Bouvard and Pécuchet [Paperback]

Gustave Flaubert (Author), Mark Polizzotti (Translator), Raymond Queneau (Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 2005

Although unfinished during his lifetime, Bouvard and Pecuchet is now considered to be one of Flaubert's greatest masterpieces. In his own words, the novel is "a kind of encyclopedia made into farce . . . A book in which I shall spit out my bile." At the center of this book are Bouvard and Pecuchet, two retired clerks who set out in a search for truth and knowledge with persistent optimism in light of the fact that each new attempt at learning about the world ends in disaster.

In the literary tradition of Rabelais, Cervantes, and Swift, this story is told in that blend of satire and sympathy that only genius can compound, and the reader becomes genuinely fond of these two Don Quixotes of Ideas. Apart from being a new translation, this edition includes Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Among all the works of this brilliant writer, Bouvard and Pecuchet is definitely the deepest, the most thorough, the broadest. . . . It is the Tower of Babel of the sciences, where all the diverse, opposing, and absolute doctrines -- each having its own language -- demonstrate the powerlessness of effort, the vanity of affirmation, and the ever eternal 'misery of everything.'" --Guy de Maupassant

"Flaubert inspires in me an affection that I don't feel for any other writer." --Jean Echenoz

"In Bouvard and Pecuchet, Flaubert created an encyclopedia of the sciences in a way that emphasizes all the laws and failures of knowledge, and at the same time, he did so in a way that breaks the forms of literature itself." --Claudine Cohen, Alliage

About the Author

Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) is considered to be one of the most important French novelists of the nineteenth century. He's most well-known for his novel Madame Bovary, and for his desire to write "a book about nothing," a novel in which all external elements, especially the presence of the author, have been eliminated, leaving nothing but style itself.

Often considered a member of the naturalist school, Flaubert despised categorizations of this sort, and in novels like Bouvard and Pecuchet demonstrates the inaptness of this label. In addition to these two novels, he is also the author of A Sentimental Education, Salambo, Three Tales, and The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press; 2nd edition (November 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564783936
• ISBN-13: 978-1564783936
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #709,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), the younger son of a provincial doctor, briefly studied law before devoting himself to writing, with limited success during his lifetime. After the publication of Madame Bovary in 1857, he was prosecuted for offending public morals.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flaubert's brilliant unfinished novel in an excellent new edition, January 22, 2006

By 

Anon. (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bouvard and Pécuchet (Paperback)

Flaubert's brilliant, and incomplete, final work (he died without completing its final couple of chapters, which exist only in outline form) has been long overdue for a new translation, and new packaging. While earlier versions always made the work look musty, the new Dalkey Press release looks great (although my cover is different from the one pictured above) with a new translation by Mark Polizzotti (author of a good biography of Andre Breton, pope of surrealism) and a reprint of an earlier preface by Raymond Queneau, as well as an appendix including "Dictionary of Accepted Ideas" and "Catalogue of Fashionable Ideas."
Flaubert's work always hovered somewhere between realism and modernism, which made him the literary equivalent of the Impressionist painters, and in his last work he goes the furthest in the direction of modernism, so much so that one is struck almost immediately by the affinities between this work and the later absurdist literature of Beckett and Kafka. Kafka always spoke of Flaubert in tones of veneration, and his admiration is nowhere clearer, at least for me, than in Bouvard and Pécuchet.
Flaubert's work remains as thrillingly modern as, say, the paintings of Manet, and it deserves to be re-discovered and celebrated. From its seemingly inhospitable soil has grown some of the greatest riches of twentieth century literature.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bouvard and Pecuchet (Kindle edition), June 23, 2009

By 

Matt Brick (Rhode Island) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bouvard and Pecuchet (mobi) (Kindle Edition)

Bouvard and Pecuchet by Gustave Flaubert. Published by MobileReference (mobi).

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.

9 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The worst book I've ever read., August 12, 2007

By 

Matthew L. Schaut - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bouvard and Pécuchet (Paperback)

This book is merely list after list after list after list of the state of knowledge in various fields at the time Flaubert was alive. If Flaubert wasn't a very famous writer, it would not be called a novel. It isn't a novel. Its an unedited scrapheap. Read it if you must real all of Flaubert for bragging rights, or because of OCD. Otherwise, run as if it were the plague. Its that bad.