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
How Long Does It Take You To Read This Post? 
Over at the Guardian there’s a blurb about how their fastest reader, John Crace, only reads sixty pages an hour, and how he considers that to be quite fast enough. I suppose I don’t know how many pages I read an hour, because really, pages are a rather inaccurate unit of measurement considering all the […]
Read More The Need For Moral Fiction I made the mistake of trying to read New York Echoes, a short story collection by Warren Adler coming out in February. I say trying because I couldn’t make it through. Aside from the pressing desire to cut the character’s dialogue in half and compress the narration, I was most put off by the morality […]
Read More Short Roundup of Reading Challenges If you haven’t checked it out yet, Kate has organized a Short Story Reading Challenge. The Short Review has a rather comprehensive list of all the short story collections and anthologies coming out in 2008. The only downside is that the list contains many titles being released in softcover, which means they really came out […]
Read More Short Story Collections Forthcoming in 2008 Below is a list highlighting some of the upcoming short story collections of 2008. I didn’t include pictures because some of the later ones don’t have cover art yet, but I hope you enjoy the selections. I’m particularly excited for Jhumpa Lahiri and Chris Adrian, and have already read or begun to read the stories […]
Read More New Year, New Design, New Focus For 2008, I’ve decided to shift the focus of BookFox onto the short story. This means I’ll be focusing on short story collections and places short stories appear – magazines, literary journals, webzines. It doesn’t mean that BookFox will exclusively cover short stories (I don’t think I could limit my interests that much), but it […]
Read More Merry Christmas Roundup Have a very Merry Christmas, everyone. I’ll pop back in after the holidays sometime to post again, but for now, I leave you with the reading below. I’ve been hearing a lot about Will Self’s infamous walks over the past few months, and now NY Times finally has a review of his book, Psychogeography. What […]
Read More Eulogy for Ed Literary blogs come and go with some frequency and few lament their passing, but The Return of the Reluctant is one that will be missed. Edward Champion has announced he’s hanging up his spurs. Many thanks to Ed for his tireless cruising about the internet and blogosphere providing quips and tips on the eclectic drugs […]
Read More Why Experimental Fiction Will Save Fiction Only If It’s Really Experimental Ben Marcus has a new short story in Harper’s Magazine, although the web site doesn’t even have January 2008 up yet. Because of the story’s placement in Harper’s, I couldn’t help but reading it in light of the fracas between Marcus and Jonathan Franzen that appeared in the same pages. It’s funny to remember, in […]
Read More LA Writing is Dead? Over at the Guardian they have an article about the absence of LA literature. Yes, I agree that the screenwriters often overshadow the novelists (and yes, I have to justify myself at parties as well) but I have to disagree with the main point: In retrospect, the years from the late 1930s to the early […]
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