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A review by mattdube
Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert
4.0
This was supposed to inspire Stein's Three Lives, so I read this one first. Of course, in some senses I've been reading it for a decade or two, given how many times I've read about, and read selections from "A Simple Heart." That story is as good as it would have to be to justify the talk about it, a real work of incredible clarity where Flaubert's attitude toward his subject becomes an incredible kind of pantomime or shadow puppet show; his stories have a way of turning from being about one thing to something much stranger in ways that remain fascinating to me. They are just so rich.
"St Julian" isn't as good, to me at least. I guess the antecedent is Lives of the Saints, and this is kind of a sexed-up remake, maybe trying to blend Balzac into the church literature of fantastic knightly quests. One of the primary attractions for me at least, was the echo of the ending alongisde that of "A Simple Heart." And as for "Herodias," I just didn't care for it. It read a bit like Playboy fiction-- it's so debauched it's kind of a sign of adult tastes to like it, only there's not much there beyond a mood of cynicism, a tsking tone that I found tiresome and too clever by more than half.
Still, an amazing collection, and one that like Stein's Three Lives gets a lot out of characters who don't change, but who instead enact the simplest kinds of fixations.
"St Julian" isn't as good, to me at least. I guess the antecedent is Lives of the Saints, and this is kind of a sexed-up remake, maybe trying to blend Balzac into the church literature of fantastic knightly quests. One of the primary attractions for me at least, was the echo of the ending alongisde that of "A Simple Heart." And as for "Herodias," I just didn't care for it. It read a bit like Playboy fiction-- it's so debauched it's kind of a sign of adult tastes to like it, only there's not much there beyond a mood of cynicism, a tsking tone that I found tiresome and too clever by more than half.
Still, an amazing collection, and one that like Stein's Three Lives gets a lot out of characters who don't change, but who instead enact the simplest kinds of fixations.