Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, trans. by Lydia Davis, 384 pages
If you are still reading it... THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE,so PLEASE COME BACK :)
Most of you have heard references to Emma Bovary, but maybe unprepared for such a train wreck of a character. She could easily be found in any modern suburb - shallow, selfish, discontented, looking for love in all the wrong places, bad mom, bad wife, shopping addicted, take your pick - her cup runneth over. I spent the first third of the book disgusted by her and the last two thirds unable to look away. Some of you may remember I mentioned a discussion with my BFF Miji about it (and my attitude toward Emma specifically), and she said "you think it's like Anna Karenina, but it isn't really". (I was pretty hard on Anna K. also.) And she was absolutely right. Because along the way,other layers were revealed apart from her flaws - her weaknesses, she was taken advantage of, her priest spurned her cries for help, and her husband was a doofus, nice guy but a doofus all the same. Just when you think she is a hateful character, she attempts to right herself by going to her priest. No help there, he's a befuddled twit and you see a little bit of her spirit die. Following this, vulnerable Emma is preyed upon by a Valmont-esque neighbor, getting swept off her feet with a broom full of lies.
There is Flaubert's famous wit - the moment of seduction is punctuated with announcements from the Agricultural Fair in the background. Perfect comic timing - hard to master on film, almost impossible on paper - with back and forth pronouncements of love amidst cattle calls. These instances of lightness and irony make reading about poor Emma bearable.
Onto the gifts of Lydia Davis: it seems to me, having now read a few translated titles, that the art of good translation is rooted in a desire to capture the essence of the original. For this reader, Davis' translation "feels" French. If you told me I was now miraculously reading in the original langauge, I would believe you. It feels that authentic. I found this fascinating interview/article from the NY Times: Knee Deep in 'Bovary' and my respect for her grew larger still. And my desire to read both her short story collection and her translation of Swann's Way is effectively hatched. You have to love a woman who defies convention in her own writing, yet has a compulsion to get the classics right.
There was a blog conversation about Madame Bovary a few months back that I bookmarked knowing I would one day want to follow along: here, here, and here and here. Just in case you are interested too...they go much deeper than I am capable of. And I remain glad I read this book in ignorance.
So assuming you have read it - do you find Emma sympathetic, weak, recognizable, fill-in-the-blank? And so continues my curiousity...can you, yes you, like a book where you dislike the main character? or with an unreliable narrator? I'm finding more and more that I do and it surprises me.
The End.
