This thread looks so sad. I'll give it an off-topic comment.

Did Latin supremacists give the Germanic languages a lot of shit for having two extra vowels? Were the extra vowels regarded as brutish or pagan or illiterate or something? Did some of them insist that there really should only be three vowels, but that the Teutons had screwed up their own language?

Jeremy at "Readin" is a big Pamuk buff.

John, this thread does not need your pity off-topic comments. This thread can hold its head up high, plain but proud.

You go back to your Latin and Dravidian nonsense, this thread will do just fine even if not one damned commenter here sees fit to look it in the eye and say 'howdy do'. This thread may be poor, but it does have its pride, thank you very much.

i never liked Emma Bovary

Apparently Flaubert didn't either.

One thing I vividly remember is that Ms. Bovary's provincial peasant / bourgeois cliche image of the dashing Latin lover was much like the small town American image of the dashing Latin lover. (More at my URL).

Jeremy! Get over here! (He's already linked.)

Oh hi John, thanks for posting this LH! I was impressed by the speech without being able to make too much of the Flaubert connection -- I have no memory at all of reading M Bovary and have not even cracked any other book of his. The role of the reclusive rebel in the modernist imagination is always fun to think about though, and nice to see the obligatory nod to our local recluses Salinger and Pynchon.

It was interesting to notice the repeated references to "identifying" with Flaubert this dovetailed nicely with my theme over the last couple of years of trying to identify with Pamuk. (There is an essay about Flaubert in Other Colors where IIRC this theme is batted around some.)