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
Wnted: Abbr Shrt Stories 4 $ 
So first we had smoke fiction, which is a short story as long as it takes to smoke a cigarette, and then flash fiction, which can be a lot quicker, and then six-word stories, which is about as short as you can get. But now there’s Txt Lit – not measured in words, but in […]
Read More I’m Back Online, with a Review and Memoir I’m back up and running now, thanks to a Verizon line for which I’m probably paying too much. But some updates on writing of mine that recently came out: Check out the Spring 2008 Rain Taxi Review of Books, in which I have a review of “Dangerous Laughter” by Steven Millhauser. Sorry, my review’s only […]
Read More Sans Internet Apologies for the infrequency of posting recently. I just moved this last weekend (don’t worry, I’m still in the Los Angeles area, though not five minutes from Skylight Books, whimper, whimper) and I don’t have internet yet. My new local coffee shop is lending out some free bandwidth for this message, but posting will be […]
Read More Roundup Interviews Bookslut interviews the editor of One Story. Members of the Society of Slow Readers, take heart! A discussion of another short story turned movie over at Columbia University Press — Eileen Chang’s story “Se, jie,” which was turned into the movie “Lust, Caution.” (via Conversational Reading) A new issue of Bookforum is out, including a […]
Read More Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is coming up soon, on April 26 and 27th, so I’ve picked out some of my favorite people who will be there. And of course I will be around as well, scouting, listening, perusing and getting into all kinds of literary mischief. Some highlights from the attendees list: Lydia […]
Read More Deja Reading Recently, while reading two short story collections — Jim Shepard’s "Like You’d Understand, Anyways" and Tobias Wolff’s "Our Story Begins," — I got the distinct feeling of deja reading. You know, when you come across something and in the first few paragraphs it seems familiar, as if you’ve read it in another life. When it […]
Read More After a Brief Lull, the Festivities Resume The Tournament of Books is in full swing, including hilarious judges commentary. The fifth annual Millions Writers Award is taking submissions for the best online short story published. Jonathan Safran Foer speaks and people consider him arrogant . . . surprise, surprise, surprise. That’s how I wanted to find him, when I saw him at […]
Read More Short Story Reviews, Marketing and Tethered Ferocity Maud Newton has a review of Cate Kennedy’s Dark Roots (which I listed in my short story roundup at the beginning of the year) in NYTBR. There’s also a review of Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser, a book which I enjoyed immensely and wrote a review that should come out in the next issue of […]
Read More Jim Shepard Wins Short Story Prize Jim Shepard won the Short Story Prize last night for his collection “Like You’d Understand, Anyway.” First prize was $20,000, and both runners-up took home $5,000. I just finished the book and understand (Yes, I do understand, really) why it won. It has a zest for exploration and a penchant for far-flung corners of the […]
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