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
Los Angeles Review of Books Launches 
The Los Angeles Review of Books is launching today, after many backroom deals, alcoholic drinks and diatribes on the robust yet underrepresented L.A. literary scene. I’m glad to finally see the project come to fruition, because I’ve been hearing rumors for years. It’s not the full site (which you can see a mock-up if you […]
Read More Why It’s Futile to List Journals Accepting Online Submissions I’m going to retire my longstanding page that lists journals that accept online submissions (to your left). Why? It’s virtually impossible to keep up, seeing as how journals are flocking to online submissions. It would probably be easier by now to have a list of journals that don’t accept online submissions. If by this point, […]
Read More USC Festival of Books Doesn’t the title look weird? It felt weird to type. For so many years I’ve been going to UCLA for the LA Times Festival of Books, but this year the location has been switched to my alma mater. Glad as I am to have USC host the event, I do have reservations about the campus. […]
Read More Books That Know a Thousand Different Things I was surfing through old book reviews and came across a widely repeated quote from James Wood (in a review of The Corrections) describing contemporary American fiction: “Curiously arrested books that know a thousand different things — the recipe for the best Indonesian fish curry! the sonics of the trombone! the drug market in Detroit! […]
Read More A Response to Anis Shivani’s “The Death of the New York Times Book Review” In the Huffington Post, Anis Shivani published a take-down of the NYTBR, provocatively titled “The Death of the New York Times Book Review: And Why That Is a Good Thing for Books.” One overarching criticism Shivani makes, at least judging by his language, is that the NYTBR is too elite. He uses the word “elite” […]
Read More Forgotten Bookmarks I love Forgotten Bookmarks, which offers pictures of fascinating objects stowed away inside books. First-name-only Michael, the proprietor, is a rare and antique bookseller who runs through five- to six-hundred books a day and shares the treasures between their pages. Highlights include an honest-to-God saw blade, (did the reader consider the book sharp or in need […]
Read More How to Make a Book with Steidl This documentary about how to make a book sounds chock full of sobering market realities. It's a German film (though not exclusively in subtitles) following Gerhard Steidl, one of the few publishers running their own printing press. Fortunately, it's not about how to write a book (now that would be a dull documentary), but covers everything that […]
Read More What Do We Have After the Quake? We Have Murakami I’m very glad that the New Yorker chose to reprint Haruki Murakami’s story “UFO in Kushiro” in their March 28th issue, because ever since the earthquake in Sendai I’ve been thinking about Murakami’s collection After the Quake. After the Quake is a collection of short stories written after the 1995 Kobe earthquake, and every story deals […]
Read More Site Redesign BookFox has received a long overdue makeover (thank you Mrs. BookFox and Jess at Blackbird Portraits). Leave hate mail, off-topic rants and effulgent praises in the comments.
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