Will be top contender for novel of the year for me. Or, err... anti-novel? It is intelligent literary analysis at its most intimate, at its most arresting and brilliant; this may be one of the best literary dissertations of all time. & that is, well, bizarre; the last time I had declared this so recalcitrantly, was for Mario Vargas Llosa's "The Perpetual Orgy," another immersive "lit. paper" of the 19th century Flaubert, and specifically on his megapopular diva M. E. Bovary.

Barnes merges poetics and juggles myriad miracles in this, a satirical alchemy that hits you out of nowhere. What a trick! He takes the antiquated father of realism by the hand, and jolts him out into our modern day. What fucking balls, this dude! This is nothing short of madness. Playful and overarticulate, "Flaubert's Parrot" is an out-of-this-world experience, where fiction (biography) and more fiction (apocrypha) interplays with history and the drama it all is to finally unravel it. There is a certain V.I.P.ness to the whole endeavor, oh exalted reader! You are being shown celestial things and "the sky is a theater of possibilities" (83)!

"Flaubert's Parrot," I shit you not, LITERALLY grabs the reader by the lapels and yells brilliant miscellany right at his face. This, to my knowledge, is the first novel to EVER do this--to affect the brain and heart and lungs alike.

And what, finally is Flaubert's Parrot? (This is NO SPOILER:) An "elusive emblem of the writer's voice." It's a search for art in objects-- which is what a novel actually is. (Shivers down the back...)

EXTRA:

Here are just two of my favorite things maestro Flaubert once wrote:

(and of course, they deal with class & society:)

"The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoisie."

and

"The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously."

...Thanks Barnes-dude. Thanks for smashing Novel Conventions to smithereens; further, for making me fall in love with the writing-out of ideas, of the dissection of the anatomy of great art.

Δεν χρειάζεται να σου αρέσει ο Φλωμπέρ για να εκτιμήσεις ή ακόμα και να θαυμάσεις το βιβλίο του Τζούλιαν Μπαρνς. Δεν χρειάζεται καν να έχεις διαβάσει Φλωμπέρ, αν και είναι πολύ πιθανό να θελήσεις να το κάνεις μετά.
Αναμειγνύοντας και αποδομώντας το μυθιστόρημα, τη βιογραφία, το δοκίμιο και τη λογοτεχνική κριτική, το έργο που έκανε διάσημο τον Μπαρνς και του χάρισε την πρώτη υποψηφιότητα για το Μπούκερ ανατέμνει το έργο του μεγάλου πρόδρομου του μοντερνισμού δημιουργικά κι ευφάνταστα μέσα από το πάθος που έχει για εκείνον ένας μεσήλικας χήρος γιατρός από την άλλη πλευρά του στενού της Μάγχης.
Σ' αυτή τη γιορτή της διακειμενικότητας, οι πληροφορίες για το έργο, τη ζωή και την εποχή του Φλωμπέρ είναι ανεξάντλητες (ενδεχομένως κι εξαντλητικές μέσα στις τόσες λεπτομέρειες) και πραγματικά σε κάνουν όχι μόνο να δεις με άλλο μάτι το συγγραφέα της Μαντάμ Μποβαρί, του Μπουβαρ και Πεκισέ και τόσων άλλων αριστουργημάτων, αλλά και να κατανοήσεις γιατί έχει μελετηθεί τόσο διεξοδικά όλο το πολιτισμικό συγκείμενο μέσα στο οποίο εκείνος δημιούργησε από ένα πλήθος ακαδημαϊκών και μελετητών.
Κι ενώ ο κεντρικός ήρωας είναι ένας αρχετυπικός εκπρόσωπος και κοινωνός του βρετανικού φλέγματος κι εκείνου του συνδυασμού στωικότητας και ειρωνείας που στέκεται κριτικά απέναντι στην ακαδημαϊκή και αποστειρωμένη ακαμψία στη μέχρι τώρα μελέτη για τον Φλωμπέρ (το πετσόκομμα που κάνει στην πιο γνωστή κριτικό του έργου του είναι το λιγότερο απολαυστικό), αυτό που σε κερδίζει τελικά είναι η υποδόρια συναισθηματική ένταση στο ταξίδι (κυριολεκτικό και μεταφορικό) ενός ήρωα που ψάχνει να βρει το νόημα της ζωής του μέσα από τη ζωή ενός άλλου.

