I'm starting to like this book a lot more. I much prefer when Braithwaite is not talking about Flaubert, I think it's much more interesting. He seems like an interesting character himself, and I am curious about his life (much more than I am about Flaubert). It had seemed to me that he was talking about every little detail of Flaubert to avoid talking about himself (and his wife) and on page 85 my suspicions were confirmed. "Three stories contend within me. One about Flaubert, one about Ellen, one about myself....I find [my own] the hardest to begin....I resist [my wife's] too." In the beginning of The Case Against I was very hopeful that he might finally be talking about Ellen's story, but then he went off into Flaubert land again. All of the minute and inconsequential details of the life of someone I don't even care about anyway are boring me to tears. Perhaps it is because his wife had some sort of affair, and he is like Charles Bovary about it. He loves her so much that he blinds himself to what is right in front of him. Even when Charles finds her love letters, he stands up for her to himself and insists she was a saint. Braithwaite is using Flaubert's story to put off facing the truth, or, as he claims, to prepare himself for it. I hope he gets to it, I'm starting to really hate Flaubert.
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Good post (another one!). I wonder if there is an intentional dynamic between the way in which you are more interested in Braithwaite's stoty than Flaubert's, while Braithwaite is more interested in Flaubert's than in his own (and Ellen's). Are we doomed to forever take the oblique view? I wonder.
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