Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pecuchet
Flaubert, Gustave. Bouvard and Pécuchet; with the Dictionary of Received Ideas (Bouvard et Pécuchet, Dictionnaire des idées reçues). Trans. A.J. Krailsheimer. London: Penguin, 1976 (1874-1880).
It's so funny. It's so mean. It's so funny. There's no way to do right by it - one of B. and P.'s principal occupations is mocking the stupidity and unoriginality of other people, and they aren't precisely wrong to do so. It doesn't feel unfinished. The tone is so homogenous that it's easy enough to superimpose it over Flaubert's plot sketch for the last chapters (with another steel-trap ending, just like L'Éducation Sentimentale), have the received ideas for dessert and go to bed with heartburn.
It's so funny. It's so mean. It's so funny. There's no way to do right by it - one of B. and P.'s principal occupations is mocking the stupidity and unoriginality of other people, and they aren't precisely wrong to do so. It doesn't feel unfinished. The tone is so homogenous that it's easy enough to superimpose it over Flaubert's plot sketch for the last chapters (with another steel-trap ending, just like L'Éducation Sentimentale), have the received ideas for dessert and go to bed with heartburn.
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