A little too Radio 4 for my liking: pseudo-scholarly musings on Gustave Flaubert, cosier than a cushioned futon in the House of Lords. Mostly diverting and amusing: if a shade pompous and niche (i.e. you don’t have to have read Flaubert to read this, but it helps). Nothing more to add, particularly. Except this edition was so tiny I had to shrink my hands to hold it. Thanks, Picador. Anyway. Did you read about my Guinness World Record in the paper the other day? I am the first man to listen to Tubular Bells the whole way through without stabbing the stereo! What a man! Next week I take on Suggs.

The Booker jury sometimes behaves like the Oscar one: how else to explain this-- In the year 1984 the following books were short-listed:
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard
In Custody by Anita Desai
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
According to Mark by Penelope Lively
Small by David Lodge

And  Anita Brookner's jaw-droppingly boring book, pipped Barnes, Ballard & Desai to the post!

The same thing happened again in 1998 & 2005, but at least he lost to somewhat good books: Amsterdam & The Sea. And finally Barnes was given a sort of life-time Booker for the masterful The Sense of an Ending in 2011.

What do they say–All things come to those....only I don't think he really waited/cared anymore.

Flaubert's Parrot was Barnes' breakthrough book: part biography, part fiction, part lit-crit, part homage, part satire; it's a crazy, whimsical, non-linear, non-conventional, postmodernist take on, on what?
What's the story, the theme, the plot?

In the words of the elderly narrator Geoffrey Braithwaite, a widowed, retired English doctor & an amateur Flaubert enthusiast: Three stories contend within me. One about Flaubert, one about Ellen(his wife), one about myself. My own is the simplest of the three--it hardly amounts to more than a convincing proof of my existence-and yet I find it the hardest to begin. My wife's more complicated...books are not life, however much we might prefer it if they were. Ellen's is a true story; perhaps it is even the reason why i am telling you Flaubert's story instead.

Flaubert's tale:  "The hermit of Croisset. The first modern novelist. The father of Realism...The butcher of Romanticism" never wanted to be chased by posterity:

The artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed.
...for the artist, death destroyes the personality and liberates the work.
 
Still Barnes wouldn't let go of his literary idol: his narrator is a sort of alter ego who obsesses over Flaubert:

It's similar with books...if you quite enjoy a writer's work...if you depend upon the drip-feed of his intelligence, if you want to pursue him & find him--despite edicts to the contrary--then it's impossible to know too much.

Three chronologies of his lives are presented: first in a factual manner, listing his personal & literary triumphs, second listing the failures & disappointments, & third,& most appropriate in a sense: the writer's life & personality in his own metaphors:

But maybe seeing someone's life either as triumph or a disaster doesn't actually tell us half as much as just seeing their lives in terms of metaphors...which consists of him saying things like 'I feel like an old camembert slowly liquefying'...I think it's like giving an extra dimension or extra depth of focus. (Julian Barnes in Conversation, Cercles 4, 2002)*

But Barnes is balanced in his approach, lest you accuse him of blind worship, he even writes a whole fictional chapter from Louise Colet's (Flaubert's much loved & abused lover) point-of-view:

He loved to think of himself as a polar bear, distant, savage and solitary- I went along with this, I even called him a wild buffalo of the American prairie; but perhaps he was really just a parrot.

I have read Madame Bovary & Flaubert did understand women, at least in his fiction if not in life but Barnes seems to have read their very heart! It's hard to read this chapter & not be moved by it.

Braithwaite's tale: The narrator uses Flaubert's life to make sense of his own, he tries to lose himself in the trivia of his beloved author's life so as not to face the disappointments in his own; it's a sort of displaced attachment:

It's a book about the shiftingness of the past, & the uncertainty & unverifiability of fact (...) how the love of art compares with the love of a humanbeing (...) beyond all that it's a novel about grief. *

By the time the chapter Pure Story comes, his identification with his hero Flaubert's philosophy is complete:

People like us must have the religion of despair. One must be equal to one's destiny, that's to say impassive like it. By dint of saying 'That's so! That is so!' & of gazing down into the black pit at one's feet, one remains calm.

