize literary criticism and tricks me into reading another postmodern novel. So there's quite a bit of ground to cover here, even with selective notes.

Why hello there, young Gustave! (Wikipedia)

I'm not a huge fan of random "experimental" sections in books and Barnes throws everything in: acknowledging the audience, biased chronologies, a Flaubertian dictionary, a collegiate exam and a chapter written from the perspective of poet (and sometimes Flaubert lover) Louise Colet. Does the narrator try different styles as part of his search for meaning/truth? Discuss.

The narrator remains nameless up to p.41 and, similar to Sense of an Ending, is unreliable. First he claims: "If you don't know what's true, or what's meant to be true, then the value of what isn't true, or what isn't meant to be true, becomes diminished" (p.77). Almost in order to remedy this within his own story he then follows: "Books are not life ... Ellen's is a true story; perhaps it is even the reason why I am telling you Flaubert's story instead" (p.86). And then: "When a contemporary narrator hesitates, claims uncertainty ... does the reader in fact conclude that reality is being more authentically rendered?" (p.89). It's as if the narrator is criticizing himself within the book. And note the concern for truth/authenticity.

The novel also touches on ye olde well of dark despair/cynicism. Regarding life: "After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment?" (p.165 and hello Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse). Regarding reading: "If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it's yours" (p.166). Reading a professional critical piece about a book isn't equivalent to reading the book.

"Why does the writing make us chase the writer?" (p.12) the narrator asks, and later answers: "Books make sense of life. The only problem is the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own" (p.168).* So instead of Ellen's biography or Geoffrey's autobiography, the reader is offered Flaubert's (removed even further; not making sense of the audience's life, or the narrator's, but a long-dead French author). Throughout the book we follow potential parrot-Flaubert connections that narrow down where the one true parrot may be, but end with uncertainty. The true parrot may be any of these or none of these, and it is impossible to know. Is there significance between Flaubert and all of his parrot-related pseudo-connections, or is it coincidence? The narrator (and reader) must come to accept ambiguity and the unknowable as the "truth" in the case of Flaubert's parrot and his wife's suicide.
*I would argue that through books making sense of someone else's life, by extension they may guide you to make sense of your own. Which goes back to the point that a personal reading is yours, versus the professional critic's.  

Returning for a moment to the 'chasing the writer' theme: Many readers, myself included, chase David Foster Wallace. On one level to understand how someone whose writing I connected to so strongly could be so depressed and commit suicide (i.e., to seek meaning), and on another level as an endeavor to possess the beauty of his writing (e.g., here is his autographed book, this writing mattered to me).

"Reading his 'memoirs' is like meeting a man on a train who says, 'Don't look at me, that's misleading. If you want to know what I'm like, wait until we're in a tunnel, and then study my reflection in the window.' You wait, and look, and catch a face against a shifting background ... The transparent shape flickers and jumps, always a few feet away ... Then there is a wail from ahead, a roar and burst of light; the face is gone for ever." (p.96)

Bottom line: You could probably write at least one dissertation on this book. Tough little nut to crack, curious to see if other Barnes books continue to tackle similar themes.

Relevant extra-credit reading: Flaubert's Parrot: fiction and literary criticism
Chase the writer here: Julian Barnes, The Art of Fiction No. 165

Summer Reading: Selections from the Smorgasbord

1. The Jungle Book

I started David Grann's The Lost City of Z thinking it was a work of fiction and was pleasantly surprised and intrigued to find it was historical non-fiction. The book follows renowned jungle explorer Percy Fawcett on his ill-fated Amazon expeditions in the early 1900s, when the age of traditional exploration was coming to a close. Similar to the Oliver Sacks book from earlier, I kept pausing to check Wikipedia because ... REALLY? That REALLY happened? Way more entertaining than anticipated and full of disgusting tidbits about the effects of Amazonian insects and climate. Even more exciting than the book (published in 2010) is that the storyline has since advanced in real life (spoiler alert: Amazon's Lost World).

Bottom line: Highly recommend! A fast, fascinating read. David Grann is a cool dude and a talented journalist; I would totally read more of his work.

2.  Hideous Men

Yes, yes, another David Foster Wallace entry.  Unlike the previous short essay collections I've read (Consider the Lobster & A Supposedly Fun Thing), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men was all semi-related short stories. It was also my least favorite, sadly. I thought the tone was depressing and dark, lacking all the YES! moments and hilarity of the other two collections, and while the writing was inventive, it just didn't do it for me. I also kept falling into the author biography trap, where I'd be reading a story thinking, "Is this what the author thought of himself? Is this a transcript of his inner monologue? Because he was depressed? And on meds? And maybe this is how he felt and what he thought about?" It was impossible to read the collection without going through that filter, and I wonder how I would've felt about the book had I NOT known the author's back-story. 

