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
Ann Beattie on Interruptions 
Ann Beattie on interruptions in fiction: “Often I use a non sequitur or a stranger saying something out of the blue as a way to change the emotional register. My students make fun of me for saying, I’ve read this carefully now, and you’ve written it carefully — too carefully. The phone never rings, people […]
Read More Jason Porter Narrates a Kiss in “We Were Down” Jason Porter has a story in Electric Literature called “We Were Down.” I love his narrator’s description of a kiss: She says, “Would you like to kiss me?” I say, “That is not fair.” She pulls on my pockets, forcing me to lean into her. I am close enough to smell that she has never […]
Read More A Year in Reading Did I read less this year? Well, yes, unfortunately. But did I write an entire novel this year? Absolutely yes! According to my end-of-the-year accounting, I’m going to believe that my novel success counterbalances my reading shortcoming. Some favorite books of the year: I continued my Orhan Pamuk streak with Istanbul, The Black Book and […]
Read More Don DeLillo From Don DeLillo’s Paris Review interview: INTERVIEWER How do you begin? What are the raw materials of a story? DeLILLO I think the scene comes first, an idea of a character in a place. It’s visual, it’s Technicolor—something I see in a vague way. Then sentence by sentence into the breach. No outlines— maybe a […]
Read More Santa Monica Review The latest issue of the Santa Monica Review (Fall 2013) showcases a number of short shorts. This isn’t the standard modus operandi—last issue, Spring 2013, contained only a few longer stories and a novella. This is something I appreciate about SMR—they feature a wide variety of tastes, styles and lengths, never narrowing the field of […]
Read More Alice Munro Wins Nobel Prize for Literature After the wildly stupid and controversial pick of Mo Yan last year for the Nobel Prize for Literature, this year the academy wised up and picked the safest choice possible: Alice Munro. Everyone loves Alice Munro. She’s delightful and she writes world-class literature. What’s more, she is only the 13th woman in history to win […]
Read More Louise Erdrich Paris Review interview with Louise Erdrich: At last, I had this epiphany. I wanted to write prose, and I understood that my real problem with writing was not that I couldn’t do it mentally. I couldn’t do it physically. I could not sit still. Literally, could not sit still. So I had to solve no […]
Read More The Writer Doesn’t Ask If It’s Worth It Italo Calvino: “However—and this is the point—it is worth it. Or rather: one does not ask if it’s worth it. We are people, there is no doubt, who exist solely insofar as we write, otherwise we don’t exist at all. Even if we did not have a single reader any more, we would have to […]
Read More Leaving a Record Good advice from Charles Baxter: The truth is that, in worldly terms, someone is always doing better than you are. Someone is always winning more of the prizes or making more of the money or getting more famous. When you open the newspaper, someone else’s picture is likely to be splashed across the book page. […]
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