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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deeply Felt, Highly Literate, Highly Entertaining, April 14, 2001
Julian Barnes's novel/fictional biography/fictional autobiography, "Flaubert's Parrot" is a magnificent work. This is the first of Barnes's work that I have read, and it shall not be the last. In it, an admittedly mediocre, aging scholar, Geoffrey Braithwaite, professedly attempts to eschew the accepted notions of literary biography, while pursuing just the sort of minutiae he derides. In the case of Flaubert, Braithwaite becomes obsessed with two stuffed parrots - which is the one that inspired and annoyed Flaubert during the composition of 'Un coeur simple'?Conventions of narrative, style, and form are dispensed with throughout this work - it is composed of a range of genres (mulit-voiced narratives, chronology, encyclopedia/dictionary, and even essay-exam questions). At the same time, the disparate modes are held together from the beginning by a deeper underlying drive - the uncovering of Flaubert's life and opinions operate as a function of Braithwaite's own unresolved issues with the death of his wife. For all the Sartre-bashing that goes on in "Flaubert's Parrot," one notices striking resonances between Barnes's novel and one of Sartre's, to wit, "Nausea." In both, exasperated scholars find themselves feebly attempting to write intended biographies (for Sartre, the subject is Monsieur de Rollebon) while exploring their own relationship turmoils. Is this part of the much-discussed 'irony' that Braithwaite emphasizes as present in Flaubert's life and writings? Is Barnes, as the deus in absentia author, manipulating and ironizing Braithwaite's tumultuous search for truth about Flaubert to point out Braithwaite's own inconsistencies? I digress. Braithwaite tackles Flaubert's life unconventionally - Flaubert is allowed to speak for himself through quotations from correspondence and novels; Flaubert's associates, mainly Maxime du Camp, and his primary lover, Louise Colet are allowed to give 'their own' accounts of their relationships with Flaubert. Braithwaite also presents the commonplaces of Flaubert biography and criticism. All of this is presented to give the reader a highly-biased while simultaneously distancing and impartial look at Flaubert, at Braithwaite, at Barnes, at history, at story, at art, at life, and at themselves. The layering of texts gives a seemingly random assortment of information subtle, even insidious coherence. Quotes, citations, and scenarios are repeated at intervals and in different contexts, allowing the reader to flesh out the importance of each without being repetitive or monotonous. Such is also the case with motifs and images - the bear, the parrot, train-travel, time, medicine, and metafiction. Each device overlaps the other until you find yourself caught up in the significance of every line to the life of Flaubert, to the life and writing of Braithwaite, and to the author Barnes. At times moving, at others repellent, still at others transfixing, Barnes stocks a wealth of knowledge and speculation about art and life into 190 highly entertaining pages. I don't know how much the reader learns about Flaubert, but the careful and attentive reader will learn quite a lot about something from "Flaubert's Parrot."
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34 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing But Net, December 12, 2000
This is not the book that landed The Booker Prize for Mr. Barnes. I have read the novel that did win, "England, England", and I feel this is every bit as good. There are some familiar variants on phrases he has used before, and while not entirely new are not boringly repetitive. I also enjoyed the abrupt changes in point of view, a perspective change that altered the cadence of the novel.Mr. Barnes has truly assembled this work as opposed to progressing from one chapter to the next. The first clever use of this is when you come upon a Chronology of Flaubert's life. Nothing-unusual here. However Mr. Julian Barnes is anything but another quick wit with a pen. So the reader is treated to 3 distinct Chronologies, the subject is essentially the same, however the only true commonality is on the date they end. The voice they are written in changes, and with this modification the mood as well. We have a Narrator who loosely guides us through the tale, however a range of stylistic changes intrudes upon his narrative. Intrude is probably too strong a word for it all works, it all makes sense when placed in the complete context of the book. For one example, I cannot remember the last time I read a novel and found myself subjected to a test, complete with parameters, what is not acceptable regarding the form of answer, and finally a time limit. It did cause uncomfortable suppressed memories of literature exams, but the unpleasant moment is blessedly short. It will depend on how fond you were of written tests. The Parrot is much more than a bird, and even when it does appear as an ornithologist would describe the creature, the number varies widely, as do the locations and clues to the one true bird. Throughout the balance of the book the word Parrot and the countless variations of language are not only extremely clever, they show the range of this man's grasp on language, his, and many others. This could have been a vacuous display of the use of a thesaurus, but Mr. Barnes does not use various words as decoration, he uses them because they are precisely what he needs. There has only been one book that I would not recommend starting with, and that is "Metroland". This book is as good as any of the 6 or 7 I have read, and so far is one of the top 2. So start where you may, odds are this man's work will delight.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Julian Barnes on How Flaubert Can or Can't Change Your Life, August 11, 1997
By A Customer
"Flaubert's Parrot, c'est moi." (Fran Lebowitz)
When someone mentions Flaubert in conversation, the first thing that usually pops into one's head is - almost inevitably - "Madame Bovary". The first thing I think of though is "Flaubert's Parrot" by Julian Barnes.
