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Rating: 
Summary: Angry that I had to give it even one star
Review: "Longwinded. Tedious. Impossible to finish (there was a reason Flaubert never finished this either).
Rating:
Summary: Angry that I had to give it even one star
Review: "Longwinded. Tedious. Impossible to finish (there was a reason Flaubert never finished this either).
Rating: 
Summary: Essential reading for the 80's generation-disco desperates
Review: Although he never finished this book, it remains even in translation, a perfect guide to the perils of bourgeois ambitions. Two hapless bank clerks use a sudden inheritance to dabble disastrously in all the current fashions, with hilarious and mordant results. Includes a "dictionary of received ideas" which should be required reading for all Americans. I read it at least once a year, out loud, and am much the better for the release. Buy it for everyone you know, and see if you can then watch Jimmy Stewart or Martha Stewart without throwing up.
Rating: 
Summary: Sharp satire, fuzzy edition
Review: Bouvard and Pecuchet is one of the funniest books ever written, and remains every bit as telling in its attack on bourgeoise society as when it was first published. The "Dictionary of Received Ideas," which is included in this edition, is sort of a "Devil's Dictionary" of middle-class stupidities; astonishingly, almost all of its satirical bite still holds true. I dock this Penguin edition one star because it doesn't have any notes, which would have made Flaubert's nineteenth-century context far more easily graspable.
Rating:
Summary: Sharp satire, fuzzy edition
Review: Bouvard and Pecuchet is one of the funniest books ever written, and remains every bit as telling in its attack on bourgeoise society as when it was first published. The "Dictionary of Received Ideas," which is included in this edition, is sort of a "Devil's Dictionary" of middle-class stupidities; astonishingly, almost all of its satirical bite still holds true. I dock this Penguin edition one star because it doesn't have any notes, which would have made Flaubert's nineteenth-century context far more easily graspable.
Rating: 
Summary: Strange stuff
Review: I thought that this was a strange book. The most obvious thing to say about it, I suppose, is that it's incomplete, but that doesn't detract from the fact that what there is of it is very curious.Bouvard inherits a fortune, enabling him and his friend Pécuchet to indulge whatever interests they might develop. Bouvard and Pécuchet are in many ways Laurel and Hardy-like figures, whose projects are all doomed to failure. They are not fully-rounded characters - rather, Flaubert uses them as a means of examining a host of subjects, ranging from agriculture to religion. Flaubert satirises attempts to understand these subjects via superficial book learning. Yet, paradoxically, there is an open question whether anything is actually worth learning - in history, for example: "...in choosing documents a certain spirit will prevail, and as it varies according to the writer's conditions, history will never be fixed." True enough, but Flaubert seemed to me to be saying either that learning is essentially worthless or that the search for ultimate truths (in whatever subject) is seeking the impossible, as "truth" is essentially subjective. Could it, if one were charitable, be seen as an early chaos theory? At the end, I was left with a feeling that Flaubert felt an overwhelming sense of futility regarding human endeavours. As such, this is not an uplifting book, and as Flaubert's message is received or appreciated quite early in the book, I felt that it was unnecessary for him to go on reiterating it by the use of further examples. Very much an acquired taste!
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