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
The Differences between Literary Theorists and Critics 
An excerpt from a work in progress: “Any interaction with a book is a type of intercourse: a ménage a trois between reader, writer, and work. The way literary theorists interact with a text is sadistic. They take pleasure in the pain of the text and, judging by the contortions of the prose, the pain […]
Read More Charles Baxter Eviscerates John Irving Charles Baxter takes down John Irving in the New York Review of Books: But the pitfalls of a novel constructed largely through plot are also on display: the characters and their construction here are schematic, as if written to and for a thesis that requires them to be dropped into slots. We are repeatedly clobbered by […]
Read More Grief, Writing Colonies and Summer Blockbusters A meditation on grief, writing colonies, and summer blockbusters: Yaddo itself was born from grief, that great leveler. The colony became a playground for creative minds because Katrina Trask, the matriarch of the mansion and its well-maintained grounds, lost all of her children in infancy or childhood and she needed something to do with her […]
Read More The Spaces of Fiction Where are you when you speak to your audience? Harold Brodkey says each author has a particular location from where he speaks to his audience — fireplace, bar, outdoors, drawing room. “A kind of writing solely meant for a public forum is often less interesting than writing where the writer has invented the public space […]
Read More What Should Literature Be? A wonderful description from Sartre of what literature should be, on par with Kafka’s famous pronouncement about the ax breaking the ice: “We did not want to delight our public with its superiority to a dead world—we wanted to take it by the throat. Let every character be a trap, let the reader be caught […]
Read More The Intellectual Property of Books In the latest issue of Poets and Writers, Paige Wheeler, founder of the literary agency Folio, explains her company’s approach to maximizing revenue for writers: “Folio’s motto, emblazoned across its website, is “thinking beyond the page,” and, as Wheeler explains, Folio is positioning itself for the next wave of publishing by looking at its clients […]
Read More Redbox for Books Saw this Redbox for books at the American Library Association (ALA) conference this weekend. An automated vending machine to check out books? Sounds like the future of libraries to me.
Read More Santa Monica Review 2012 I’m going to review stories from the latest issue of the Santa Monica Review (Spring 2012). This is the first review. Rhoda Huffey’s “Rima” is a wicked satire of fundamentalist Christian culture, skipping from spinster missionaries to the archeology of Noah’s ark. The story is surreal not only because of its brevity but because of […]
Read More The Best Literary Books on Fatherhood This is not your typical list of fatherhood books. You’re not going to find any of those cleverly titled books like “My Boys Can Swim!” or anything with “emergency” or “idiot” in the title. What you will find is a carefully curated list that represents my knowledge on the subject. Which is, admittedly, limited. Especially […]
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