The Portable Chekhov (Viking Portable Library)
by Anton Chekhov

List Price: $18.00
Our Price: $6.97
You Save: $11.03 (61%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.93 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of The Portable Chekhov (Viking Portable Library)

Book Review: Vast
Summary: 4 Stars

Chekov is perhaps best known for his short stories and his plays. He wrote literally hundreds of short stories. He was admired in St. Petersburg, the intellectual centre of the country, and won critical prizes and made a nice living from his writing. Chekov spent time in various pursuits that might seem rather strange -- traveling to the Siberian plains and to Sakhalin, to see the prison conditions; he headed a hospital, but found this interfered with his writing. He revered Tolstoy, but could not become an ardent disciple. Always in ill health, he traveled abroad to France, returning to Russia to live in the south, near Yalta, which he always considered no better than a warm Siberia. In all, Chekov lived a varied life, and was convinced that, within a year or so of his death, no one would be reading him any more. He died in 1904, at the age of 44. His writing career spanned some twenty-five years. While his reputation was eclipsed briefly during the Russian Revolutionary period, his reputation remains stronger than ever.

Chekov's short story career was always strong, which is somewhat surprising to modern Western readers. His stories tend to lack strong narrative plots and strong characters. Almost universally they are set in Russia, dealing with the various peoples he encountered in his life, incorporating the feelings and spirit of the place. Many of the stories seem somewhat desperate and desolate, with a quiet resignation as big as the country. Chekov's career as a playwright got off to a relatively slow start, but by the end of his life, his plays were greatly admired and regularly performed in Russia and beyond. Indeed, his 44th birthday was an occasion of the opening of his last play, 'The Cherry Orchard', included in this anthology.

Editor and translator Avrahm Yarmolinsky has an introductory essay, in which he describes Chekov as the 'knell of old Russia' rather than a leader into the new Russia. When reading his stories and plays, one gets a sense for the pre-Revolutionary Russia, the old guard. Never one to go in for novels, which he considered required far more development than he thought he had, Chekov is the scene crafter for late imperial Russia. Interesting, stimulating -- it is hard to anthologise Chekov, and I take a star off here because some of my favourite stories and my favourite play ('The Seagull') are not here, but I can understand the difficulty in deciding.

This anthology includes 40 pages of correspondence; Chekov's correspondence was vast (he wrote his wife nearly every day in the last several years of his life, for example), so again, any representative sample must needs be selective.

This is a good, one-volume introduction to a great Russian writer, one whose influence continues to grow.

Literature & Fiction Books