Bouvard and Pécuchet are two Chaplinesque copy-clerks who meet on a park bench in Paris. Following an unexpected inheritance, they decide to give up their jobs

Bouvard and Pecuchet opens with two middle-aged copy-clerks who become fast friends after meeting on a city bench and discovering their shared habit of writing

When two copy clerks inherit a fortune, they embark on a new life as professional dilettantes in the unfinished novel by the author of Madame Bovary. First conc

In his own words, the novel is "a kind of encyclopedia made into farce . . . A book in which I shall spit out my bile." At the center of this book are Bouvard a