"Madame Bovary", foreword to

[fiefoe]

Mary McCarthy started with 'the rapt exchange of platitudes between Leon and Emma on the night of their first meeting' about the pleasure of night reading, and proceeded to say:
    'The threadbare magic carpet, evidently, is shared by author and reader, who are both escaping from the mean provincial life close at hand. Yet Madame Bovary is one of a series of novels - including Don Quixote and Northanger Abbey - that illustrate the evil effects of reading.'

Among the pitfalls:
__ Ideas and feelings as well get more and more soiled and grubby, like library books, as they pass from hand to hand.
__ Words, like lovers, have the power of lying, and they also, like lovers, have a habit of repeating themselves, since language is finite.
__ Flaubert's horror of repetition in writing... reflects his horror of repetition in life. Involuntary repetition is banality. What remains doubtful, though, is whether banality is a property of life or a property of language or both.

Seen in this light, the copy of "Fahrenheit 451" on my bookshelf right now makes a fine companion piece to MB. I even have "Gemma Bovery" there - an British update on MB in graphics novel form. But serendipity is failing to inspire my enthusiasm about this Emma - after all, this is a novel in which the title character DIES. (Shall we make of an unhappy list of such or just stop at "Anna Karenina"?) Fate can be whimsical but not congenial, it seems.

Funnily enough, I have also been reading about Mary McCarthy's ex-husband, Edmund Wilson (via this mefi thread), and now her bile againt literature seems almost personal. ('When they fought, he would retreat into his study and lock the door; she would set piles of paper on fire and try to push them under it.' )