Bottom line: Mostly I agree with this article, The Last Book I Loved:

"... you might add that the word “joy” is not one you would necessarily use to describe the book. Try explaining all this while wondering to yourself if you give David Foster Wallace a pass because it’s such, like, a thing to discuss his books and be seen reading them on the bus."

This & That: Farther Away

Full disclosure: I liked Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" even though all the characters were terrible people and I generally share his sentiments about the overuse of technology and its amplification of narcissism (Exhibit A: this site). His book of essays, "Farther Away," is something I stumbled upon while browsing the shelves. It doesn't reach the heights of Wallace's "Consider the Lobster" but it's an approximation. And I'd be lying if I said I read this and had no interest in what he says about Wallace.  (Because it's like talking about Eric Clapton without mentioning Jimi Hendrix; see: Do Not Mention David Foster Wallace) 

Winners:
I Just Called to Say I Love You

 The cell phone came of age on September 11, 2001. Imprinted that day on our collective consciousness was the image of cell phones as conduits of intimacy for the desperate.

Farther Away

Substantial swaths of my personal history were going dead from within, from my talking about them too often.

Pain Won't Kill You:

The prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking.

Loser:
The Ugly Mediterranean -- Seriously, I cannot deal with bird-watching, I don't care how elegant your prose is, I just do not care.

So, of these, I guess "I Just Called to Say I Love You" would qualify as a "typical" Franzen essay that goes off against technology and how the world is falling into disarray because of iPhones and the internet and whatever else. But why does everyone always pile on and criticize him for writing about that!? Because it's complaining? Because it's pretentious to not like Twitter and ebooks? (Jonathan Franzen Still Doesn't Like the Internet) All things in moderation here. Yes, technology has done great things and connected the world and kickstarted Reading Rainbow, but let's also all agree that technology's given us a bajillion twerking videos and duck-face instagrams. It's entirely possible I would've wasted that minute of my life doing something equally unproductive and banal, but the pervasiveness of techno-entertainment today makes it difficult to do things in The Real World, In Real Time, With Real People.

Bottom line: Preferred "The Corrections" to this collection.

DFW Random Bandwagon? On it.

David Foster Wallace's commencement speech to Kenyon back in 2005 is getting somewhat of a renaissance on the web this week thanks to The Glossary, and, being all about spreading/preserving the word of Wallace, here's the full transcript:

http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words

"The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: This is water."

The David Foster Wallace Experience

My purpose in grabbing "Consider the Lobster, And Other Essays" off the sale rack was to see if I'd be into this whole thing and willing to tackle "Infinite Jest" (a considerable investment) at some point in the near future.  Thanks to snippets of hearsay, I'd always been intimidated by Foster Wallace's writing and presumed it was exceedingly cerebral, etc etc.  But he's actually funny!  See:

This is probably the place for your SNOOT reviewer openly to concede that a certain number of traditional prescriptive rules really are stupid and the people who insist on them ... are that very most contemptible and dangerous kind of SNOOT, the SNOOT Who Is Wrong.
(p.100, Authority and American Usage)

Though the above-cited funniness is buried in the midst of one of the denser essays.  There were two particularly brilliant essays:  "Up, Simba" and "Host" that I will enthusiastically endorse to anyone who will listen to me.

In fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians make us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about.
(p.187, Up, Simba)

... The single biggest reason why left-wing talk radio experiments ... are not likely to succeed, at least not on a national level, is that their potential audience is just not dissatisfied enough with today's mainstream news sources to feel that they have to patronize a special type of media to get the unbiased truth.
(p.316, Host)

It's these moments of  'WHY, YES!' clarity, combined with weird humor and amazing linguistic gymnastics ("Dostoevskynalia") that made me fall in love with David Foster Wallace.  And he writes like this about everything!  Lobsters, Kafka, 9/11, the dictionary, porn, whatever!  The total high of gleefully connecting with a new author is countered in this case with the fact that he's dead now and I missed all his book talks and I really feel that no one else is currently writing like this.  Some parts of Dave Eggers, Franzen at the end of "The Corrections" maybe, and definitely not Jonathan Safran Foer.

Well.  Looking forward to settling in with "Infinite Jest" at least.