seems like flaubert's another i'll have to check out, based on this statement from wikipedia:
"This ruddy giant was secretly gnawed by misanthropy and disgust of life. His hatred of the bourgeois and their bêtise (wilful idiocy) began in his childhood and developed into a kind of monomania. He despised his fellow-men, their habits, their lack of intelligence, their contempt for beauty, with a passionate scorn which has been compared to that of an ascetic monk."
he's sounding like a gluttonous, french version of a character in a dostoevsky novel.