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
All the Way to Harper’s 
It was quite nice to see a post from The Elegant Variation reprinted in the May issue of Harper’s magazine. With a clever title — Textually Transmissible — the piece, translated from the French by Dorna Khazeni, is hilarious, especially if you’re familiar with Michel Houellebecq’s sexually infused novels or, Houellebecq aside, know the literary […]
Read More Short Roundup Reviews and Stories Zoran Zivkovic, a Serbian writer, has his short story collection “Steps Through the Mist” reviewed. ZYZZYVA recaps the rejections that turned out to be mistakes, as well as quite a funny response to a rejection by Howard Junker himself. Over at Ward Six there’s a discussion of the Alice Munro story “Material,” finishing up with […]
Read More The Podcasts Are Marching On Again, Hurrah; Hurrah Over at Pinky’s Paperhaus there’s a post about a new development with the Short Story Review — they’re going to start podcasting short stories in September of 2008, and are already reading submissions. It’s a new journal, with only two issues out, but now fifty-two stories a year will be podcasted, selected from the jaws […]
Read More Mark This One In Your Calendars Over at Papercuts, Dwight Garner reveals that last night Jhumpa Lahiri soared into the number one spot on the New York Times Bestseller list with her collection of short stories, “Unaccustomed Earth.” When’s the last time a short story collection was #1? Glad you asked, because I was willing to guess virtually never, but then […]
Read More Your Novel Uses The Word “The” Too Many Times Over at Literary Rejections on Display, there’s a list of reasons why agents/publishers rejected a particular author’s last two manuscripts. It’s hilarious, as long as you don’t get depressed easily. And couldn’t you see this in one of the sidebars of Harper’s Magazine? we find this book too complicated for our readers we think there […]
Read More Short Roundup Dan over at Emerging Writers Network points out a new trend among literary journals, such as Fence and American Short Fiction, to “pay what you can” for a subscription to their journal. A smart move, I believe. Journals need some kind of marketing to jumpstart their subscription base. How literary journal rejections that take over […]
Read More New Short Story Collections Just wanted to update the short story collections that should be on your horizon. In addition to the many I listed back in January, there are a couple of heavy-hitters coming out in Fall. First, Annie Proulx has a collection of more Wyoming stories coming out from Scriber in September: “Fine Just the Way It […]
Read More Pastry Chef = Short Story Writer Junot Diaz, who just won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, commenting on life as a celebrity of the short story form: “Being a hot young short-story writer is like being a hot young up-and-coming pastry chef.” Who really knows or cares in the real world?” (Interviewed in Newsweek)
Read More New Publishing Routes Are Really Quite Old So HarperCollins made big news with the creation of a new division that is trying out “new” techniques in selling hardcover books. The most salient news is that they’ll eliminate advances in favor of higher royalties on the back end. Read: a kind of profit-sharing. From what I know of corporate accounting, though, mostly through […]
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