am-i-flaubert6 - The Monday Morning Memo

I Did Not Make It Up

Those definitions were lifted from Gustave Flaubert’s
unfinished and unpublished Dictionary of Accepted Ideas.

Gustave said other surprisingly contemporary things as well:

“To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three
requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking,
the others are useless.” – Gustave Flaubert

THANK YOU to our friend Steve King at Today in Literature for today’s Am I Making This Up

“A film that immediately comes to mind is François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, which I watched alone at a private screening in 1963, having gone to review the movie for the Seattle Times. After leaving the theater, I did not — could not — speak for three whole days. The unexplained silence caused my baffled wife to flee, moving into a motel until I recovered my voice. Susan never understood and I’m unsure if I can explain it adequately even now, except to say that Truffaut’s daring artistry validated unexpectedly yet completely my nascent literary vision, giving me the confidence to bring it, in time, to fruition.

In one amazing scene, a young woman about whom Truffaut has led us to care deeply, is shot by gangsters who are hiding out on a French farm. It’s winter, and when the dear girl topples, her body goes gliding slowly, gracefully, on and on, down a long slope covered with snow. Our hearts are breaking over the girl’s death, yet the long, snowy scene (shot in black and white) is, from an aesthetic perspective, heartbreakingly beautiful. The audience is pulled in two directions at once…”

- Tom Robbins, Tibetan Peach Pie, p. 67

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