“Nabokov came from the library. Gogol from the government office. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy from the clouds…. Chekhov came from the earth. He was the only great Russian writer of the nineteenth century born to the peasantry rather than the nobility, the reason why the peasants in his stories are complex human beings, neither saints nor sinners, and as understandable as they are sometimes degenerate, rather than pegs in grand philosophies.”
Boris Fishman’s Chekhov is a writer of the people, and that’s the Chekhov we’ll be exploring together during the August edition of Restless Reads, our virtual online book club. Before his death from tuberculosis at the age of forty-four, Chekhov wrote nearly a thousand short stories. His radical commitment—radical for his time—to telling complex human truths above simple ideological ones have made those stories some of the most influential ever written.
During a summer of plague and rising poverty, it’s worth mentioning that Chekhov knew all about that, too: a doctor-writer, he devoted himself to the people rather than the Moscow elite, giving away horses and books and providing free health care to peasants during a cholera epidemic. A writer for our times, truly.
Here’s how to join us:
© Matt McCann, from Chekhov: Stories for Our Time.
Read these six stories by Chekhov, in no particular order, all translated by Constance Garnett and available in the public domain:
“The Darling”
As Boris Fishman observes, it’s a rewriting of the plot of Anna Karenina and an “implicit rebuke to Tolstoy’s quite undeniable resolution of Anna’s problem: the adulterous shall be smitten.”
“About Love”
If you’re already familiar with “The Lady with the Pet Dog,” one of his most popular stories, you need to read this one, says Fishman.
“Gooseberries”
In this story, Chekhov “says in a line what would take another writer a paragraph.”
“The Man in a Case”
Writes Fishman, ”To understand why a piece of the Russian mind worships submission, read ‘The Man in a Case.’”
“The Siren”
An example of what Fishman calls Chekhov’s “miracle of… simultaneous soulfulness and lack of adornment."
“The Letter”
”For all their preoccupation with religion,” Karlinsky writes, “[Tolstoy and Dostoevsky never thought of making an Orthodox priest, deacon or monk a central character in a work of fiction.” Chekhov did.
All of these stories are also available in our Restless Classics edition Chekhov: Stories for Our Time, introduced by Boris Fishman and featuring illustrations by Matt McCann. Find it here on our website and use the code BUYDIRECT to get 15% off. It’s also available at Bookshop, your local indie bookstore, or any of these retailers:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Google | iTunes | Kobo | Kindle
2. You’ll have three opportunities to meet with us via Google Meet and discuss Chekhov: Stories for Our Time. Drop into any of these sessions throughout the month of August:
Wednesday, August 5 at 11 am
Co-presented by the Bronx Library Center
Facilitated by Isaiah Stavchansky
Please register through the New York Public Library’s website here; a link to the event will be sent via email a day in advance. You don’t need to be a patron of the NYPL to register.
Wednesday, August 12 at 4 pm
Co-presented by the Battery Park City Library
Facilitated by Isaiah Stavchansky
Please register through the New York Public Library’s website here; a link to the event will be sent via email a day in advance. You don’t need to be a patron of the NYPL to register.
Thursday, August 13 at 8 pm
Co-presented by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (NYPL) and the Jones Library (Amherst)
Facilitated by Ilan Stavans
Please register through the New York Public Library’s website here; a link to the event will be sent via email a day in advance. You don’t need to be a patron of the NYPL to register.
About the Facilitators
Ilan Stavans is the Publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, and A Critic’s Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, the three-volume set Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile’s Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. Stavans’s work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen. A cofounder of the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst, Stanford, Chicago, Oxford, and Dublin, he is the host of the NPR podcast "In Contrast."
Isaiah Stavchansky is a teacher, writer and performer based out of Brooklyn, New York. Regionally, he has been in the Wellfleet Harbor Actor's Theater adoption of Six Character's in Search of an Author as well as in the Williamstown Theatre Festival world premiere of Adam Bock's Before the Meeting. His writing has been performed in New York, Ohio, and Massachusetts. He is a current member of the NYB writers group. He holds a BA from Kenyon College in English and Philosophy and attended the Atlantic Acting School Conservatory.
About the Book
About the Author
© Matt MccCann
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860 - 1904) was a Russian playwright and short story writer who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. The son of a grocer, he was born into a large family in Taganrog, Russia. As he studied in medical school, he supported the family by writing hundreds of stories under a pen name for local magazines. In his twenties, he shifted his focus to drama, writing plays that would signal the birth of modernism in theater: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard. Alongside his work as a doctor, he continued to write extraordinary short stories—nearly one thousand in all—until his death from tuberculosis at the age of 44.
About the Introducer
© Stephanie Kaltsas
Boris Fishman was born in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States in 1988 at nine. He is the author of A Replacement Life and Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo (HarperCollins), both New York Times Notable Books of the Year. He has won the Sophie Brody Medal from the American Library Association and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. His journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and Book Review, The Guardian, Travel & Leisure, New York Magazine, and many other publications. His next book is a work of creative nonfiction, a family history told through recipes. He lives in New York City and teaches creative writing at Princeton University.
About the Illustrator
Matt McCann is a photo editor and occasional illustrator in New York City.
By Anton Chekhov
Introduction by Boris Fishman
Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett, Ilan Stavans, and Alexander Gurvets
Illustrations by Matt McCann
Restless Classics
The Restless Classics edition of Chekhov: Stories for Our Time presents a must-have collection by the great Russian author who captured humanity in all its complexity, and reintroduces Chekhov as a funny, playful, deeply human, and thoroughly modern writer.
Paperback • ISBN: 9781632061805
Publication date: Jul 24, 2018