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
Maud Newton’s David Foster Wallace essay 
Maud Newton’s essay on David Foster Wallace in the New York Times, suitably categorized under “riff,” situates Wallace’s idiosyncratic use of language inside a generational context while critiquing its extravagances. But I found it notable that she only dealt with his older texts. Many of the stylistic distinctions that she brings up were abandoned (or at […]
Read More The Future of Bookstores John Hodgman on The Daily Show parses out the future of brick and mortar bookstores, recommending they go the way of curiosity shops, like canadian pharmacy onhealthy Colonial Williamsburg. The Daily Show – Borders Goes Out of BusinessGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook
Read More Shenandoah Releases First Online Issue Sixty years into Shenandoah’s august literary life, the literary journal has just launched its first online issue. My short story “To Will One Thing” is one of the fiction selections. Please read it and tell me your thoughts. The online version also features: Local artwork by William Dunlap (full gallery of artwork) R.T. Smith writes […]
Read More The Writing Conference of the Summer I’m going to the Squaw Valley Writers conference in early August, and looking forward to the wonderful cast of aspirants and teachers. If you’re going as well, drop me a line and we’ll make sure to talk while we’re there. I’ll try to remember to give a run down on the blog once I return, […]
Read More Short Story Research Hello Everyone, Currently I'm in Xi'an, China, researching a short story. It's a story that I wrote four years ago but which never quite worked (likely because I wasn't good enough to accomplish the ambitious structure). Back then I read more than twenty books on the Cultural Revolution, and acheived a degree of versimilitude, but […]
Read More American Masculine by Shann Ray The Bakeless Prize has rockstar taste. Last year they published Belle Boggs’ “Mattaponi Queen,” which went on to garner a bouquet of accolades, and this year they’re publishing the astonishing “American Masculine” by Shann Ray, a frontrunner for my favorite book of the year. “American Masculine” is the perfect title. The stories are rough and raw, […]
Read More The Unblemished Reader I read David Foster Wallace’s “The Pale King” in late April, soon after its release date, but our introduction felt secondhand. It was like meeting a friend whose reputation had preceded him. Every page seemed filtered through the viewpoints of pundits of every stripe and pedigree, whom I’d consumed in the media frenzy anticipating the […]
Read More YA Fiction and Censorship Despite the firestorm (1, 2) over the WSJ article about YA fiction, I did agree with this paragraph by Meghan Cox Gurdon, which she talks about the process of guiding what young people read: “In the book trade, this is known as ‘banning.’ In the parenting trade, however, we call this ‘judgment’ or ‘taste.’ It is a […]
Read More Happy 5th Birthday to BookFox BookFox turns the venerable age of five today. Five years, thousands of books, infinite fun. Thanks to all my faithful readers. I hope that the news and books covered here inspire your journey. Year One (thoughtful account of writing energy)
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