Author of Madame Bovary, Salammbo, and Sentimental Education
Gustav Flaubert was born in Rouen, a town in Upper Normandy, in 1821; the same year that someone sailed around Antarctica for the first time ever. His father was a surgeon and his mother was some lady. Like many 19th century European boys that aren’t the sons of paupers or farmers, he attended school in Rouen then moved to Paris to complete his studies. For Flaubert, those studies were in law, which he didn’t like. He soon came to hate Paris as well. So, after a literal epileptic fit, he returned to the small town life of home.
Flaubert looks like some gluttonous baron from Alice in Wonderland world, and he was a grumpy slut. He never married or had children. His justification for this was that he would “transmit to no one the aggravations and disgrace of existence”. Instead, he spent his years out whoring. Flaubert kept a travel journal, where he wrote detailed accounts of his sexual escapades in exotic locales, involving both women and men. So generous were his accounts, he even guesstimated at which girl of ill-repute gave him syphilis, (“either the Maronite or that Turkish girl”).
When Flaubert wasn’t out fucking, he was writing, but his writing process crippled his productive output. It took him five years to finish *Madame Bovary*. *Salammbo*, the book whose research required so much sluttishness in faraway lands, took four years. His final publication, *Sentimental Education*, took seven. A terminal perfectionist, his was constantly re-reading and revising. It was common for him to take an entire week just to complete one page. By his own petard, his legacy was made less remarkable than his peers.
His final decade was a harsh one. Prussian soldiers occupied his house during the war of 1870. His mother died. He became destitute after over-investing in the failed business ventures of his niece’s husband. Then, at long last, all of those sex diseases he’d collected over his lifelong frolics caught up with him. In 1880, he died of a brain hemorrhage just short of age sixty.
The Normal Times 