Madame Bovary

I am reading Madame Bovary once more. I read it in high school, but I read it the way I read almost everything else in high school: hastily, lazily and superficially. I picked up a brilliant translation by Lydia Davis, and couldn't be more swept away. The attention to detail, and vivid portraiture of Madame and Monsieur Bovary, is just the kind of sumptuous literary world I was craving. The book also has me a little obsessed with the idea of the whole life imitating art imitating life thing... How many times has this relationship repeated itself over the course of history? And is it as predictable and tragic as Emma's story. In tune, as always, Paris Review posted this Partial Inventory of Gustave Flaubert's Personal Effects.

Flaubert's finer things in life:



Sisqo's finer things in life: