![]() ![]() Often 'rash,' always 'bold.'" The only escape from cliche, Flaubert insisted, was tireless pursuit of the right word. Always 'regrettable' or 'unlucky'-as if a mishap might sometimes be a cause of rejoicing." "FULMINATE: Nice verb." "HYPOTHESIS. What is his Dictionary of Received Ideas if not a compendium of mental monotony, each cliché arrayed like an impaled butterfly for close examination? From Jacques Barzun's translation: "ACCIDENT. The tedium of men's minds was one of Flaubert's great topics early and late, from Madame Bovary to Bouvard and Pecuchet, he avidly collected specimens of human stupidity. "Too much canoeing! Too much exercise! Yes, sir! The civilized man doesn't need as much locomotion as physicians pretend." Flaubert, himself a physician's son, offered a more oblique remedy for the second affliction of which Maupassant complained. "Too many whores!" Flaubert admonished him. "There's a simple remedy for that-don't avail yourself of it." Maupassant had complained that he was as bored with women's asses as he was with men's minds. ![]() ![]() "You lament the monotony of ass," Flaubert wrote to his young disciple Guy de Maupassant in 1878, two years before the master's death of a heart attack at age fifty-eight. ![]()
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