Word: lottman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Lottman warns readers in his preface that, "the biographer of a seminal figure such as Gustave Flaubert may on occasion appear to resemble a newspaper editor handling a story...
...Lottman points out these contradictions simply by telling the story, but he never addresses them, and this lack of explanation leaves the character of Flaubert disappointingly flat...
This is particularly true since Lottman obviously did extensive research for the book. The entire narrative is framed around letters to and from Flaubert. Correspondance with his sister, his niece, his friends and his most notorious lover, Louise Colet, give flesh to what is otherwise largely a chronology...
...appetite is satisfied. Flaubert seems to have sought the mot juste, the perfect word, as much in his personal writing as in his novels, and the passages which include letters he wrote are beautiful. It would be better to read a collection of his letters than to read Lottman's biography...
...Lottman does pull successfully the political and social controversies of the times into the narrative, giving the story a context that is far more interesting when he manages not to say whether it was one Saturday or the next Tuesday...