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

  • Roberto Bolano 2666: Introduction image of tag icon

    I’m going to devote the entire upcoming week to Roberto Bolano’s magnum opus 2666, which FSG publishes in November. Perhaps because of its size, I’m not going to do anything as comprehensive as a book review. Instead, I’ll be posting disparate thoughts on various sections of the novel, posts with more of a conversational bent. […]

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  • Jean-Marie Gustav Le Clezio Wins 2008 Nobel Prize image of tag icon

    The French writer Jean-Marie Gutav Le Clezio just won the 2008 Nobel prize for Literature. He was eleventh on the list of betting sites, offering 14/1 odds, just between Inger Christensen and Michael Ondaatje. He’s published thirty-odd books, a few of which have been translated into English. Many people identify two distinct periods in his […]

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  • “Blindness” Not Available in Braille? image of tag icon

    The National Federation of the Blind is protesting the film adaptation of Jose Saramago’s Blindness. The director of the Federation, Marc Maurer, claims that “Blindness doesn’t turn decent people into monsters.” Jose Saramago has already dismissed the protesters quite emphatically, calling the protest a “display of meanness based on nothing at all.” The protest couldn’t […]

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  • Minnesota Review Extinction? image of tag icon

    The Minnesota Review is in danger of shutting down, due to Carnegie Mellon’s intransigence regarding funding. It’s an age-old struggle between English departments squeezed for money, who want to shift funds to other seemingly more tangible benefits, and literary journals that are rarely self-supporting. David Kaufer, the head of the English department, insists that The […]

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  • Betting on the Nobel Prize image of tag icon

    Nothing could be more foolish than betting on the Nobel. At least with the National Book Award and the Man Booker you have a shortlist to choose from. With the Nobel, it’s anyone’s guess. Besides, I’ve lost plenty of money betting on the stock market, which these days might be even more foolish than betting […]

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  • Jewel of Medina Terrorism image of tag icon

    So now that the British publishers of Sherry Jones’ “The Jewel of Medina” have been firebombed, do you think that Random House is congratulating themselves on a prudent decision? In terms of cost-analysis, and in terms of potential danger, and in terms of (some) public relations, Random House clearly took the correct path. If nothing […]

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  • Roundup: I’m Back! image of tag icon

    Apologies for the scarcity of posts this week. I was up in Canada for a few days. But without any further ado, a roundup of stuff that has happened in my absence. A new Open Letters for the month of October. Oxford University Press is publishing “As They Say in Zanzibar: Proverbial Wisdom from Around […]

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  • Recent Journalism image of tag icon

    Pop over to PBS’s Channel Thirteen website for my recommendations on the new high school reading canon. Feel free to critique my list or offer a book you wish you were assigned in high school. UPDATE: The link to PBS is dead. I’ve reposted the article below. The New Canon John Matthew Fox Selecting reading […]

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  • Roundup with Silverblatt image of tag icon

    I’ve been listening to Michael Silverblatt’s interviews with David Foster Wallace for Bookworm, and they are quite rewarding. I especially like that Silverblatt starts out the interview on “Infinite Jest” by asking Wallace straight out whether the structure of the book is based on fractals. (!?) The National Book Foundation highlights five very talented writers […]

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