Ellen's story: Her husband is a doctor who keeps referring to Emma Bovary-- you get the drift?

The Theme: The novel begins & ends with Geoffrey B's visit to Rouen, the Flaubertian city, where he sees the first stuffed parrot at the Hôtel-Dieu before discovering the second one in Croisset:

Here I could play off the real against the fictional & the contemporary against the nineteenth century in a productive way. *

 The novel asks  the question : Can we really ever know someone, whether it's a great historical figure or one's own spouse? The attempts to find the real Flaubert mirror the attempt to find his parrot, i.e., apparent futility:

I think in any case this is appropriate to the book, & also to the sort of novels I write: there isn't a solution. I like the kind of novel or work of art or film which implies that it's going on after it ends, which leaves some things unresolved. If you set up a novel in which there is a sort of symbolic chase for the writer's voice, which is emblematised in one of the two parrots, I think it's only fair that the writer's voice, that the feeling of getting finally in touch with the great writer, fails in the end: let him have a little bit of privacy, & let him keep his secrets, I say.*

The Plot : The narrative arrangement here is as unconventional & upside down as in 'The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters', still there's a method to this madness:

Flaubert's Parrot begins with chapter 1- the problem, the quest; Chapter 2- the facts in the case; working backwards: the answer to the problem- the last chapter... The Pure Story is the answer to the second quest. Thus the narrative structure is balanced against the pleasures of going off the tangent.
The so-called  separate chapters exist in a sort of parallel relationship to it & explain it indirectly.

The vitriol against the critics: This book doesn't handle critics with kid gloves– in fact, the dedication taken from Flaubert's own letter to Ernest Feydeau in 1872, makes it amply clear:

When you write the biography of a friend you must do it as if you were taking revenge for him.

So Barnes takes it upon him to fence off every conceivable charge against his hero in the chapters called The Case Against, Emma Bovary's Eyes & Cross Channel.

The critics are failed creators, carping, jealous & vain who adopt "patronising tone towards their subjects", they are "eternal mediocrity living off genius by denigrating & exploiting it."

I'm reminded here of one  critical study of The Sense of an Ending (which I think Paul Bryant quoted in his review), which rejects the idea of unreliable narrator & his relevance to Adrian & his girlfriend's story, but if we accept that, then the novel just becomes an exercise in irony & loses its emotional impact & the redemptive value for the reader. Only the writer knows what he has written, critics will just be throwing up many theories. Perhaps Mr. Barnes will oblige us someday.
And how can I conclude without mentioning The Examination Paper which Barnes puts just after the emotionally draining Pure Story, as a sort of anti-climax:

I thought it would be a nice joke to give the reader an examination paper at the end of the book, you know: 'You've done your work-I hope it was pleasant work; here's some question for you to consider' (whose answers are not contained in the book), again it's a sort of upside down examination (...) It's a subversive examination paper.*

 The staid, old, kindly-looking  English gentleman setting up a subversive paper?!

But then did I tell you that in a scathing display of wit & sarcasm, he also prohibits the writing of 10 different kinds of novels in the chapter Cross Channel (still majority of GoodReads members should rejoice as vampire love stories & pornography are not banned :p).
For this & Emma Bovary's Eyes chapters alone he shd've won the Booker, rest of the book is like a cherry on a sinful chocolate cake!
Highly recommended.

4.5 stars.

I'm very happy I read Julian Barnes' novelistic homage to Flaubert for a number of reasons, not least because I now realize how badly I misunderstood Madame Bovary in my first reading. Barnes brings Flaubert (his hero) to life in a way that a conventional biography would likely struggle to do. And Barnes knows his subject so well that one can trust him completely in his revivification of the great author. The plot, of an elderly doctor obsessively researching Flaubert, is interesting, but the story of Flaubert himself really takes center stage, and I'm happy it did. The many quotes from Gustave are often hilarious and always carefully spoken. Flaubert was uncannily prescient about what was to come, and he was not an optimist; Barnes uses this to comedic effect in "debating" a critic of Le Grand Homme: the critic charges Flaubert with hating progress, and Barnes' protagonist says, "In his defense, I cite the Twentieth Century". At one point, Flaubert says (to paraphrase), "I occasionally look at a newspaper to see what fresh calamity awaits. I do not say that we are dancing on the edge of a volcano, no, we are dancing on the wooden seat of a latrine, and I believe it is more than a touch rotten, and we will soon fall through into nineteen centuries of shit. There will be quite a lot of shouting."

