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
Orhan Pamuk in Harper’s 
In the September issue of Harper’s magazine there’s an excellent article on the recent Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk, written by Christopher de Bellaigue (also check out the photo essay of Turkey on the pages preceding it). Alas, it’s not available online or I would link. The article, “There is no East” is less about […]
Read More If I Did It (Again) O.J. Simpson’s quasi-confessional memoir about how he would have killed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman, has found a home: Beaufort Books, a vanity publisher (although in this case, it’s not exactly vanity – more like debasement). If the book actually sells, Judith Regan will strut and feel justified. But […]
Read More New Jean Thompson Collection Reviewed The Boston Globe checks out Jean Thompson’s new collection of short stories, Throw Like a Girl, a title that should not be mistaken for any flavor of chick-lit. Thompson excels at portraying characters too easily betrayed by those they hoped to love and be loved by, too unobservant or naive to notice the thunderbolts poised […]
Read More Roundup: Frank Conroy Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time is being filmed. That memoir made me feel like I had much too wonderful of a childhood to become a real writer. Hope the movie makes it through all the Hollywood hoops. (via Earthgoat) Catch the discussion on Triangle by Katherine Weber over at the Litblog Co-op, and if you haven’t started […]
Read More Back to Los Angeles Greetings everyone. I’ve back from a very long and rather physically exhausting trip to South America, though I have the stories and Mrs. BookFox has the pictures to prove we had a good time (I will link to Flickr once we upload). Many thanks to my wonderful guest posters who held down the fort and […]
Read More No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July No one belongs here more than me. That’s what I kept telling myself while staring at the bright and shiny cover. Really, it was shiny. I could just about see my nose in the binding. An appeal to the reader—look I want you to read this book so much that I will show you how […]
Read More Adaptations Stephanie Harrison’s Adaptations Collection.This is an interesting book I saw awhile back. A collection of thirty-five short stories that have been adapted into classic movies. From “All About Eve” to “Minority Report.” I’ve always heard the idea professed that – in terms of adaptation – the worse the novel, the better the movie. The idea […]
Read More Gift From The Sea To often I have been finding in my recent reading we focus on ‘invoking the muse’ rather than actually ‘being creative’. Everyday there is another book published about how to become or get creative. Rather than the fluffy titles that the books now have, they should read "How to be Creative in Just Three Easy […]
Read More Reading Roberto Bolano in Chile Mucho gracias to my witty and wonderful guest posters. I will just briefly interrupt their reign of wisdom to weigh in with another Dispatch From Abroad, this time with my promised post about Roberto Bolano. I have been reading Bolano in Chile, simply because he´s Chilean and I wanted my reading to match my travels. […]
Read More