It has become not uncommon for the Brits to write perceptive analysis of French authors - Alain de Botton's "How Prouste Can Change Your Life" is only a recent example. It's probably the very nature of a complicated relationship between the two countries, their often emphasized difference that bears fruit like Barnes' masterpiece: profound knowledge of the close neighbor, on one hand, and on the other, an ability to keep one's distance and stay aloof, for the purposes of estranged observation. Barnes employs both. As a result, we have a work of art that is neither English nor French, but both, in which English irony and self-scrutiy mingle with French grace and wit in a most successful combination.
"Flaubert's Parrot" is also a mixture of styles, both fiction and literary criticism, diary and biography. We get to view Flaubert's life though the eyes of one Doctor Geoffrey Braithwaite who sets off to reconstruct the writer's life in order to - probably - better understand the human nature and thus to - possibly - comprehend a mystery of his own wife's suicide.
In Flaubert's melancholy the protagonist finds - perhaps an illusionary - comfort, almost a feeling of shared sadness which he might fail to encounter among his contemporary friends, in case he has any. It actually seems that Gustave, as Braithwaite takes to calling the writer, is his only friend. There is an "advantage of making friends with those already dead." Both are lonely, prone to self-analysis and are mourning a loss: Flaubert, of his mother; the doctor, of his wife.
A curious "animal-theory" introduced by Barnes could have become the ground for a Ph.D. study by one of those contemporary scholars who often turn to obscure topics having run out of traditional ones. Throughout his notes Flaubert compares himself to a number of animals, but "secretly, essentially, he is a Bear." It truly tells us more about his character than it might seem. We tend to see ourselves through others. Every one of us has a fluffy, flying or even creepy counterpart in the animal kingdom. Horoscopes tell us we are "aries", "pisces", "leos", "scorpios", "capricorns". Barnes plays with linguistic variations of the French word "ours" (a rough fellow, a police cell) and it's literary allusions (La Fontaine's fable). Now we have yet another image of the writer: Flaubear.
But then why is the book called Flaubert's Parrot?
We are to participate in yet another quest that Doctor Braithwaite undertakes: there exists a stuffed parrot which supposedly inspired Flaubert to write "Un Coer Simple", a story about a poor lonely woman and her bird.Which is also a symbol of the writer's grotesque and his other animal counterpart, according to Braithwaite.
Braithwaite's notes about France where he travels in "a packed cross-Channel ferry,..a modern ship of fools" are alternated with Flaubert's about England - another hint to the "mixed background" of the book. The same with the past and present: they intervene, implicate and compliment each other, cancel and suggest each other's truths. The protagonist tries to reconstruct the past through memoirs, literature, Things which feed his imagination. Braithwaite does not find the past romantic, or better, or particularly interesting - it is merely a framework of Flaubert's creativity, an ambiance of his exitence. It simply is. Flaubert's view of his time was not much brighter than Braithwaite's of today's world. After all, OUR past was only HIS everyday present.
The most fascinating and subtle interplay of the two lives is to be found in the last chapters, in which Braithwaite tells a story of his marriage and of his wife's death. The dead writer comments on it, from the past. The story is intermingled with the episodes of Flaubert's life that have to do with grief.
Braithwaite's wife was unfaithful ("Madame Bovary, c'est moi"?). Through Flaubert's writing he seeks to understand the nature of her adultery. Was it simply, as Nabokov put it, "a most conventional way to rise above the conventional"? or was she merely unhappy? It strikes us that Braithwaite is a doctor, just like Charles Bovary. It does not surprise us that he does not find any solutions in the book:"Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this..." Books and dissertations might explain why Emma commited adultery and died. Nothing will explain why Ellen did. Braithwaite is left tete-a-tete with himself, like Gustave after his beloved mother's death.
Braithwaite is alone, at the end of his parrot-quest, facing three identical parrots at the provincial French museum of Natural History. "Perhaps...we should prefer the consolation of non-fulfillment."
Well, perhaps.
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