Flaubert's unique approach to life (he has a sense of humor similar to DeGaulle's) is brilliantly illustrated with quotes and historical fiction that is usually about 90% history to 10% fiction. One of the things that comes through clearly is how hard Flaubert worked to find exactly the right word or phrase, and how seriously he took his craft. Flaubert's desire for clarity rose to the level of frustration with language itself: "Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity." This book is all the biography I need of Flaubert, and it has inspired me to read Bovary again, with fresh eyes.

"Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can’t we leave well alone? Why aren’t books enough?”(p. 12)

I have so many questions about Julian Barnes’ 'Flaubert’s Parrot':

Does this book deal with Flaubert’s life? Yes – to some extent. It has an odd structure – somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. The book is confusing and enlightening at the same time, and I’m asking myself, where do we draw the line between fiction and nonfiction, and is this even possible?

Who is the unreliable narrator of the story who follows the path of Flaubert’s life? How much is the implied author a part of the narrator? There must be a strong connection between the implied author and Flaubert. Julian Barnes must be a Francophile as his love of France shines through in the pages of this novel. I especially loved his description of the respectability of French pharmacies on page 84 which made me smile in agreement.

Who should read this book? I am sure that Flaubert-aficionados get the most out of it. However, at a second glance, there is more to the book. One’s own life and the narrator’s life intertwine and mingle with Flaubert’s life. The narration opens up to life and its unpredictability. Is this book, therefore, about the unreliability of life and thus in literature?

Well, as you can see clearly, Julian Barnes’ small book – shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 1984 – left me with a lot of questions. While reading it, I felt entertained and amused, sometimes a little bit bored, but still very intrigued.

Of course, it is well written but is it a must-read? I don’t think so. However, if you are interested in life and its irony, if you like well-written literature, and if you are interested in Flaubert, France and all that comes with it, you should definitely give it a go.

A novel that is largely a non-traditional biography of Gustave Flaubert. We get all the usual biographical info on Flaubert we expect, but it’s organized in chapters such as one on the various colors of Madame Bovary’s eyes in that novel by Flaubert. Barnes threads the book with the fictitious biographer’s concern for, and reflections on, his wife dying of an illness. Spooky, because Barnes’s wife actually died of a brain tumor in 2008, but he wrote Parrot in 1986.



One chapter is structured as a glossary of odds and ends about Flaubert’s life, his acquaintances and thoughts. Another chapter tells of Flaubert’s long-term relationship with Louise Colet from HER perspective.

A chapter titled “The Train-Spotter’s Guide to Flaubert” features Flaubert’s thoughts on trains, how they figured in his novels, and one house that he lived in, visible from the tracks.

“The Flaubert Bestiary” chapter features his pets, animals in his stories, and how they were connected to animals he owned, and the parrot! The chapter called “The Case Against” features sixteen things (count ‘em) his detractors said ranging from the cosmic (he hated humanity) to the mundane (there are a lot of animals slaughtered in his books). Barnes demolishes most, but not all, (isn’t that phrase redundant?) of these bad raps.

Flaubert at times claimed he was annoyed at the overbearing fame of Madame Bovary that overshadowed his other work. (All authors should be so lucky.) Barnes tells us we should take him a “little seriously” on this matter.

Quotes I liked: “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 people’s lives, never your own.”



Flaubert believed in “authorial absence.” He wrote “I think that one must not show one’s own, and that the artist must no more appear in his work than God does in nature.” Of course times change, deconstruction arrived, and no one believes that an author can remain hidden now.

This book is a meta-biography because Barnes offers his reflections on the “why” of a biography. He starts with a discussion of the statue of Flaubert in Rouen in northern France (pictured above), just across the English Channel. We love Madame Bovary but why can’t we let it go at that? Why the statue? Why a museum? Why a biography? What do we expect to get out of wandering through Flaubert’s home? Why do we go to his grave? – he wasn’t family.

