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
Happy 2nd Birthday to BookFox! 
BookFox turns the ripe old age of two today. Since blog years are like dog years, that’s pretty old. On this date two years ago I posted a quasi-jealous rant after listening to a reading at Dutton’s with Jonathan Safran Foer, and that spawned this blog that has moved from Blogger to WordPress to Typepad […]
Read More Scott Snyder and the Voodoo Rejections I just started reading Scott Snyder’s “Voodoo Heart,” a wonderful collection of short stories originally published in venues like One-Story, Epoch, and Tin House, and published as a collection in 2006. There’s an interview with him over at Literary Rejections on Display, but I just wanted to excerpt this staggering anecdote: I once sent a […]
Read More Book Expo America (In Los Angeles!) I’m lucky enough to have Book Expo America right here in Los Angeles this year, so I’m taking full advantage. I’ll be living in the Los Angeles Convention Center for about four days, eating up all the lovely literary goodness. And, of course, in true BookFox fashion, passing all that lovely information on to you. […]
Read More The iTunes of Short Stories One Story’s blog, Save the Short Story, alerted me to newest short story podcasting site, Sniplits. The idea behind the name, I believe, is that while listening to audio books in the car doesn’t allow you enough continuity to enter the dream-like experience of the novel, a snippet of literature — such as a short […]
Read More Slush Pile Dispatches So a long time ago, back when a different journal was being published at USC, someone accepted a poem for the literary journal from a prisoner. Just some incarcerated guy that mailed in a typewritten poem. While it seems a kind of noble and liberating idea (giving some locked-up men a voice!), it actually was […]
Read More Nam Le: “The Boat” So Nam Le’s short story collection “The Boat” comes out today, and after reading it over the past month, it seems he’s going to give Chris Adrian competition for best debut of 2008 (yes, I know Adrian’s published before, but “A Better Angel” is his first collection). Le’s got geographical range, that’s for sure, both […]
Read More Three Short Story Links Although I missed the initial salvo of reports about the short story panel at PEN World Voices Festival, it’s worth checking out this summary from Stingy Kids, (and also Chekhov’s Mistress) to find out: – the pro-short-story state of Korea and how that’s changing to encourage novels instead – how an unrecognized Annie Proulx rose […]
Read More The Death of Simultaneous Submission? The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about a new software called CrossCheck, which is billed as a plagarism program. Most writers, who unlike academics are not quoting and paraphrasing, are hardly ever in danger of plagiarism. But the program actually goes one step beyond crosschecking other previously published articles, and also checks other […]
Read More Frank O’Connor Short Story Award The 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the heftiest cash prize in the literary world for the short form (35,000 euros), has announced its longlist. Thirty-nine authors from around the globe are nominated. Only one Canadian was up (no, it wasn’t Alice Munro) as opposed to fourteen British writers (!). But the nice thing […]
Read More
