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
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Kazuo Ishiguro’s “When We Were Orphans” 
In a writing workshop, a friend of mine once criticized Kazuo Ishiguro for his novel “Never Let Me Go,” which my friend claimed was a science fiction novel that refused to embrace its science fiction roots. It’s true that the science fiction conceits in “Never Let Me Go” are largely glossed over. Most of the book […]
Read More First Book Read in 2012 Quiz Time: In this J.M. Coetzee novel, a professor interacts with a disadvantaged member of another race during the apartheid in South Africa. If you guessed Disgrace, you can be forgiven. After all, the plot line is identical to this novel written nearly a decade before: Age of Iron. The eerie similarities between the novels gave […]
Read More New Issue of Confrontation The new issue of Confrontation is out, issue #110, with cover art by Claudio Bravo (“Red, Rose and Orange Paper”). It’s a timely homage to the recently deceased Chilean painter. Inside the journal are a number of glossy full-color pages showcasing Bravo’s other work. Paul Zimerman’s “Full Remittance,” a kind of anti-Rakolnikovian story, is excellent, […]
Read More Nobel Prize for Literature 2011 Over the last decade the Nobel Prize for Literature has alternated between a proscriptive award and a descriptive one. A proscriptive award takes little known but worthy authors and presents them in a bow and wrapping to the world, telling everyone to read. A descriptive award honors the authors that have, to a large extent, […]
Read More writers or Writers: A Definition Is a writer merely defined as someone who writes or are there additional qualities required? The way that creative writers use the term Writer, I’ve noticed, is limited to people who write creatively. They say “Writers” and exclude all those people whose expertise is in another field, the people who dip into writing only to […]
Read More Poets and Writers’ MFA Ranking Controversy In Slate, Scott Kenemore argues that the latest Poets and Writers’ Rankings are a travesty, but his reasoning is self-centered and misleading. Let’s look at why Kenemore thinks that Columbia deserves to be ranked highly (in 2nd place behind Iowa): Because the last rankings had them high. As he says, “A few years ago, U.S. News […]
Read More 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
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