Here's where the book’s title comes from: Flaubert wrote with a brilliantly colored stuffed parrot on his desk to inspire him. It could have been any one of a number of parrots lent out by the local museum at the time but for some reason we want to know WHICH ONE really was his parrot.



A very good read; it was short-listed for the Booker Prize.

Top photo is Flaubert's statue in Rouen from Wikimedia
The parrot from booksnplaces.files.wordpress.com
The author from thereadersroom.org

[Revised 4/27/22, edited 8/31/23]

This was a giant gimmick of a novel and I thought the gimmick just worked so well. I understand some readers disagree. I'm not going to say that them's fightin' words and I'm going to have to ask you to step outside. I'm just annoyingly, irritatingly going to tell you that I thought this was like a gloved hand on the back of your neck which inches its way round to your windpipe. What happens is that a dull kind of guy mooches about France collecting biographical data about the sainted Flaubert, one of the handful of authors about Not One Bad Word Has Ever Been Spoken. As he muses and mumbles and huffs and puffs his way about France, gradually little fragments of his own life bob to the surface and are quickly shoved back down. He doesn't want to think about that stuff. he's over in France on this Flaubert tour to get away from all that. But back they come and gradually you get this feeling of dread creeping over the somewhat amusing observations about Flaubert and his life and times, and his gentle monologue becomes like trying to focus your eyes on something below the water and realising it might be something really...gruesome.

Geoffrey Braithwaite, a doctor with three children, takes a vacation to Rouen in France to pay homage to his literary hero, Gustave Flaubert, most famously known for his novel Madame Bovary. On this pilgrimage, Dr. Braithwaite is stimulated to think of the many arguments and critiques of his hero and we are drawn along with him. An example of his arguments is in his response to critics who claimed Flaubert was not patriotic:

“The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonourably, foolishly, viciously. The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.”

As he visits the points of interest in Rouen, he notices something strange. In Flaubert’s story, Un coeur simple there is a parrot. It is said that Flaubert borrowed this parrot from the Museum so he could further study “parrotism” while he writes the story. Yet, as Dr. Braithwaite continues on, he discovers two parrots, in two different locations within the city – both allegedly the parrot that inspired (and annoyed) Flaubert. Now he is on a mission. How do you compare two parrots, one already idealized by memory and metaphor, the other a squawking intruder?

Dr. Braithwaite has this to say about the story with a parrot:

The control of tone is vital. Imagine the technical difficulty of writing a story in which a badly-stuffed bird with a ridiculous name ends up standing in for one third of the Trinity, and in which the intention is neither satirical, sentimental, nor blasphemous. Imagine further telling such a story from the point of view of an ignorant old woman without making it sound derogatory or coy. But then the aim of Un Coeur simple is quite elsewhere: the parrot is a perfect and controlled example of the Flaubertian grotesque.

While in a bookstore, Dr. Braithwaite hears, through a fellow named Ed Winterton, of the existence of letters between Flaubert and a governess who had left France to live in England. He envisions now a book, his book: ‘Juliet Herbert: A Mystery Solved, by Geoffrey Braithwaite’, illustrated with one of those photographs in which you can’t quite read the handwriting. And he muses, “ . . . perhaps the sweetest moment in writing is the arrival of that idea for a book which never has to be written, which is never sullied with a definite shape, which never needs be exposed to a less loving gaze than that of its author.”

In contrast to that thought, Flaubert says: ”I am bothered by my tendency to metaphor, decidedly excessive. I am devoured by comparisons as one is by lice, and I spend my time doing nothing but squashing them.” Words came easily to Flaubert, but he also saw the underlying inadequacy of the Word. Remember his sad definition from Madame Bovary: “Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” So you can take the novelist either way: as a pertinacious and finished stylist, or as one who considered language tragically insufficient.

This novel has so many quotable quotes. So much to think about, to ponder, to jostle for priority. I found myself, again and again, drifting off into my mind to think and reflect on what I had just read. I had over 5 pages of highlights on my eReader. Unfortunately, I could only include the few that would illustrate my own humble description of this incredible novel.

I loved the way this book was laid out. There is a section of brief biographical notes, a section of arguments with various points critics of Flaubert have made, a section of highlights A to Z in the life of Flaubert, and so many other little landscapes to discover.

