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
Nobel Prize for Literature 2010 Predictions 
It’s that time again when literary folk dust off their shattered predictions from years past and wager (money, prestige, honor) on who will win the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature. Most likely, you will be wrong. Most likely, virtually everyone will be wrong. Even people who do nothing other than read, study, and talk about […]
Read More Book Reviewing Interview I'm interviewed over at Creative Writing Now about reviewing books. I don't know what was into me, but I felt rather playful and sarcastic the day I answered the questions. RE: below — I don't even have a cat! I even talked about the literary establishment's preference for Jonathan Franzen — I mean, for male […]
Read More Granta’s Best of Young Spanish-language Novelists Granta has another list of Best Novelists . . . except this time, instead of focusing on British or American, they’re going Spanish. Love it. Despite all the complaints about lists and prizes (many of which are justified, since the criteria are often subjective or obscure), these type of hierarchies still serve a semi-useful function […]
Read More What Happened to Authors with Experience? Thanks to the Fictionaut blog for pointing me toward this Tin House essay. These first two paragraphs perfectly encapsulate the sociological shift that has overtaken writers in the last half century: I don’t suppose anyone has ever done an in-depth study of that interesting form of literary ephemera, the author dust jacket biography. But if […]
Read More Los Angeles in Maps: 1930s Literary A new book, Los Angeles in Maps, by Glen Creason, showcases 72 maps from throughout Los Angeles history. Of particular interest to literary folk is the one that shows the library locations circa 1930. Apparently the city did not skimp on library branches even back before the depression. That particular map is not available online, […]
Read More USC Creative Writing Blog: The Gamut Glad to see my alma mater USC has started a blog for their creative writing grad program — MPW, as opposed to MFA. They just love different initials. It’s called The Gamut, and it certainly spans it — so far I’ve seen Eminem, The Muppets take Manhattan, Thoreau, Sandra Tsing Loh, and an inquiry into […]
Read More Chess Stories I have a confession to make. I have a dark, horrid secret known only to those close to me. I have a chess addiction. And it goes back a long, long time. Ever since I started playing my grandfather when I was a wee young lad (I never won, and the wise old sage kept […]
Read More Tribute to Powell’s Books Back from an adventure to Powell’s Books in Portland — a veritable mecca of books, a non-corporate sanctuary that is the highlight of any trip to Oregon. I’ll just tell you one book I purchased there — David Mitchell’s “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.” Below are a few pictures, but might I say […]
Read More Poets and Writers MFA Ranking Round #2 Poets and Writers published their second annual MFA ranking. Not really any surprises — in fact, not one of the top ten programs even shifted a single place. Of course, the folks over at AWP have already panned the rankings quite devastatingly. In addition to those fine critiques, I have a few of my own. Since […]
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