...than a hundred years later by Julian Barnes's narrator in Flaubert's Parrot, when he exclaims that "we can study files for decades, but every so often...autobiographical fiction pretending to be a parliamentary report".8 As for Bloom's philosophy of history, it appears most clearly and dramatically in the final...

...in common with those of the fiction-writer. As Julian Barnes wrote in his novel Flaubert's Parrot, 'Every so often we are tempted to throw up our hands...fiction pretending to be a parliamentary report.' 2 In other words, 'history' is a record of subjective readings of the past; it exists only in the perspective...

...about history is both clearer and more widely acceptable. It echoes Geoffrey Braithwaite' s musing: "We can study files for decades, but every so often...autobiographical fiction pretending to be a parliamentary report."1'1 If A History of the World in I01/: Chapters is a wholeheartedly postmodernist work, with...

...the protagonist, himself draws in a later chapter: "How can we know such trivial, crucial details? We can study files for decades, but every so often...autobiographical fiction pretending to be a parliamentary report" (Flaubert's Parrot 93-94). Here, parataxis, as a spatializing technique, makes us rethink historical...

...Finally, if it is asked why the Pastons, the answer is simple, despite all the Flaubertian reservations ('We can study files for decades, but every so often...autobiographical fiction pretending to be a parliamentary report' ; 'We are dancing not on the edge of a volcano, but on the wooden seat of a latrine, and it seems to...

...or oceans, we may never learn the answer — unless some alien with a crystal set tells us. Epilogue The past is autobiographical fiction pretending to...parliamentary report. — Julian Barnes Flaubert's Parrot //TI .flow DO WE SEIZE THE PAST?" muses the narrator in Flaubert's Parrot. "We read, we learn, we ask,...

...recreating historical events. This frustration leads Braithwaite to the following exasperated formulation: "We can study files for decades, but every so often...past is autobiographical fiction pretending to be parliamentary report" (90). If one sought a maxim for the genre of historiographic metafiction, this...