false 45374 5 Julian Barnes's long and passionate relationship with la belle France began more than forty years ago, and in these essays on the country and the culture he combines a keen appreciation, a seemingly infinite sphere of reference, and prose as stylish as classic haute couture.<br><br>Barnes's vision of France-"The Land Without Brussels Sprouts"-embraces its vanishing peasantry; its vanished hyper-literate pop singers, Georges Brassens, Boris Vian, and Jacques Brel ("[he] sang at the world as if it&#8230; could be saved from its follies and brutalities by his vocal embrace"); and the gleeful iconoclasm of its nouvelle vague cinema ("'The Underpass in Modern French Film' is a thesis waiting to be written"). <br><br>He describes the elegant tour of France that Henry James and Edith Wharton made in 1907, and the orgy of drugs and suffering of the Tour de France in our own time. An unparalleled connoisseur of French writing and writers, Barnes gives us his thoughts on the prolific and priapic Simenon, on Sand, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé ("If literature is a spectrum, and Hugo hogs the rainbow, then Mallarmé is working in ultra-violet"). <br><br>In several dazzling excursions into the prickly genius of Flaubert, Barnes discusses his letters; his lover Louise Colet; and his biographers (Sartre's The Family Idiot, "an intense, unfinished, three-volume growl at Flaubert, is mad, of course"). He delves into Flaubert's friendship with Turgenev; looks at the "faithful betrayal" of Claude Chabrol's film version of Madame Bovary; and reveals the importance of the pharmacist's assistant, the most major minor character in Flaubert's great novel: "if Madame Bovary were a mansion, Justin would be the handle to the back door; but great architects have the design of door-furniture in mind even as they lay out the west wing."<br><br>For lovers of France and all things French-and of Julian Barnes's singular wit and intelligence-Something to Declare is an unadulterated joy to read. 1155676 2002 Something to Declare: Essays on France total:49|5:9|4:14|3:20|2:5|1:1| 49 172 75 6 2 0 false false Sun Apr 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 25 22:07:25 -0700 2009 Mon May 11 06:45:30 -0700 2009
The bulk of the essays in this volume deal with Flaubert, his life, and his work. The non-Flaubert essays are a delight t...more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Dec 19 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Oct 28 22:47:05 -0700 2008 Sat Dec 20 13:33:14 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Aug 15 10:28:53 -0700 2007 Sun Jan 11 19:53:29 -0800 2009
Englishman Barnes meanders through various things French, from his childhood trips to drug use in theTour de France, songs of Boris Vian and Jacque...more...]]> 3 0 true false Sun Jan 11 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 22 12:10:24 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 12 09:56:49 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Sep 11 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 19 12:24:08 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 06:33:37 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Mon Jan 16 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Mon Aug 11 16:52:24 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 11 16:52:24 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Sun Oct 25 12:30:59 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 25 12:30:59 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Sep 23 20:57:39 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 23 20:57:39 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Aug 24 10:50:41 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 24 10:50:41 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Jul 24 22:54:19 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 20 12:30:19 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sun Jul 19 08:36:03 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 19 08:36:03 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Jul 04 12:24:09 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 04 12:24:46 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Wed Jun 17 21:18:58 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 17 21:18:58 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Mon Jun 15 09:10:45 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 15 09:10:45 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Tue Jun 09 08:13:20 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 09 08:13:20 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue May 05 08:06:37 -0700 2009 Tue May 05 08:06:37 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Wed Apr 22 11:45:25 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 11:45:25 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Apr 18 13:50:20 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 18 13:50:20 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Mar 30 09:19:41 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 30 09:19:41 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Mar 13 07:44:28 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 13 07:44:28 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=45374