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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Ideas that Ferment in the Brains of the Brainless,
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This review is from: The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas (Paperback)
"ARTISTS. All charlatans. Boast of their disinterestedness (old-fashioned). Express astonishment that they dress like everybody else (old-fashioned). They earn insane amounts, but fritter it all away. Often asked to dine out. A woman artist cannot be anything but a whore."Flaubert's satirical reference work, the Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues, reveals in a marvellously condensed form the writer's attitude toward the French bourgeois society in which he was brought up. It is a sort of guidebook to19th-century crassness, triteness, pomposity, and irrationalism decked out to look like reason. Clearly Flaubert regarded his own social class with a mixture of detestation, boredom, and intense fascination. He found both comic and tragic possibilities in this cultural stratum, which he mined relentlessly for the realistic details of his novels Madame Bovary, L'éducation sentimentale, and Bouvard et Pécuchet. In the early 1850s (while at work on Madame Bovary) Flaubert referred in several letters to his "sottisier," a compendium of trite opinions, of the ideas that "ferment in the brains of the brainless." Flaubert never published his dictionary, although in a letter to his mistress, Louise Colet, he hinted that he intended to do so eventually. Topical dictionaries and digests of knowledge were popular in France, especially among the upwardly mobile, who may have fancied that posession of snippets of miscellaneous information conferred a patina of erudition, and made one's dinner-party conversation more sparkling. Flaubert must have enjoyed parodying the entire concept of the "authoritative" reference work; his private compendium was arranged in alphabetical order, with ludicrous cross-references, secondary definitions (which generally contradict the first one), and a tone of pompous omniscience. The Dictionary's stock of platitudes served Flaubert as a sourcebook for the opinions of many characters in the novels Madame Bovary, L'éducation sentimentale, and Bouvard et Pécuchet. This work, as well as being enjoyable and witty reading for its own sake, is an indispensable artist's eye view of mid-nineteenth century bourgeois mores, and also provides some insight into the paradox the author struggled with in his novels: how to create pure art out of pure vulgarity.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amusing to consider how many took it seriously,
This review is from: The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas (Paperback)
Like any master of parody, Flaubert doesn't go completely overboard with this satire of the "...For Dummies" books of his day. If we know a bit about Flaubert, we know that his "definitions" in the book are tongue in cheek, but it's actually possible that a member of the French upper middle class in Flaubert's time would have picked this up and thought it a good handy reference book. Priceless, just priceless.This is great humor, and the accepted ideas it mocks are actually remarkably similar to the accepted ideas of our own time. Flaubert has a way of stating these "facts" that holds them up to the light of his brilliant ridicule. Because a dictionary can contain pretty much anything, Flaubert uses this as a platform to discuss views on art, politics, philosophy, food, animals, and just about everything else. Don't expect, however, to read this and just take its opposite in order to understand Flaubert's mind -- sometimes there is double irony here, and the author is himself ambivalent about the proper "definitions" of the words he lists. Overall, this is a genuinely funny read, and a useful insight into the petty bourgeois society (similar to our own) Flaubert loved to mock.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Available: a secret weapon of wit,
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This review is from: The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas (Paperback)
Flaubert is not generally someone you may associate with being a laugh, but The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas is hilarious. For decades now, it has been my secret weapon, as I held onto my worn out copy of a used bookstore edition I had. Only a few knew it existed, and only the elect knew what it was, and we would quote from it and share the joy between ourselves. (I knew it as the Dictionary of Received Opinion, which might capture the English contents a bit better.)
New Directions paperbacks are always worth our time, as they have superior translation and presentation, and this is no exception. No less a figure than Jacques Barzun (author of A Jacques Barzun Reader: Selections from His Works (Perennial Classics) and many, many important works) translates and, more importantly, offers context for the entries. Flaubert collected overheard statements throughout his life -- snippets from other tables in the cafe that seemed outrageous -- and the collection was put together after his death. From "hatred of the bourgeoisie is the beginning of wisdom" to "deicide: to be railed against, despite the infrequency of the crime," there are incisive, absurd, and still challenging entries on every page.
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