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
Electric Literature #3 Review 
Issue #3 of Electric Literature just came out, featuring Aimee Bender and Rick Moody, among others. I got my hands on a copy of the print journal, and I’m glad to see that a journal that touts itself as being available on so many digital platforms hasn’t let the print side languish. It’s a beautiful […]
Read More Image Journal #64 I’ve been a subscriber to a number of journals over the years. Recently, I’ve subscribed to Image, but the last issue in particular disappointed me. It only had a single story — disappointing in itself — but even more disappointing was that the story wasn’t any good. The author was Scott Russell Sanders, whose grandiose […]
Read More Ted Conover: The Routes of Man I count myself as one of the many ardent fans of Ted Conover, ever since he wrote Newjack: Guarding Sing-Sing, which is a gritty nonfiction story about prison life. And to think once the prison authorities turned him down for access, he simply got a job as a prison guard. He got to write about […]
Read More Etgar Keret On The Silver Screen The movie is called “$9.99.” No, that’s not the price for streaming it, or some price cross-over from the e-book world. And it’s based on Etgar Keret’s short stories. And it’s stop-motion animation. Fun, fun, fun. It’ll actually sell for $24.98 when it comes out on February 23rd. Here’s the trailer:
Read More Spoiled Salinger Bookslut pointed me toward the Economist blog “More Intelligent Life,” where in a post titled “Salinger’s Spoiled Children” Bradley Freedman describes a friend’s pilgrimage to see JD Salinger and present him with a manifesto demanding more fiction. Freedman, as you can infer from the title of this post, disagrees with his friend’s impulse: But instead of […]
Read More Requiem for Equator Books Equator Books is shutting their doors after nearly six years here in Los Angeles. The knowledge that independent bookstores seem to be shutting down with metronomic frequency does not reduce the sorrow of the occasion. Since Equator specialized in collectible books, it was a virtual shrine to the book-as-object. I remember browsing through in awe […]
Read More Amazon’s Strongarming of Macmillan Day 8 The Guardian has an excellent article rounding up all the sites, authors, and publishing groups boycotting Amazon in one form or another. Some remove all links to Amazon; others encourage readers to buy books from elsewhere. It's this last tactic, encouraged by John Scalzi, which I think will be the most helpful. Instead of limiting […]
Read More Amazon’s Extortion of Macmillan Day 6 It’s 10:00 p.m. here in Los Angeles, on the sixth day of the Amazonian extortion against Macmillan. Counting the days is starting to seem like some kind of foreign hostage crisis where the newscasters count out the length of imprisonment. As many people have pointed out, Amazon doesn’t have the slightest clue of the definition […]
Read More Ted Genoways Screed in Mother Jones Ted Genoways, editor of VQR, wrote an impassioned call for action in Mother Jones. Essentially, he laments the decline of the literary journal and the explosion of creative writing programs and writers who don't read. About those writers who don't read: "Last summer, Louis Menand tabulated that there were 822 creative writing programs. Consider this […]
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