British Booker Prize Winner Julian Barnes' "Flaubert's Parrot" for Literary Highbrows

Julian Barnes (b US 1946) is a talented author of novels & non-fiction.  "The Sense of an Ending" received the Man Booker Prize in 2011.  It's soon to be released as a major motion picture. "Levels of Life," (2013) was a memoir exploring his grief over the death of his wife and an intriguing historic triptych.  His unique writing style and humanistic interest are brave, brilliant and deeply stirring.  "Flaubert's Parrot," (1984) is an esoteric, unique form of writing that pays tribute to a writer whom Barnes is obviously in awe.  It's also an attempt at sharing the artistic process of researching & writing a biography with interest & integrity.  Unfortunately, the book reads like a thesis for a Ph.D which became utterly tedious & too buried in minutia pertaining to Flaubert's life, loves, fascinations & peccadilloes.  I chose the book because of my affinity for Barnes' writing & my appreciation of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" without knowing much about the French author.  I was bored by an overwhelming girth of knowledge about Bovary.  He was presented in various scenarios as rather pathetic with numerous health issues & social pecadilloes.  (His friendship with George Sands was illuminating.)  Barnes juxtaposed the reader into the mindset of a writer focusing on a historic figure,  "So you can take the novelist either way; as a pertinacious & finished stylist; or as one who considered language tragically insufficient."  And with a complicit wink, Barnes quips "all biographers secretly want to annex and channel the sex-lives of their subjects; you must make your judgement on me as well as on Flaubert."  Barnes shares TMI regarding what we want to believe or not about Flaubert's sexual affairs.  I still greatly admired Barnes apt ability for blurring the lines between fiction/non-fiction & creating his own unique & brilliant genre.  However, for "Flaubert's Parrot" unless you have an incessant yearn for a glut of information on Flaubert this novel doesn't fly high in my esteem.  Still, I understand Barnes' homage to a literary genius.  Barnes often quotes from Flaubert's masterpiece "Madame Bovary."  "Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity."