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
Roberto Bolano: The Third Reich 
The Paris Review is serializing Roberto Bolano’s The Third Reich (El Tercer Reich), an early novel discovered in his papers after his death. Bolano wrote the novel in 1989, before his hyper-productive decade that produced 2666 and The Savage Detectives, but rather than displaying a nascent version of his talent, the novel bears a strikingly resemblance […]
Read More A Literary Guide to March Madness Japan might have been big news over the weekend, but now it’s time to fill out the brackets for March Madness. Let’s be honest: we all know which event has a longer life span. A nuclear reactor might contaminate Japan with radioactive waste for decades, but winning your office pool is forever. You might think […]
Read More Anthony Doerr wins The Story Prize Anthony Doerr just won The Story Prize for his collection “Memory Wall.” He wins $20,000, while the two runners-up win $5,000. Doerr is no stranger to accolades — Granta also named him in the Best of Young American Novelists. One unusual fact about this collection, other than its memory-centric theme, is that it only contains […]
Read More Open City Closes The literary journal Open City has closed. Cue obvious puns on open/closed. They were a good literary journal, but their heyday had passed. I particularly saw the slide in the last few years, when slush pile submissions weren’t being accepted/rejected as much as sent into a type of purgatory. For instance, I ignored the prevalent […]
Read More David Albahari’s Leeches + Ferenc Karinthy’s Metropole + Kafka In Ferenc Karinthy’s Metropole, a man named Budai takes the wrong flight and ends up trapped in a mysterious city in which the inhabitants speak an unplaceable dialect and the city itself seems to conspire against his escape. The novel bears the marks of Kafka, in particular Kafka’s depiction of bureaucracy as an unsolvable maze, […]
Read More Julio Cortazar “The Winners” (And I’m moving) I apologize for the lethargic pace of posting in these parts — Mrs. BookFox and I are shifting residences, and my time has been filled with boxes and loan doc signings and moving vans. Also, it makes it more difficult to write when one can no longer find one’s desk, buried underneath mounds of miscelleana […]
Read More Paintings of Books Mrs. BookFox pointed out to me the work of Stanford Kay, who paints books in a series called “Gutenberg Variations.” She paints quite a lot of books, actually. One might call it an obsession. An obsession that has been going on since 2003. Since I’m quite skeptical of the companies that sell beautiful hardback books […]
Read More MLA Conference Los Angeles The MLA conference in Los Angeles just drew to a close. I didn't go. I've gone before and found both stimulation and irritation. When people suggest that I attend the MLA conference, I think they believe that since I work in the English Department, I must therefore be interested in what they do at such […]
Read More Best Review Ever of 2010 Books (Involving Guns!) Forget thoughtful and nuanced book reviews. This Electric Literature video will tell you everything you need to know about the best canada drugs online safety books of 2010, and their ability to keep you safe from harm. Firearms and tomes involved.
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