At one point Geoffrey Braithwaite states: ”What happened to the truth is not recorded.” From his vantage point of just over a hundred years after Flaubert’s death, it is harder than ever to gather together facts from the sources remaining.

Flaubert wrote to Du Camp: ‘Pride is one thing: a wild beast which lives in caves and roams the desert; Vanity, on the other hand, is a parrot which hops from branch to branch and chatters away in full view.’

In reading his surviving letters and his books, are we truly any wiser about who the real Gustave Flaubert was? Maybe he was a series of blank or partially painted canvases and we are left to paint them in as we choose. If that is the case, Dr. Braithwaite did such an excellent job that we can admire all of his canvasses for days and weeks and months. We may never come closer to the truth than this.

And lest we forget, accolades must be accorded to Julian Barnes for creating this amazing character, Dr. Geoffrey Braithwaite, and the excursion we were able to share with him.

SPOILER ALERT! It takes a while to realize what this little book is about: at first you have the impression Barnes lets us share his passion for the 19th Century French author Flaubert, master of the realistic school. We seem to follow Barnes in a visit to Rouen and other places, and learn to know the mystery of the two stuffed parrots, of which at least one (well, perhaps...) stood on the desk of Flaubert and which was his model for a short story. But then, gradually, it becomes clear that not Barnes, but someone else, a doctor Geoffrey Braithwaite, is the author of this novel, a man wrestling with the death of his wife. In the meanwhile a lot of information is passed on: big and little details of the life and personality of Flaubert, both interesting and detestable; this is done in different ways and styles.

The booklet is quite amusing and humorous. In postmodern sense it illustrates that it is almost impossible to get a grip on the real Flaubert, just as doctor Braithwaite in the end has to admit he did not really know his wife. As a bonus literary critics are satirized, philosophical reveries on art and reality are served and the British and French soul are exposed. Quite interesting, but also with some flaws (not all chapters are succesful). All in all a very fine novel, written in a clever, efficient style.

Οι βιογραφίες, και δη οι μυθιστορηματικές, είναι από τα λογοτεχνικά είδη που δεν με έλκουν καθόλου· είναι πολύ δύσκολο ένα κείμενο που έχει ως επίκεντρό του ένα πρόσωπο να ξεφύγει από την αγιογραφία, τον διδακτισμό ή -πιο σπάνια- τον λίβελο, κι αυτά υπάρχουν ήδη γύρω μας σε πολύ μεγάλες δόσεις.

Ακόμη λιγότερο με αφορά η μυθιστορηματική βιογραφία με θέμα τη ζωή κάποιου συγγραφέα: μου αρκούν τα βιβλία του που τα διαβάζω για την αναγνωστική απόλαυση που μπορούν να μου προσφέρουν και όχι ως υλικό για να τον ψυχαναλύσω εκ των υστέρων (ο Φλωμπέρ σε ένα γράμμα του σημείωνε ότι ο συγγραφέας δεν θα πρέπει να εκφράζει πουθενά στο βιβλίο του τα συναισθήματα ή τις απόψεις του).

Με τον Φλωμπέρ τον ίδιο πάλι έχω μάλλον μικρή εξοικείωση· αν ήθελα, ακολουθώντας τον Μπαρνς, να γράψω, μια βδομάδα πριν, τη δική μου εκδοχή της βιογραφίας του Φλωμπέρ, θα έγραφα κάτι τέτοιο:

Γκυστάβ Φλωμπέρ: Γάλλος μυθιστοριογράφος του 19ου αιώνα, από τους θεμελιωτές του ρεαλισμού, διάσημος για το έργο του «Μαντάμ Μποβαρί» (ΠΡΕΠΕΙ να το διαβάσω κάποια στιγμή). Στηλίτευε την αστική υποκρισία και τα ήθη της εποχής του. Έγραψε επίσης το «Σαλαμπώ» (κάτι με την Καρχηδόνα), την «Αισθηματική Αγωγή» (μη με ρωτάτε, δεν έχω ιδέα), το «Λεξικό των Κοινών Τόπων» (το μόνο του βιβλίο που έχω διαβάσει, αριστούργημα της ειρωνικής χρήσης του λόγου). Θυμάμαι ένα πορτρέτο του στο οποίο είναι ντυμένος περίεργα. Τον αναφέρουν (ή νομίζω ότι τον αναφέρουν) διάφοροι αγαπημένοι μου συγγραφείς (Έκο, Κούντερα κοκ.). Κανονικά θα έπρεπε να τον γράφω «Φλομπέρ», αλλά δεν μου πάει το χέρι, ίσως επειδή αυτή η γραφή μου θυμίζει αερόβολο.

