Progress and Adultery

Ha! Trains as a symbol of progression also creating a substantially EASY excuse to participate in adultery.... Sounds like we should stop ALL modern technology! NOW! If trains were so bad, imagine Flaubert's reaction to e-mail communications. I'm not sure how Gustave hated the train. My small, unexplored, theory is that he hated it because it made Louis closer by quicker means, and he's just demented, so that would cause him to hate this.
But I don’t actually want to talk about trains. Braithewaite already did that. So did Flaubert. I want to talk about something that has been mentioned briefly in the book and constantly in life. Yeah, I want to talk about that little word called Truth. Because “What happened to the truth is not recorded,” (65) but Barnes seems pretty intent on focusing in on specific truths.
Let me tell you about authors and truths. The truth is whatever the writer writes. Now, we may not like it, agree with it, or find it true in our own lives, but it was definitely true for the author. The only truth is that life is what you make of it. Yep, that’s right…. We are all authors of our own stories, and nobody else can tell the truth. Authors are perhaps the most deceptive artists there are. Why else would people have to say “you can’t believe everything you read.”? See, we substitute whatever may be generalized as a ‘true’ reality with our own, and we claim it to be true. (Yes, if you’re wondering, that is a Calvin and Hobbes comic.) So, why is Barnes sooo infatuated with every truth and detail from Flaubert’s life? I certainly am not. I take his critical views of the world, which G. Flaubert claims to be true, that progression is just a sign of our moral digression, with many grains of salt. Because trains, well, they’re just trains. They didn’t cause every married man and woman to go about town and sleep with some other lover.