He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the window. “It’s better not to sleep at all,” he decided. There was a cold damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday—Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere—at the windows, the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself—were flowers. The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of flowers surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there was a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile of her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal. Svidrigaïlov knew that girl; there was no holy image, no burning candle beside the coffin; no sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself. She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish soul, had smirched that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled
The Blog
Told You So 
As I suspected back in October from the vitriolic reviews by Marilynne Robinson and Terry Eagleton, Richard Dawkin’s God Delusion is the most overrated book of the year. Here’s the list of the other overrated and underrated books (hat tip to Ed) Addendum: Rake’s Progress on Murakami’s political involvement I-keep-finding-great-stuff Addendum: Foer (as in Jonathan […]
Read More Dave Eggers reading “What is the What” Dave Eggers has a strong streak of social consciousness, as can be seen through his 826 Valencia writing program for kids, the content of You Shall Know Our Velocity, where the character travels the globe looking to give people money, and in the 2005 book Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, a book of […]
Read More The Loudest Voice with Glen David Gold My good friend Bryan Hurt organized the second Loudest Voice reading at the Mountain Bar in Los Angeles last night. We packed out the second story, despite the sweltering conditions (management refused to turn down the heater) and a bouncer who continued to harass everyone even after they’d been carded. Cody Todd read a number […]
Read More Wendell Berry’s New Book The irony of writing about Wendell Berry on a computer, especially for a blog, doesn’t escape me. Since Berry refuses to own a computer, and has widely (and trenchantly) written about the negative repercussions of technology, there is almost a note of friction simply by covering him in such a technological medium. Nonetheless, it’s time […]
Read More Ask and You Shall Receive So since I had scored on a copy of Hear the Wind Sing (unavailable in the States) I thought why not go for broke and ask my loyal readers for a copy of Pinball 1973? It was mostly tongue in cheek, but lo and behold, Viktor JaniÅ¡ emails me the Pinball text. Mucho thanks, my […]
Read More Haruki Murakami: Hear the Wind Sing One of my Loyal Readers, knowing of my penchant for all things Murakami, was able to procure an English copy of Hear the Wind Sing from a drugstore in Tokyo. The novella is perfectly pocket-sized, at four by six inches, and extremely slim, with 127 pages – a format I would like to see more […]
Read More Books I’m Thankful For In the spirit of thanksgiving, I’ll make a quick list of books I’m thankful for. First of all, the red book of poetry my grandfather wrote – it was a book that let me know writing was in my blood; an inspiration, so to speak. Also, Vito Aiuto’s collection of poems Self-Portrait as Jerry Quarry, […]
Read More Literary Mix Tape #5: Words The devotchka sort of hesitated and then said: “Wait.” Then she went off, and my three droogs had got out of the auto quiet and crept up horrorshow stealthy, putting their maskies on now, then I put mine on, then it was only a matter of me putting in the old rooker and undoing the […]
Read More Richard Ford’s enduring voice Richard Ford has been well covered in the blogosphere recently, with the third installment of Frank Bascombe in The Lay of the Land, and that’s not territory I can one-up, so I’ll cover slightly different ground. Reading Ford alongside Raymond Carver, as I’ve been doing the last few months, has been a lesson in the […]
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