The Undiscovered Chekhov
Forty-Three New Stories
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The Undiscovered Chekhov gives us, in rich abundance, a new Chekhov. Peter Constantine's historic collection presents 38 new stories and with them a fresh interpretation of the Russian master. In contrast to the brooding representative of a dying century we have seen over and over, here is Chekhov's work from the 1880s, when Chekhov was in his twenties and his writing was sharp, witty and innovative.
Many of the stories in The Undiscovered Chekhov reveal Chekhov as a keen modernist. Emphasizing impressions and the juxtaposition of incongruent elements, instead of the straight narrative his readers were used to, these stories upturned many of the assumptions of storytelling of the period.
Here is "Sarah Bernhardt Comes to Town," written as a series of telegrams, beginning with "Have been drinking to Sarah's health all week! Enchanting! She actually dies standing up!..." In "Confession...," a thirty-nine year old bachelor recounts some of the fifteen times chance foiled his marriage plans. In "How I Came to be Lawfully Wed," a couple reminisces about the day they vowed to resist their parents' plans that they should marry. And in the more familiarly Chekhovian "Autumn," an alcoholic landowner fallen low and a peasant from his village meet far from home in a sad and haunting reunion in which the action of the story is far less important than the powerful impression it leaves with the reader that each man must live his life and has his reasons.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Unearthed by translator Constantine (Six Early Stories, by Thomas Mann) from the archives of the New York Public Library, these humorous tales, sketches and vignettes written by Chekhov in his 20s stand in the same relation to the later stories as his one-act "vaudevilles" do to his major plays. Appearing in Moscow and St. Petersburg magazines under such pen names as "Antosha" and "A man without a spleen," they display the overflowing energy of a young man exploring sundry genres--satires, sentimental portraits, domestic comedy, impressions of the commonplace--to amuse and to earn money. While the shorter sketches are near-anonymous hackwork, some of the later, longer stories reveal Chekhovian elements, such as a querulous elderly couple "hissing and growling at each other" while their daughter's engagement is being decided ("A Serious Step"). An ailing tutor trying to get a prescription discovers he hasn't enough money ("At the Pharmacy"), and a physician brooding over his colleagues can't assume an appropriate facial expression ("Intrigues"). Throughout, readers can see Chekhov training his eye for character and sharpening his ear for dialogue, as well as reveling in a surprisingly boisterous sense of fun. Sometimes the youthful humor explodes into a carnival atmosphere, as in a community's reaction to a tour by Sarah Bernhardt ("Sarah Bernhardt Comes to Town"). These early stories, some of which have appeared recently in Harper's and the New Yorker, deliver the lightest of literary entertainment, with a glimmer of potential brilliance. FYI: Another Chekhov collection is noted below.
