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Write a Letter To Your Favorite Character

Bloomsday celebrant Ben Greenman coaxes your inner Herzog

by
Marc Tracy
June 10, 2010

Next Wednesday, novelist, New Yorker editor, and Tablet Magazine contributing editor Ben Greenman will be joining us to celebrate James Joyce’s Ulysses.

To see what he has in store, well, you’ll just have to come to Solas, in Manhattan’s East Village, next week. Meantime, here’s a thought. Greenman’s new story collection, What He’s Poised To Do, from Harper Perennial, drops next Tuesday. (You can read the title story here.) Because the stories are intimately involved with letters and letter-writing, Greenman has set up a super-cool Website, Letters With Character, which encourages readers to submit letters they would write to their favorite literary characters.

“I write to offer my condolences,” Jaime Fuller addresses The Scarlet Letter’s Hester Prynne, “because your life truly sucks. However, I can’t feel too sorry for you, because you have made some poor life decisions. The A on your chest does not condemn you for being an ‘Adulterer,’ but instead for the fact you are ‘Attracted to Assholes.’” Heh.

Perhaps Leopold or Molly Bloom, or Stephen Dedalus—or, hell, the Man in the Macintosh—await your missives? Send ’em to [email protected].

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.