From the Author of "Salammbo"
"Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other peoples' lives, never your own."
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
posted by dubjay at 2:28 PM
5 Comments:
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."
I just looked up Salammbo on Wikipedia ... have you read it?
I've never read Salammbo. Possibly no one in the English-speaking world is now alive who's read it.
I just mentioned it because people who have only read =Bovary= have a distorted picture of what Flaubert was about. He could thud-and-blunder with the best of them.
I was going to point out that he did read that other book. And I know people who have read Salammbo. None of them recommended it. But after spending 17 years on Bovary, who can blame him for want something a little less...tightlaced.
"Every English-speaker who read this book is now dead." "Wow, that sounds creepy. What, did they all die of mysterious respiratory ailments, or a strange wasting disease, or unlikely incidents involving meat-processing machinery?" "No, it's just a really old book." "...oh."
As for books about your life: If I had to pick a story that sounded like me life, it would be "The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty".
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