You’ve probably read one of those stories where the emphasis is placed on a character’s psychology –their inner monologue– and not so much external detail or action. And you’ve probably read one of those stories where, instead of a fully realised mammoth-sized plot that ends with the resolution of all the loose ends and maybe a reassuring happily-ever-after, the narrative doesn’t seem to conclude at all: your glimpse into the life of the character is extinguished as though it had been lit by a flash. You had only enough time to catch a nuclear moment of epiphany in that one person’s life, and you're left ponder the ramifications on your own. If you’ve read Joyce, Woolf, Mansfield, or any other greats of high-modernist fiction, you’ve probably read one of these stories. Well, they all admired the writings of this scruffy Russian. You should too. After all, he started that stuff.
Chekhov had a tough life, being Russian in the late 19th century. As a kid he served vodka to foul customers in his dad’s shop while keeping up with school. The whole family fled from their small port town to a Moscow slum so Dad could avoid debtor’s prison after the shop went bankrupt. With Dad then taking up the drink, Chekhov had to both support his family and pay his med-school tuition by writing sketches and jokes for the newspapers. Once he’d graduated and become a doctor, he opened up a practice. The money came pouring in then, right? No, because he treated the poor for free and volunteered much of his time to helping out during famines and epidemics. He trudged on until, lo and behold, in 1898 he quit the practice and began living off his writing. Sadly, he’d contracted tuberculosis two years earlier.
Still, most of his best fiction and plays were written in the last twenty years of his life and, despite having alter-careers in medicine and theatre, he’d published over eight hundred stories by the time he died in 1904 at age 44.
The modern short story would be unrecognisable without him, so read some Chekhov. Show him the love. Not that he needs it: in a 1987 survey of twenty-five highly esteemed short story writers (including Eudora Welty and Nadine Gordimer) asked to name their crucial influences, Chex here came out on top with ten votes. Only ten? Well, Joyce and Henry James tied for second with five each. So decide for yourself if Raymond Carver was drunk (hint: he probably wasn’t) when he called Chekhov "the greatest short story writer who ever lived.” And if I decide to make this into a bit of a series, doesn't Chekhov just make the perfect start?
Chex as a young man. He's a med student, you know.
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