Reading Chekhov

Reading Chekhov

Praise for Reading Chekhov

Janet Malcolm's previous books include In the Freud Archives, The Journalist and the Murderer, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession; all published by Granta Books, and The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Born in Prague, she grew up in New York, where she lives with her husband, Gardner Botsford. 'So marvellous, so attentive to its subject, so insightful into his writing and to the act of writing… Malcolm captures with consistent brilliance what anyone could of the famously elusive Chekhov. On every one of Chekhov's works she mentions she has something wonderfully illuminating to say. When Malcolm writes about the guile, the concealments and the discoveries of writing - she is like no other critic I have ever read: limpid, revelatory and startlingly attentive to every nuance. Her reading is one by which all our readings can be illuminated, and in which we can all share' John Lloyd, Financial Times 'A literate, exceptionally charming jeu d'esprit that merits a place on the bookshelf ahead of most of the conventional lives' Julian Evans, New Statesman 'Highly enjoyable… like the best criticism, Malcolm alerts and enlightens; her gift is for drawing you into the story of her journey as much as his. Excellent' Daniel Paddington, Time Out

'Janet Malcolm's reading of Chekhov is affectionate, attentive and acutely intelligent… Malcolm is such a good writer and such a sympathetic reader that her book will only enhance one's enjoyment of Chekhov's prose. She has her own gift for making a striking new connection between one story and another, and she brings to a wider audience the best perceptions of academic critics' Donald Rayfield, Literary Review 'Succinct… polished… beautifully written… impressively focused' Jonathan Heawood, Observer 'Sharp-witted… wryly subverts literary biography to reveal its shortcomings and absurdities… contains new research as well as intelligent insights about the Russian writer, his work and inner life. This book, underpinned by a sly wit, is often illuminating and always well-written' Ian Thomson, Irish Times 'This delightfully produced and written book is the story of a literary pilgrimage. Reading Chekhov will send one back to the stories to test Malcolm's assertion, seemingly proved by argument, that Chekhov hides surrealism behind realism, that his stories are not, as they are commonly thought to be, "modest, delicate, grey", but "wild and strange, archaic and brilliantly painted"' T. J. Binyon, Scotsman

ALSO BY JANET MALCOLM

The Crime of Sheila McGough The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes The Purloined Clinic: Selected Writings The Journalist and the Murderer In the Freud Archives Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession Diana and Nikon: Essays on Photography

READING CHEKHOV  

A Critical Journey

JANET MALCOLM  

Granta Books London One

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êåò they have slept together for the first time, Dmitri Dmitrich Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna von Diderits, the hero and heroine of Anton Chekhov's story "The Lady with the Dog" (1899), drive out at dawn to a village near Yalta called Oreanda, where they sit on a bench near a church and look down on the sea. "Yalta was hardly visible through the morning mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops," Chekhov writes at the start of the famous passage that continues: The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings-the sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky-Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.