Why A New Madame Bovary?

“He combed through the sahaflar, the second-hand bookshops that line the streets around the Grand Bazaar, their dusty wares stacked on haphazard tables. He sat by the New Mosque, drinking tea out of tulip-shaped cups, playing backgammon, and watching the fishermen’s wooden boats launch into the dirty waters of the Golden Horn.” For Public Books, Suzy Hansen writes about James Baldwin‘s less-well-documented time in Istanbul. Pair with this piece from our pages about the famed author, race, and fatherhood.

Two new studies reaffirm what good readers (and Quixote and Pechorin) have long known—when you identify with a fictional characters, you are likely to subconsciously emulate them.

Actress Mariel Hemingway, granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, will be producing a film adaptation of A Moveable Feast, a memoir of Hemingway’s early years as a writer in Paris.  The essays feature a colorful cast of literary characters, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas.

“I don’t remember what Davis read, except that it whistled through the air perfectly.” At Electric Literature, Freeman’s editor John Freeman writes about the experience of publishing Lydia Davis. We have a few pieces about Davis to pair with it.