Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Barnes: Flaubert's Parrot train image

[Narrator G. Braithwaite speaking of Mauriac]
He finds himself by looking in the works of others...Reading his 'memoirs' is like meeting a man on a train who says, 'Don't look at me, that's misleading. If you want to know what I'm like, wait until we're in a tunnel, and then study my reflection in the window.' You wait, and look, and catch a face against a shifting background of sooty walls, cables and sudden brickwork. The transparent shape flickers and jumps always a few feet away. You become accustomed to its existence, you move with its movements; and though you know its presence is conditional, you feel it to be permanent. Then there is a wail from ahead, a roar and a burst of light; the face is gone forever.

(p96 in Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes - an otherwise forgettable book)

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