Why read The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas?

Book cover of The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas

Book description

Throughout his life Flaubert made it a game to eavesdrop for the cliche, the platitude, the borrowed and unquestioned idea with which the "right thinking" swaddle their minds. After his death his little treasury of absurdities, of half-truths and social lies, was published as a Dictionnaire des idees recues. Because…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Alan Pell Crawford

Author

I love this book because Flaubert has meticulously—and with a bracingly acidic intelligence—listed the cliches of his day…meaning what people, without thinking, automatically say about almost any subject, including the stock phrases that must accompany any subject. He exposes superstitions and absurdities that must have driven Flaubert nuts to hear. An American writer, Frank Sullivan, did something similar when he invented “the cliché expert” who would testify before Congress.

I recommend this book because we need to be reminded that our everyday speech and thinking are saturated with thoughtless absurdities. We take so much for granted that it is totally…

From Alan's list on surviving an American presidential election.