Allan Massie
A First-Rate Education
Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris: The Story of a Friendship, a Novel, and a Terrible Year
By Peter Brooks
Basic Books 208pp £25
Biographers and critics often have a problem in determining how far remarks made in conversations or letters represent a settled serious opinion. The starting point of this acutely intelligent and enjoyable book by Peter Brooks is a good example. Returning to Paris in 1871 after the bloody suppression of the Commune and touring ‘the still smoking ruins of central Paris, where the seat of Government and many public buildings had gone up in flames during the final agony of the Commune’, Gustave Flaubert ‘commented to his friend Maxime Du Camp that if only his contemporaries had understood Sentimental Education, this – the devastating denouement of the Terrible Year – never could have happened’. ‘His remark’, Brooks writes, ‘claims an exceptional role for the novel in the writing and understanding of history.’
Well, up to a point. Clearly Flaubert, even while displaying an unusual degree of authorial vanity, wasn’t speaking altogether seriously. For one thing the novel was published only in November 1869. It was impossible that many could have read it in time to be influenced by it, and the majority
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk