Notes from the Editor's Desk — 9/4/21

It was remarkable to discover in Flaubert’s writing a species of ideation that is not only like a spider’s web, but that also seemed to reproduce the sagging of old strands, the presence of the spider in the workings, the effect of the breeze on strands both integral and broken away, and like such gestures towards reality. Looking at the first sentence, we are presented with the abstract entity of a date, followed by the corporeality of a ship, then a place, and a description attached to the ship explicitly, the whole of the setting implicitly in conclusion. This molecular quality, wherein a base component is combined and augmented by meaningful addenda, and whereby each sentence comes to evidence a gestalt particular to Flaubert, is found throughout the first chapter.