Flaubert's narration of "gradual focus" - and hats off to Lydia Davis's edition

Before even beginning to comment on Flaubert's Madame Bovary a few words to commend translator Lydia Davis for the excellent edition - not only is her translation superb (as I also came to realize in reading he v. of Swann's Way some years ago), but she has created a perfect edition of this great novel - she's smart enough to begin the intro by noting that readers not familiar with the plot should read the intro last - completely agree! it's what I do all the time even if I am familiar w/ - a terrific chronology, and really smart end notes: chronology complete but not as bulky as those found in Everyman or Library of America editions, notes much more helpful and germane that those from the great Russian translations of Pevear-Volokhonsky. All that said, such a pleasure to move into this world, this novel again - even slowly; read just first chapter last night and realized once again what a surprise Falubert's narration is, with what I might call its gradual focus - the story coming into clarity like a lens adjusting on a movie camera or a set of binoculars - a narrative technique now much more familiar to readers, done esp. well by Alice Munro in her short stories. Note how in Bovary we start off not with the eponymous Madame but with her (eventual) husband, Charles - and we see him first as a school boy, entering a classroom, awkward, gangly, maybe a little too old for this particular class, oddly dressed - and this scene is narrated by a mysterious "we" - we first knew/met/saw Bovary when ... - this first-person plural narrator plays little or no role through the rest of the novel, but it establishes a familiar and comfortable voice - we all knew this guy from way back, so I'm perfectly within bounds telling you the story of his life - except eventually it won't be about his life, although he is the survivor of the tale. What seems at first as if it will be a novel about schoolboys - the arrival of the new kid, his hazing, his eventual assimilation or ostracism - moves along v. quickly and by the end of the first chapter Bovary is beyond school and being linked up with his first wife, wealthy and harsh. We begin to see his ambition and his aspirations, all of which will be important as the novel moves along, but we don't have yet even a clue as to where the novel is going - in fact, first readers may suspect that Madame Bovary will be the first wife of Charles, whom we meet in this chapter. Hardly. Flaubert uses the gradual focus not so much to sharpen his view of the character but to draw us into a setting, which still seems real and live 150 years later.