It began as the GODFATHER OF MATH, evolved into the GOODFATHER OF MATH. Now this. Go figure...

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The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for five seconds and think for ten minutes = G. CARLIN...Stain glass, engraved glass, frosted glass
–give me plain glass = JOHN FOWLES ... Music is the mathematics of the gods=PYTHAGORAS ... Nothing is more fluid than language = R. L. SWIHART
I cannot live without the oxygen of laughter = DAWN POWELL ... !!! ... But laughter cannot survive without the hydrogen of gravitas = PAUL OLIVERIO
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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

They Were There In A Previous Year (The Book Of Gus #8)

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Grassy undulations marked the cliffs
composed of soft brown earth that,
in hardening, had turned into 
a wall of gray rock.


They stumbled over the sticky grasses
sometimes leaping over crevasses.
Bouvard sat near the bank and
contemplated the waves,
thinking of nothing, 
fascinated,
inert.

Bouvard And Pecochet


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Footnotes
The 21st Century image of  Port en Bessin is from  here.
Bouvard and Pecochet were there in the 19th Century.

If less than one million and one artists and writers were influenced by–
or descended from–Flaubert's novel, I will eat my beret!

The most obvious descendent in American culture
is the films of Laurel and Hardy.
 
Port en Bessin is in Normandy, France.

Our  BOOK OF GUS began  there.

Eight is enough.

Until later.
 
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3 comments:

  1. Flaubert's "quotes" spark like his "white linens".
    Why do his narratives choke like the dry dust
    from the French country roads settling on teeth?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I partially agree with you
      (the part of me that prefers
      Kate Chopin's THE AWAKENING
      to Flaubert's EMMA BOVARY).

      Rather than think Flaubert's narratives
      choke like the dry dust
      from the French country roads

      I mostly think his narratives
      slowly squeeze the pus
      out of the pimples


      PS
      Our English teacher friend, "Starbucks Sarah,"
      is a master teacher of the Chopin story,
      which is set in New Orleans.


      Delete
  2. Regarding the "white linen" comment,
    what Flaubert once said was:

    The better a work is,
    the more it attracts criticism.
    It is like the fleas who rush
    to jump on white linens.


    ReplyDelete