C'est moi!

Reading Madame Bovary again to prepare for teaching it to our scholars later in the year. It gets better with each reading - a possible factor in identifying what makes a work of literature great that I found myself pointing out to a class as we read Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha last week. (It works for Mr Doyle as well.)

But as well as it being a delight to read I do find myself with a radical problem with Flaubert's great novel. As he tears apart all his characters, laying bare their painful superficiality, I find the level of self-recognition painfully disconcerting. Are we really all as stupid as that? Well, yes, I'm afraid.