Bovary, Emma

Update:  Nate an I put our toes in the sand down Mexico way.  Yup.  Cancun.  Bros gone wild.  Well, not WILD.  Maybe nixy.  We did go topless.  We did.  We went down for the wedding of a long-time friend.  Dear friend.  Destination wedding.  I never thought I'd attend one.  And then I did.  All-inclusive.  Lap-of-luxury type thing.  It was a high time.  Last time I saw the groom, he was standing in my hospital room.  He'd come to say goodbye, more or less.  The big goodbye.  And then we're standing on the beach, not a dry eye between us and then we're drinking tequila on in the surf and in the pool and in the lobby and the hallways and elevators and for breakfast, not a clear eye between us. Tequila should never ever ever be free.  But when it is, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.  But beware of Greeks bearing gifts. There's this too: luxury can get really boring.  But that is a horse of a different color.

So here's the deal, I'm drinking tequila again.  Been a long time gone.  And I'm teaching again.  The two aren't really connected.  I found the juxtaposition smirking, the relationship provocative.  About relationships more later.  Feels like I'm doing some pretty good work.  Hard to say b/c I'm such a thoroughgoing skeptic, but it feels right.  In the fall I was energized by the work. Still am.  It's a garden variety reading and writing course—Foundations of Verbal Communications (how's that for title-itis?)—but if virtuosity is doing something common uncommonly well, we probably ought to be working on something common.  That's my goal.  I told my class I intended to the best English teacher they'd ever had.  It took some stones, laying it out there like that b/c like who says something like that?  Is that hubris or needless complication or just silly? I felt like I could hear a roomful of late adolescent internal thoughts: "oh, reallly?"   I said it anyway.   And doubled down.   B/c it's true, those are my intentions and I wanted them to be known.  Pretty terrifying first day back after not being in front of a chalk board in 5 years.  For one thing I felt compelled to lay down on the tracks in front of complete strangers--that whole vulnerability thing.  For my first number I want to make the stakes ridiculously high and leave my self no exit.  For another there are no more chalk boards.  Did you know this?  Nope.  Dry erase.  Everywhere.  Strangely my handwriting improves in the vertical plane.  My handwriting can't help but improve.

But yeah, first semester went well.  That's my cautiously optimistic assessment at the moment. (Wait, til I see a student from that section out and about and he or she totally ducks me.  Assessment might change.)  I was able to knit a couple ideas together, ways of talking about writing and reading but also stuff that I've learned over the past couple years.  I don't want to put you to sleep.  In a word:  relationships.  Study the relationships.  Meaning is made AND conveyed in relationships.  Take a line from the Kinks' Lola:

"I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man, so's Lola." [italics mine]

All by itself we have a perfect dangling modifier.  Is Lola glad the speaker is a man or is Lola a man?  Perfectly ambiguous right?  By itself, the sentence fails completely.  We don't know what is meant.  But the song is about a homo-sexual transvestite.  The ambiguity is INTENDED.  The speaker is confused by his attraction.  Lola herself is ambiguous.  She "walks like a woman and talks like a man."  Alone, so's Lola has an unclear relationship to the rest of the sentence.  As part of a line in a stanza of lyrics?  We see a clear and unambiguous (if you're paying attention) relationship to the rest of the song, namely INTENDED or WINKING AMBIGUITY.   Is Lola glad or is she a man?  Both.  Obviously.  This is really easy to see if we study the relationships between the words.  This is where the magic happens.  I mean, here and with tequila, of course.  So's Lola really is an exception that proves the rule.  The rule is make sure the words are in clear and unambiguous relationship to each other.  Unless you mean something ambiguous.  Here I quote the great William Gass: A hare vaguely perceived is nevertheless a specific hare, but a hare that is the object of a vague image is a vague hare.

That last bit was a red herring.


