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
Story Prize Finalists 
Out of a field of 73 books, the Story Prize has announced its finalists for 2008: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (Alfred A. Knopf) Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno (Akashic Books) Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff (Alfred A. Knopf) I am surprised by the Joe Meno nomination, but also delighted because […]
Read More LA Weekly I used to enjoy the LA Weekly on a regular basis — consult it for book readings, check out the interviews of literary folk and/or original fiction in its pages, find out how local politicians were squandering money and cultivating corruption. But alas, as Marc Cooper describes in great detail in LA Weekly: The Autopsy […]
Read More Quotes of the Day The New York Times has an lively, quote-filled and entertaining article in the recently created genre of Depress-Lit: All terrible news about the publishing industry, all the time. It’s “Puttin’ Off the Ritz: The New Austerity in Publishing.” What amused me were the quotes. The first, from the literary agent Amanda Urban, who represents Cormac […]
Read More Wovels (You Wish That Was A Misspelling) Apparently something called a Wovel (Web + Novel, get it? Get it?) is the new incarnation of online storytelling. It’s like Choose Your Own Adventure books: at the end of each section, readers get to vote which direction the story takes. Check out the Underland Press website for an example in progress. Maybe even cast […]
Read More Ten Short Story Collections You Should Know About Let me whet your appetite for short fiction in 2009. Below is a list of ten upcoming short story collections, most of them coming out in the first six months of the year. Some heavy hitters, some favorites, some in translation, some from bigger publishers and some from smaller publishers. In a word, Variety. 1. […]
Read More Chris Adrian’s “A Better Angel” Review Frequent readers of this blog will know that I found Chris Adrian’s short story collection “A Better Angel” to be one of the more fascinating short story collections of 2008. Which is why I decided to do an in-depth 2500-word review. In a reviewing culture that rarely gives space to short fiction, and space, when […]
Read More Break This blog will be on break this week because I’ll be in San Diego for a few days, considering 2008 and making up goals for 2009. Happy New Year.
Read More 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 […]
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