The Inventor Of Modern Narrative

The incomparable James Wood on the unsurpassable Gustave Flaubert:

"Novelists should thank Gustave Flaubert the way poets thank spring: it begins again with him. He is the originator of the modern novel; indeed, you could say that he is the originator of modern narrative - that the war reporter and the thriller writer owe as much to him as the avant-garde fictionist...

"Much of the time Flaubert's influence is too familiar to be visible. We so expect it that we hardly remark of good prose that it favors the telling and brilliant detail; that it privileges a high degree of visual noticing; that it maintains an unsentimental composure and knows how to withdraw, like a good valet, from superfluous commentary; that it judges good and bad neutrally; that it seeks out the truth, even at the cost of repelling us; and that the author's fingerprints on all this are, paradoxically, traceable but not visible. You can find some of this in Defoe or Austen or Balzac, but not all of it until Flaubert. And after Flaubert, it sometimes seems, this is all you can find."