I was terrible at some stuff too, proving how rusty you can get even at job you like.  Administrative duties, mostly.  These are common too and I had to get serious about trying to do them uncommonly well.  I got better as I got into it.  Sink or swim.  Have courage in your convictions or don't.  I remembered how to do it.  Mainly it takes attention and effort.  Being terrible at some things and pretty good at others probably didn't make me anyone's best English teacher.  But, maybe, the feedback cycles on that can be kinda long.

Then here we are in the spring semester.  Reading Madame Bovary.  Flaubert.  I talked a couple of you into joining me.  It's a work of art.  Remember when you saw your first Rothko or Rodin or the grand canyon?  It's like that.  Really.  This is not a book club.  I know it sounds a lot like a book club.  It's not.  I don't know WHY it's not except that I don't want it to be.  I was in a book club (War and Peace).  It was awful.  I mean the people were great. But something about forced discussion makes people say the weirdest things.  You are not forced.  Don't read it if you don't want to. Read it and don't contribute.  Whatever.  I don't care*.  It's not a lecture either.  I'm claim no authority.  I'm not sure I completely understand the novel it is so rich and complex.  I just know it's beautiful and funny and terribly sad and thrilling all at once.  This is a discussion or non-discussion, whatever.  Imagine you just web-surfed your way into some amazing link, funny and sharp, and smart with poignant, insightful commentary on life as we live it, confirming and challenging simultaneously.  Would you forward that to me?  I hope so.  I'm reading Bovary.  This is the link.  You will not diminish your happiness if you don't participate but you will almost certainly augment it if you do.

I think the way it'll work is I 'll post reading notes and maybe some thoughts or questions.  Notions I had or things that come up in class.   OR you'll have ideas about the way it should go.  The idea itself, putting it on the blog is Lut's.  He was one of the first I hooked to read it with me.  Blame him.

Get the Lydia Davis translation, Penguin Classics Deluxe edition.

Here is what I handed out to my class to get them started.  Take no offense.  They're 18.  I'm trying to remove as much resistance as I can.  Vocabulary and strangeness of setting and time, custom and mores are powerful resistors.   They need to learn to read aggressively, with muscle and determination, yes.  First imma let Flaubert seduce them with his story.

Let me know what you think, what I forgot, got wrong. Above or below.

Bovary

Ch 1-6

            Read 1-3 slowly, methodically.  Put the pieces together.  These are people you will be spending some time with.  How are they introduced?  The moment we first see a person tells us a lot, right?  In life. In fiction.  Study the circumstances, the language, the scenes, the words characters use when we meet them.  Their gestures, the objects around them.  We know that these were of great importance to Flaubert b/c he wrote that that they were.

            Read the rest at whatever pace seems to fit.  Underline and/or write down the sentences that confuse you, leave you with questions, amaze you or take your breath away.  Bring them to class.  Flaubert famously said that the writer/author doing her job well is like god in the universe:  present everywhere, visible nowhere.  What might this mean?  Give it lots of thought.  It's an artist's question, whether you agree or disagree with the statement, it seems to me.  It will likely be a question on the test.

Jumping right in:

Characters to get you started--

Novel opens with Charles as a boy. (One should think about the implications, effects of this scene, see above).  Charles will become Emma's husband.

Charles has parents, Monsieur and Madame Bovary ELDER.  Their stories are revealed with thrilling compression that tells us about them, of course, but also give fuller understanding of Charles.  See if you can reckon how.  Charles soon has a first wife, the FIRST Madame Bovary, the younger, from Dieppe, a costal town in Normandy (I think, if I remember correctly).  Also much compression to be seen here.  Roualt is a kindly old farmer who likes his creature comforts.  He breaks his leg.  Charles, now a doctor, goes to treat him.  Roualt's daughter is Emma. The farmer's daughter.  Charles and Emma are married by the end of chapter 6.  Emma is THE Madam Bovary, your protagonist some like to say.  A couple other significant characters are coming.  Biggies thus far: Emma, Charles, Roualt.  What do you know of them thus far?  What kind of people are they?  What do we know about any of them?  How do we know it? Or on what basis do you make assumptions, form ideas about them?  Answer these questions.  It wouldn't be wrong to write them, the answers, down.  Doing so makes you a student of literature, an endangered species, but so thrilling to see in the wild.  What is the setting? Is there plot?  Flaubert has been called the father of realism.  What is realism—in any art?  What is it in fiction?   What isn't it? Compare it to other styles.  Big question: how is realism achieved on Flaubert's page?? In painting? In drama?  Educated people have been studying this for generations.  Welcome to the club.

