In Flaubert’s Parrot (Vintage International, New York, 1990, pp. 39) Julian Barnes writes: But then Ed Winterton liked to present himself as a failure…. His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore toContinue reading “On Failing In Our Own Style”
Tag Archives: Gustave Flaubert
Mary McCarthy on Madame Bovary as Neurotic
Among the most famous descriptions of Emma Bovary are Mary McCarthy‘s cutting lines: [She] is a very ordinary middle-class woman, with banal expectations of life and an urge to dominate her surroundings. Her character is remarkable only for an unusual deficiency of natural feeling. Ouch. But what follows these lines is a perhaps more interestingContinue reading “Mary McCarthy on Madame Bovary as Neurotic”
Samir Chopra 