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

Nathan Englander Interview
- Writing Life
I conducted this Nathan Englander interview for the Spring 2008 issue of the Southern California Review, and I’m posting it online now for easier accessibility. If you want the entire text, click the title above or the link at the bottom of this post. Nathan Englander burst onto the literary scene in 1999, when he […]
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Yaddo
- Writing Life
The New York Times has a great article on an exhibition at the New York Public Library about Yaddo, the artist retreat outside Saratoga Springs in New York. As can be expected whenever Yaddo is discussed, the article veers into the social dimension: John Cheever used to boast that he had enjoyed sex on every […]
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A Nickel for a Starving Writer?
- Writing Life
In light of the recent meltdown of the financial sector, and with the specter of a global recession looming over our spending habits, it’s an excellent time to examine how the fallout will affect the literary world. There’s been a few articles on this, including this one, “Will Books Be Immune to Global Recession?” Eric […]
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Writer Database
- Literary Journals
Columbia College Chicago has put together a database of literary journal information. It gives you a snapshot of the type of fiction/poetry published in each journal, with currently more than fifty journals listed. While Duotrope‘s best information is statistic based — how many submissions a journal receives and how quickly they reject/accept — and the […]
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Roberto Bolano 2666: Links
- Writing Life
Bookninja has a conversation between three critics on The Savage Detectives. BOMB magazine has an interview with Roberto Bolano, conducted through email back in 2001. The Nation has a personal story about poetic skirmishes during the time of Bolano. Biography and analysis of his major works at the New York Review of Books. Geometry of […]
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Roberto Bolano 2666: Book One
- Writing Life
Book One of 2666 — “The Part About the Critics” — introduces four literary critics obsessed with a reclusive author named Benno Von Archimboldi. Archimboldi is as autobiographically unknown as Pynchon, and as built up with legendary accomplishments as Kurtz. Each of the four critics are introduced by way of their introduction to Archimboldi, as […]
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Roberto Bolano 2666: Names
- Writing Life
Bolano’s 2666 packs more names per square foot of text than a Pynchon novel. It’s especially dense in the fourth book of the novel, “The Part About the Crimes” as Bolano relates the stories of the mysterious murders of women in the Sonora desert of Mexico. These women are occasionally anonymous, but usually have names, […]
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Roberto Bolano 2666: The Title
- Writing Life
Everyone says Roberto Bolano’s 2666 is titled in a “mysterious” way. That’s a euphemism for not having any idea what it means. Part of the mystery is that 2666 never appears in any of the five sections of the novel. 2666 does, however, take on the form of a date, and by a date in […]
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Roberto Bolano 2666: The Novel Novel
- Writing Life
In the New York Times, Steven Millhauser recently wrote about the distinctions between the genre of the short story and the novel. These distinctions are very well classified, although Millhauser manages to infuse some fresh poetic verve into the discussion. But there’s just as much difference between the compact, 300 page novel and the loose […]
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