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
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 
Just in time for the Christmas-day debut of the Brad Pitt/Cate Blanchett film, Jacket Copy has a multi-blogger discussion about the Scott Fitzgerald short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I’m one of the voices in this discussion, so please pop over there as the posts roll out over the next couple of days.
Read More A John Updike Christmas In the hearty spirit of good holiday fun, I offer this sweet Christmas bah-humbug, gleaned from John Updike’s “The Twelve Terrors of Christmas,” which is illustrated quite well by Edward Gorey. The First Terror: 1. Santa: The Man Loose-fitting nylon beard, fake optical twinkle, cheap red suit, funny rummy smell when you sit on his […]
Read More Auction! This Christmas, if a regular hardback won’t please your hardcore bibliophile friends, RainTaxi, the venerable book review mag, has an auction going down on Ebay. All proceeds not only get you great stuff but let you support the magazine at the same time. Books on the auction block included autographed books from Sherman Alexie, Matthew […]
Read More Best Short Story Collections of 2008 For all you belated shoppers out there, and for all two of you not already sickened by the blizzard of Best-Of lists, here’s my picks for the best short stories of 2008. I read a good chunk of them — most that I’ve read are in my sidebar, though I’ve neglected to add a few. […]
Read More Recommended Fiction for 2008 Lists Bookslut offers five books for the Best Foreign Fiction of 2008. 2666 makes the cut, unsurprisingly, as well as Metropole, by Ferenc Karinthy. The Millions has their annual “Year in Reading.” If you want a slightly different take on the Fiction 2008 lists, try the Financial Times book suggestions. (via) The TLS has authors suggest […]
Read More Post-Thanksgiving Roundup Want to win a free short story collection? New York Times listed its 100 Notable Books of the Year. Out of 42 fiction titles, 9 were short story collections — a ratio that’s not too shabby, in my book. Also, the ratio’s virtually identical to last year, which listed 8 short story collections. All short […]
Read More N+1 on Bolano I like N+1, both specifically and generally. Specifically in that usually I enjoy the articles infused with the scathing wit that could earn any writer the moniker of Captain Contrarian. Generally in that I support the idea of having a publication that isn’t afraid to upend convention wisdom and challenge the cultural sages. (Those rhetorically […]
Read More The Award Authors Don’t Want It’s that time of year again: the shortlist of the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award has been announced. It’s just in time for the Holiday season, in case you’re interested in reading (or getting an annoying co-worker to read) badly written sex scenes. Or, at the very least, it will provide amusing online […]
Read More Survey Time All you MFAers out there (or MAers in fiction, or MPWers, or whatever else your degree is called if you studied creative writing at the graduate level), go take the MFA survey at Our Stories. There are seventeen sections, but it won’t take you that much time. If nothing else, it helps you to reflect […]
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