ABSTRACT
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary ‘I don’t much care for coincidences. T here’s something spooky about them: you sense m om entarily what it m ust be like to live in an ordered, God-run universe, w ith H im self looking over your shoulder and helpfully dropping coarse hints about a cosmic plan. I prefer to feel that things are chaotic, free-wheeling, perm anently as well as tem porarily crazy - to feel the certainty o f hum an ignorance, brutality and folly.’