Γιατί λοιπόν να ξεκινήσω ένα βιβλίο που συχνά παρουσιάζεται ως μια -εναλλακτική έστω- βιογραφία ενός διάσημου συγγραφέα με το έργο του οποίου δεν έχω ιδιαίτερη επαφή; Εντάξει, έχει καλές κριτικές και ικανοποιητική βαθμολογία στο goodreads.com, αλλά μάλλον δεν αρκούν αυτά. Νομίζω ότι αυτό που με έπεισε να διαβάσω το βιβλίο, πέρα από το γεγονός ότι με είχε ενθουσιάσει η γραφή του Μπαρνς στα Τρία Επίπεδα της Ζωής, ήταν ο τίτλος του· ένιωθα ότι μου υποσχόταν ότι εδώ δεν θα διαβάσω ακριβώς για τον Φλωμπέρ, αλλά για κάτι παραδίπλα, με αφορμή τον Γάλλο μυθιστοριογράφο.

Δεν διαψεύστηκα· ο Μπαρνς γράφει ένα ιδιαίτερο βιβλίο, που όχι απλώς απέχει πολύ από μια κλασική μυθιστορηματική βιογραφία, αλλά είναι ταυτόχρονα προσωπική αναζήτηση, λογοτεχνική κριτική, στοχασμός πάνω στην τέχνη, στο ίδιο το είδος της βιογραφίας, στην αλήθεια, την ηθική, τον έρωτα και άλλα πολλά. Μεταμοντέρνο, τόσο στη μορφή όσο και στην ουσία του, γεμάτο χιούμορ, αλλά και αυτοσαρκασμό, είναι ένα βιβλίο που δεν παίρνει πολύ στα σοβαρά τον εαυτό του, όπως περίπου έκανε και ο Φλωμπέρ (ή μάλλον, ο Φλωμπέρ έτσι όπως μας τον παρουσιάζει).

Ο αφηγητής και κεντρικό (πέρα από τον Φλωμπέρ) πρόσωπο του βιβλίου είναι ένας χήρος συνταξιούχος Άγγλος γιατρός που έχει ως προσωπικό πάθος τον Γάλλο συγγραφέα και συγκεντρώνει υλικό γύρω από εκείνον για να γράψει κάποια στιγμή ένα βιβλίο. Στον Παπαγάλο του Φλωμπέρ τον ακολουθούμε σε αυτές του τις προσπάθειες, είτε στη ζωή είτε στο χαρτί, και ταυτόχρονα τον βλέπουμε να αφηγείται έμμεσα άλλες δύο ιστορίες, τη δική του και της συζύγου του. Μάλιστα η αφηγηματική φωνή μοιάζει να μιμείται σε πολλές περιπτώσεις, είτε έμμεσα είτε ρητά, το ύφος, αλλά και τις συγγραφικές τεχνικές του ίδιου του Φλωμπέρ, φωτίζοντας έτσι με έναν διαφορετικό τρόπο τον τίτλο του βιβλίου, που μπορεί και να σημαίνει ότι εδώ μιλά κάποιος που μιμείται τον Φλωμπέρ.

Έτσι, στο πρώτο κεφάλαιο μιλά για αναζήτηση του αυθεντικού παπαγάλου που δανείστηκε ο Φλωμπέρ για τις ανάγκες της συγγραφής της Απλής Καρδιάς, μια αναζήτηση που θα διατρέχει όλο το βιβλίο σαν μια παραβολή για το ζήτημα της αλήθειας όταν έχουμε να κάνουμε με το παρελθόν· στο δεύτερο ο αφηγητής μας δίνει (χωρίς άλλη εξήγηση) τρεις εκδοχές ενός χρονολογίου της ζωής του συγγραφέα, μία που στέκεται στις επιτυχίες του, μία στις ατυχίες και στις σκιές της ζωής του, και μία με ρήσεις του σε χρονολογική σειρά· στο τρίτο έχουμε μια παιγνιώδη ιστορία γύρω από την ανακάλυψη κάποιας χαμένης ερωτικής του αλληλογραφίας· στο τέταρτο μια καταγραφή, εν είδει ανεκδοτολογικής μονογραφίας, της σχέσης του Φλωμπέρ με τα ζώα, μέσα από τα γραπτά του, αλλά και περιστατικά της ζωής του και πάει λέγοντας.

Υπάρχουν ακόμη κεφάλαια για τις συμπτώσεις γύρω από τον Φλωμπέρ, για τον ρεαλισμό και την εσωτερική συνέπεια των λογοτεχνικών έργων, για τη σχέση του συγγραφέα με την Αγγλία ή με τον σιδηρόδρομο, για τις ιδέες του που ποτέ δεν εξελίχθηκαν σε βιβλία. Καθώς το βιβλίο προχωρά προς το τέλος του, η γραφή γίνεται όλο και πιο τολμηρή, όλο και πιο φιλόδοξη, όλο και πιο πειραματική: σε ένα κεφάλαιο ο αφηγητής απαντά σε καθεμιά από τις βασικότερες κατηγορίες που έχει προσάψει η κριτική κατά καιρούς στον Φλωμπέρ, στο επόμενο γράφει σε πρώτο πρόσωπο την άποψη της περιστασιακής ερωμένης του Φλωμπέρ, Λουίζ Κολέ, για τη μεταξύ τους σχέση, έπειτα γράφει ένα κεφάλαιο που αποτελεί το δικό του συμπλήρωμα του «Λεξικού των Κοινών Τόπων», αυτή τη φορά όμως με λήμματα που αφορούν άμεσα τη ζωή και το έργο του Φλωμπέρ.

Λίγο πριν τελειώσει το βιβλίο, ήρθα αντιμέτωπος με μια σχεδόν ανατριχιαστική σύμπτωση: ο αφηγητής μιλά -επιτέλους- ευθέως για τη σύζυγό του που έχει πεθάνει πρόσφατα και το πώς βιώνει ο ίδιος αυτή την απώλεια. Όσοι και όσες έχουν διαβάσει τα Τρία επίπεδα της ζωής θα θυμούνται ότι το θέμα τους είναι ακριβώς η προσπάθεια του ίδιου του Μπαρνς να διαχειριστεί περίπου τριάντα χρόνια μετά την απώλεια της δικής του συζύγου· διαβάζοντας τις σχετικές σελίδες στον «Παπαγάλο» άκουγα τον αντίλαλο του μελλοντικού αυτού βιβλίου…

Η παιγνιώδης διάθεση που διαπνέει το βιβλίο είναι εμφανής και στο προτελευταίο κεφάλαιο που έχει τη μορφή ερωτήσεων σε εναλλακτικό πανεπιστημιακό μάθημα με θέμα τον Φλωμπέρ και στο τελευταίο που κλείνει και πάλι με τον παπαγάλο και το ζήτημα της αλήθειας.

Πρόκειται τελικά για ένα πανέξυπνο, ευρηματικό και πνευματώδες μυθιστόρημα για τον Φλωμπέρ, τη συγγραφή και τη λογοτεχνία, που προσεγγίζει αυτά τα θέματα με τον τρόπο που έχει νόημα να το κάνει ένα μυθιστόρημα: φωτίζοντάς τα από πλευρές που άλλο είδος γραπτού λόγου δεν θα μπορούσε. Ελπίζω μόνο η πιο πρόσφατη έκδοση του Μεταίχμιου να έχει πιο προσεγμένη μετάφραση και επιμέλεια από αυτή του Aquarius που διέθετα.

Ανεβασμένη και στο μπλογκ μου

An interesting concept and an excellent execution.
At the end you end up liking both Flaubert and Barnes.
Entertainer with many witty turns and close observations on Life and Art.
Loved the parts in which he talks of relations between Life and Art, Literary Criticism, Obsessive adherence to favourite authors, The difference between the reading of an ordinary reader/lover of literature and the reading of a literary critic.