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

  • 2008 LA Times Festival of Books at UCLA image of tag icon

    So I’m thrilled to go to the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend, where I’ll get to see a bunch of friends I haven’t seen for a while and reconnect with some great authors. I’ve got a couple of things going. First of all, I have — in my editing-grooved, keyboard-calloused hands — the […]

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  • Stephen Corey on Genre Numbers image of tag icon

    Stephen Corey, editor of the Georgia Review, wrote a piece for the May/June Poets & Writers. Here’s an excerpt in which he quantifies the shifts he’s seen with nonfiction, poetry, and short stories: Well, more people are sending out and publishing what they now call (forgive us, Father Montaigne) “creative nonfiction.” In the mid-1980s we […]

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  • Literary Journal Correspondence image of tag icon

    Over at Fence there’s a exchange between the editor and a contributor that devolves incredibly quickly into rather shameless namecalling (via Chekhov’s Mistress). Despite the nastiness, I have to say that just getting any response from an editor of a literary journal is difficult, so an editor responding multiple times should earn at least some […]

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  • More Cynthia Ozick image of tag icon

    Just on the heels of turning eighty and putting out a new collection of short stories, Cynthia Ozick is raking in the prizes. She was just awarded the PEN/Malamud prize for short fiction, as well as the PEN/Nabokov prize. Both are lifetime acheivement awards, which is not only quite an honor, but also conveys the […]

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  • Short Roundup of Short Stories image of tag icon

    Nathaniel Rich, the editor of “The Paris Review” and recent author of “The Mayor’s Tongue,” has a new short story over at Five Chapters called “Trainchasers.” More Nathaniel Rich at the LA Times, as part of a trio of recent authors who have written books where characters are defiantly proud of print journals. It’s been […]

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  • Cynthia Ozick: Dictation image of tag icon

    Cynthia Ozick has a new collection of short stories — or at least a novella accompanied by three stories, so a quartet of stories would be more accurate. “Dictation” came out in mid-March, but we’ve not seen the type of coverage I’d expect, except for the faithful Complete Review and some coverage given by Bookforum. […]

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  • Charging Fees for Library Books? image of tag icon

    Because of the budget crisis in L.A., Mayor Villaraigosa has been cracking down on the LA public library — not only freezing journal and database subscriptions but limiting new book purchases. Now there’s apparently a plan to charge a fee for library books that come from other library branches. So naturally, there’s a big hullabaloo […]

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  • All the Way to Harper’s image of tag icon

    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 […]

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  • Short Roundup Reviews and Stories image of tag icon

    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 […]

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