Vocabulary to help, in rough reading order.  This is NOT exhaustive.  If/when you need others, look 'em up.

Busby, Shapshka, bowler, otter-skin:  these are kinds of hats.

Polygon: many-sided shape, figure

Quos Ego:  "Whom I..."  Like Ralph Cramden saying, "One of these days, Alice..." When a speaker doesn't complete her thought for effect it's called an aposiopesis.  Quos ego is what Neptune said to the nixy north winds "whom I [he]...." (would punish severely for meddling in the affairs of the gods)  Get it?  The headmaster says, "500 lines for the entire class[...]" (if you don't shut up).  And it worked!  Flaubert tells us so.  Quos ego: a "famous" aposiopesis, delightfully obscure, learned, recondite, likely not very useful except in this moment.  But really, really interesting.  It comes from the Aeneid.  Flaubert knew (and ADORED) his ancient texts.  He has an historical novel, Salammbo, about an African priestess alive between the Punic wars.  It's bad-ass.  Totally bad-ass.  And sadly ignored.  It's in DESPERATE need of illustration.  Read it. Illustrate it.  Make millions.  Put me in the acknowledgements.

Cure-priest (missing accent, I'm typing fast)

Chintz: a pattern of fabric and wallpaper.  Lately has meant cheap but not here

Surfeit: excess, abundance

Angelus:  a catholic devotion.  "the angel said..."  Angelus nuntiavit... at the moment Mary knows she is with CHILD (Jesus) b/c the angel tells her.

Shuttlecock: birdie.  Not tweet-tweet.  Badminton  (so-called b/c it shuttles back and forth over the net and has bird plumage on it. (used to, anyway.)  I'm hell on the badminton court. Just saying.

Bailiff:  lower court official.  The guy that tells you to rise when the judge arrives

Eau de vie:  brandy, distilled wine.  Literally water of life

Twelfth Night:  right before Epiphany.  Three wise men. The beginning of Mardi Gras season.  Usually Jan 5 or 6.  Also a Shakespeare play

Chignon: fashionable tied hair knot

Lorgnette:  those funny eyeglasses that have no arms, just a handle

Taut moire: the cloth on her umbrella

Ursaline: order of nuns

Lassitude: sluggishness, laziness, weakness, lack of vim

Ecu: coin

Trousseau: bride's gathering.  Clothes, sheets, whatnot.  Something old, something new...

Charabanc:  "carriage with benches"  four wheeler, covered for carrying large parties

Fichu:  thin lacy shawl

Cariole:  carriage

Arabesque: Arabic line pattern/rhythm.  Bullfighter's move, so named for the pattern

Toillet:  outfit, dress, clothing

Kirsch: cherry liquor

Chatelaines:  fancy, ornate, jewelry-ish keychain.

Trefoiled: Three-lobed design offent stamped or carved into building materials

Ogive: architectural arch that connects to other arches to make a vault or domed space

Espaliered:  trees or shrubs that get strung out on frames or wires are called this.  think vineyard grapes

Breviary:  little prayer/devotion book

Tilburg: kind of carriage named for an English town.  Two-wheeler

Refectory:  cafeteria, dining hall, mess hall

Postilion:  outrider/guide for a team of horses

Dithyramb: song, poem, verse to Bacchus, god of sex, wine, fertility, excess