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
Back on the Short Story Train 
The only time I’ll probably link to Entertainment Weekly — but this article on McSweeneyism is great for exposing the jealousy and idiocy of McSweeney bashers. Over at The Millions, it’s short story week, and so far they have one post on Deborah Eisenberg — as regular readers know, one of my favorite short story […]
Read More RIP Alain Robbe-Grillet So Alain Robbe-Grillet, the king of the French new novel, died on Monday at the age of 85. I find it just a little funny that back in October I wrote a piece linked to by The Guardian about Robbe-Grillet’s new novel, “Un Roman Sentimental.” The title: “And I Thought He Was Dead.” So now […]
Read More Writing advice from 1908, Writing Slowly, and Terrible Query Letters Writing advice given in 1908 to short story writers. And good points made about how they were getting 3 to 5 cents a word back in the day when 3 to 5 cents could buy, say, about 100 times more than it could today. Advice on Short Story Publishers: But I wasn’t ready to give […]
Read More For Valentine’s Day: Love Never Dies In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ll mention The Christian Science Monitor has a review of a love anthology edited by Jeffrey Eugenides, the proceeds of which help out the Chicago 826 writing center of Dave Eggers. The title? My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead. No comment on that. As a huge fan of Jose Saramago, the […]
Read More Roundup Short Story Glory Habitus has a new (never before translated) interview with one of my favorite short story writers of all time: Jorge Luis Borges. The Literary Saloon points out that there’s a new collection of One Minute Stories (titled More One Minute Stories — brilliant, eh?) by Örkeny Istvan, for those of you interested in Flash Fiction […]
Read More Raymond Carver Debate Continues Over at Pinky’s Paperhaus, Carolyn Kellogg had the good fortune to receive quite a lengthy comment (actually, about six comments) from Raymond Carver’s first wife, Maryann Burk Carver, clarifying and arguing on several points. Quite a interesting read.
Read More Roddy Doyle Review Sorry for the slow posting here this week — I’ve been swamped with other writing projects. Hope at least that the links from Monday kept everyone busy. As for today, go over to The Short Review, which is, as its name suggests, concerned only with short story collections, and also the host of my review […]
Read More The Short Roundup One-of-a-kind stories inserted into bottles. Speaking of stories in unique formats, check out this story by Gregory Norminton told in footnotes. As mentioned on Critical Mass, when the nominees for Oscars were announced, nothing was mentioned about the original source of the films. Nothing about “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro which […]
Read More Jhumpa Lahiri Unaccustomed Earth I’ve been enjoying an advance copy of Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection of short fiction, Unaccustomed Earth. These stories don’t significantly diverge from her previous fiction, either in theme or tone or style, but they still are moving renditions of Indian immigrants torn between being American and being Indian. Of these eight stories, only three (so […]
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