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
Swing to Electronic Submissions 
The shift to electronic submissions for literary journals has reached a tipping point — more than 50% of journals are accepting some form of electronic submission. What this means is that the pressure has shifted off the journals accepting electronic (the pressure of a expanding slush pile), and has shifted to the journals who still […]
Read More Could E-Readers Reverse Women’s Hegemony as Book Buyers? WSJ has an article today that says people are reading more than ever — because of e-readers. While some of the article uses dubious facts, such as Amazon's claim that people with e-readers buy more than 3.3 times the books as before (c'mon Amazon, do free books count as "bought"?), the story gets really interesting […]
Read More Kevin Morrissey Suicide Embroils VQR in Controversy On August 2nd, I tweeted my condolences to VQR when I learned about the suicide of their Managing Editor, Kevin Morrissey. But now, as more information has been revealed by the Chronicle of Higher Education, it appears that Morrissey had been making complaints to HR about bullying in the workplace by his boss, Ted Genoways. Genoways […]
Read More Remember How Publishers Complained About Kindle’s Text-To-Voice-Reading? Remember How Publishers Complained About Kindle's Text-To-Voice-Reading? Well, Apple's iBooks can do the same thing, but there hasn't been nearly as big of an uproar. As David Pogue writes in the New York Times: "Now swipe down the page with two fingers to make the iPhone start reading the book to you, out loud, with a […]
Read More Michel Houellebecq Map and Territory Michel Houellebecq has a new novel coming out in France in September, a month in which apparently 2/3 of new novels are published in France (!). No ETA for the English translation or even an English title (in French, La carte et le territoire, which translates to Map and Territory), but the Independent reports that the […]
Read More Handmade Kindle Cases Many people have complained that e-readers don’t advertise your taste in books like traditional books do, but a handmade Kindle case might give your fellow subway/bus passenger a general sense of your aesthetics. With a bit of ingenuity, I imagine these could even be reshaped to fit the iPad. Not that the iPad needs any dressing […]
Read More Douglas Coupland Clothing Line When I was up in Vancouver last week, the city was plastered with signs advertising Douglas Coupland. Except the word attached to his name — Roots — wasn’t a book I was familiar with. Didn’t he just publish Generation A? (another go around at defining a generation, piggybacking on Generation X). But then I figured out […]
Read More Summer Break BookFox is going to be on a summer break for the next two weeks, since I’m going on some writing retreats. Please visit some of the links in the adjacent columns for your literary fix. Much literary love, Fox
Read More Mentor: A Memoir by Tom Grimes Mentor: A Memoir, by Tom Grimes, is a tribute to a great teacher and writer, an inside dish on Iowa/agents/deals, an anatomy of a mental breakdown, and a tour-de-force through the famous: Marilynne (never Robinson), Mailer (never Norman), Charlie (Charles D’Ambrosio), and Frank (Conroy). It’s such a mesmerizing book I read it in one sitting. […]
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