Volume 18, Number 6 · April 6, 1972
Battle of the Century—Sartre vs. Flaubert
By John Weightman
L'idiot de la famille Gustave Flaubert de 1821 à 1857 Books)
by Jean-Paul Sartre
Gallimard, 2 vols, 2,136 pp., 110F (to be published in its entirety in the United States by Pantheon
The Greatness of Flaubert
by Maurice Nadeau, translated by Barbara Bray
The Library Press, 306 pp., $9.95
Sartre's awe-inspiring book is without a doubt the most extraordinary work ever composed by one writer about another. I have been reading it for a month in varying moods of exasperation, humility, exultation, and despair, and I have still not got to the end of the 2,000 odd pages. But to speak about an end is probably inappropriate. Sartre promises us more volumes, and indeed if his intention is eventually to analyze Flaubert's major novels with the same exuberance as he has brought to bear on the oeuvres de jeunesse, there is no reason why the book should ever be completed. So far he has only got to the foothills of the subject; to deal with it completely he will have to digest the universe, because, strictly speaking, no one detail in creation is ever adequately defined until its relationships with all the rest have been minutely worked out.
Review, 3046 words
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