About Madame Bovary

Post 1819:

So it’s always a little weird reading a classic novel. You have to factor a bunch of stuff in. Some great novels are “important” because they took risks and made a statement about society that was considered dangerous. It’s not my style to care so much about societal importance. If the characters and writing is awesome, it’ll be important to me.

Madame Bovary is one of the best novels I’ve ever read. It is meticulously written, and props to the translator. This translation from French beats damn near everything written in original English. I can’t even imagine how good the original version is. Maybe I’ll learn French. Okay, never mind.

I always love a good look into the soul of humanity. The main character gets her mind filled with a bunch of romantic notions of life and chases after things that hurt her and the people that actually care about her. It’s like the guy looking at the clouds and falls into a pit because he wasn’t paying attention to what mattered.

The main character is just awful. Like it hurts to read. It’s absurd how awful she is, really, and at times I wanted to dismiss her as an impossible creation of some weird French dude.

But nah. We’re all absurd. Maybe not all the time, but we’ve all had silly notions and we’ve all nurtured them in our minds, despite what good sense and decency tells us. If you’ve ever been obsessed or addicted or just simply misguided, this book will hit you in the heart. It’s devastating how unhappy people can make themselves. It’s tragic and sad and funny and interesting, like most great novels.

The prose itself is some of the best I’ve ever read. It is extremely descriptive but never dull. Flaubert worked his butt off on this. It's a product of some genius but mostly pure crazy effort. I love it. Cheers and see you after.