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
Roundup Book Prizes 
Canadian author Julie Curwin has won the 2008 Commonwealth prize for her short story “World Backwards.”(via) And be amazed (jealous?) by this: New Brunswick-born Curwin began writing only two years ago, and is now working on a collection of short stories with medical themes. Rachel Resnick, who did epic interviews for BookFox a few months […]
Read More Roberto Bolano 2666: Latin American Influences/Insults Sidenote: I wrote this post a few weeks ago, but it didn’t make it into my 2666 week. So now that Bolano mania is in full swing, I’m posting it. Bolano despised most other Latin American writers, often insulting them using humdingers like these: Gabriel Garcia Marquez: “a man terribly pleased to have hobnobbed with […]
Read More Nam Le Wins Dylan Thomas Prize Congrats to Nam Le for scoring the Dylan Thomas prize — 60,000 pounds is quite a serious chunk of change. Also, props to the Thomas prize administrators for repeatedly honoring short story writers — the 2006 winner, Rachel Trezise, was also a short story writer.
Read More No Editor Left Behind The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about a new system that ranks humanities journals. Predictably enough, scholars and editors are up in arms: A large-scale, multinational attempt in Europe to rank humanities journals has set off a revolt. In a protest letter, some journal editors have called it “a dangerous and misguided exercise.” […]
Read More Roberto Bolano 2666 Reviews The Roberto Bolano 2666 reviews have been gushing praise. What’s more, most reviewers recognize (and I agree) that 2666 is more ambitious and a greater achievement than The Savage Detectives. Which is why GQ wrote that it is the only 1,100 page book they’ll ever tell you to read. Adam Kirsch in Slate: Jonathan Lethem […]
Read More Sidebar Reading Apologies for neglecting the right sidebar updating what I’m reading. I’ve been reading a spate of novels (some of them very very small, you know, like 2666), and so have not been adding to my short story collection reading. But don’t worry — I’ve jumped back in the fray with some small press/university titles, four […]
Read More VQR Review Winner VQR just announced the winner of its review contest, in which reviewers under 30 submitted a review of a book published in 2008. Congrats to Emily Wilkinson, for her review of “The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective” by Kate Summerscale. And, I might add, she […]
Read More Roundup of Yaddo More about Yaddo (a book!) Unusual calls for submissions gathered on the blog of Hayden’s Ferry Review. While I wouldn’t say that a call for Death and Dying is all that unusual, the YouTube literary journal is rather strange. Literary Rejections on Display offers up rather lengthy rejections, complete with details about grammar and pacing, […]
Read More Atlantic Monthly on The Art of Blogging For the November Atlantic Monthly, Andrew Sullivan writes a lengthy article — “Why I Blog” — musing on the nature of blogs. Most of what he says is well phrased and crafted and shows a prolonged thoughtfulness about the function and nature of blogs, although much of it, upon further analysis, seems rather familiar. But […]
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