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

White Noise and Postmodernism

My general perception of Don DeLillo's White Noise before reading it was something along the lines of, "It's weird and David Foster Wallace liked it, and a lot of people always seem to talk about Don DeLillo." I wasn't familiar with the author outside of seeing "Cosmopolis" -- yes, Robert Pattinson, that one -- which I thought was actually quite good if extremely strange. (I also saw it right after "Holy Motors"; another, better, movie involving limos and cryptic dialogue.) Looking through critiques of White Noise after I finished, people tend to fall into 'love it' or 'hate it' camps. I'm not sure I had particular feelings either way, but mostly because I spent the majority of the book trying to puzzle out what the heck the subtext was and getting distracted by the style.

White Noise is narrated by Jack, a renowned college professor in Hilter studies who lives in the suburbs with his family. The general plot revolves around his discovery that his wife, Babette, has been having an affair and taking experimental medication to eliminate the fear of death. And boy is White Noise about death.

This all takes place in a nihilistic, dystopian world where apparently everyone speaks with the same stilted, unnatural dialogue. Seriously, no character has a definitive "voice" except for the narrator. It's weird, but also the same as "Cosmopolis," so I can only assume this is how DeLillo usually writes. The book places heavy emphasis on the prevalence of TV, radio, ads and consumerism (cue the Franzen / DFW comparisons), which is particularly striking given that it was written in 1984 before Facebook and the smartphone, etc.  Don DeLillo saw the future, kids. Slate has an excellent White Noise podcast discussion related to this: listen here.

After Jack is exposed to an ominous "airborne toxic event" (no, not the band), he obsesses over his vague medical tests and the certainty of death ... in a couple decades. His fear drives him to further investigate Babette's medication, and the final act of the book descends into a very weird place indeed. If only someone had told him that we're all dying on the inside. At the same time I was compiling points for this post, I was reading The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee and was struck by this observation: "Society, like the ultimate psychosomatic patient, matches its medical afflictions to its psychological crises ... the rot, the horror -- the biological decay and its concomitant spiritual decay -- was now relocated within the corpus of society and, by extension, within the body of man."

So what is white noise? The background noise that you usually tune out but is always present; the triads of ads and snippets from TV/radio that DeLillo randomly disperses throughout the book, the mindless consumerism at the grocery store scenes. At one point death is described as white noise, which, yes, it's always in the background of this book and life in general, and tuning in to (social) media is a way to ignore it. I think it could also relate to the strange dialogue in the book and Jack's effort to learn German. Rather than true communication it's just noise.

White Noise is considered "postmodern" and I had to do some digging to try and get a grip on what that meant. I came away thinking I need to read an entire separate book on postmodernism and then come back to critique it in White Noise. Confusing things are confusing. A helpful resource is the Jean Baudrillard page in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (referenced below), if you really want to have a head-scratching journey. Relevant to this post, one of the key components of postmodernism is the idea of a simulacrum, which Wikipedia helpfully defines as a "representation or imitation of a person or thing" ... Think of those crazy mirrors where you own image repeats itself again and again and again into infinity.

Gratuitous yet apt screencap from "Supernatural".

For Baudrillard:

 "Postmodern societies [are] organized around 'simulation' by which he means the cultural modes of representation that 'simulate' reality as in television, computer cyberspace, and virtual reality ... In the society of simulation, identities are constructed by the appropriation of images, and codes and models determine how individuals perceive themselves and relate to other people ... In this postmodern world, individuals flee from the 'desert of the real' for the ecstasies of hyperreality and the new realm of computer, media, and technological experience."  

So, this blog exists in a postmodern world. I'd like to point out that, once again, this was written BEFORE Facebook/Instagram/Twitter, and that Morpheus welcomes Neo to "the desert of the real" in "The Matrix" (wait, there are even MORE levels to that movie!?). And clearly, yes, this is the vibe of White Noise.  

Bottom line: Lots of interesting philosophical overtones, little to no character development or plot.