The September issue of Playboy magazine will feature an excerpt from the Lydia Davis translation of Madame Bovary. Playboy‘s headline called Gustave Flaubert’s classic “The Most Scandalous Novel of All Time.”
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner declared the piece to be “a great read” in a tweet. The Book Bench scoffed at the “scandalous” title.
What do you think? An excerpt from the post: “Though Madame Bovary was truly scandalous when it was released, it cannot shock now, in part due to Playboy and its role in, shall we say, defining deviancy downward; and in part due to [Madame] Bovary itself-having been written (and successful), it changed the standards for what was acceptable territory for fiction.”
Lydia Davis has published novels, book criticism, and French translation works (in fiction and philosophy). She is trilingual with proficiency in English, French, and German. Her most notable translation is Proust’s Du cote de chez Swann. Her translation of Madame Bovary will be published by Penguin with September 23rd set as its release date. (Via Atlantic Wire)