Customer Reviews

Chelkash and Other Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)

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Chelkash is a very deep story, which involves a thief named Chelkash and a young man on he finds on the street and hires. The story focuses on the use of the ocean to reflect moods and events as well as the importance of money in our society. The story leads one to question how far one would go for money. The book is much deeper than the story. One must take the time to think about it before the meaning becomes clear or one can simply enjoy the story which is a page turner.

I recently picked up a Dover Thrift Edition of Maxim Gorky's Chelkash And Other Stories. This slim book only contains three tales- the title tale, Makar Chudra, and Twenty-Six Men And A Girl. What struck me was that Gorky's style was quite different from the pre-Chekhovians like Leo Tostoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Nikolai Gogol. This modernity is evident in the very first lines of the titular tale, which follows the title character- a vagrant, and his young `understudy' Gavrila through a series of adventures that bonds the two men before fate rend them from each other. The basic crux of the tale is how far should a person go simply for money....Gorky's reputation has suffered in and outside of Russia due to his relationship with the 1917 Russian Revolution, but whether or not he was a good man is beside the point. These tales, at least, display he was a talented writer, and a worthy successor to Anton Chekhov and his predecessors in the Russian short story.

I recently picked up a Dover Thrift Edition of Maxim Gorky's Chelkash And Other Stories. This slim book only contains three tales- the title tale, Makar Chudra, and Twenty-Six Men And A Girl. What struck me was that Gorky's style was quite different from the pre-Chekhovians like Leo Tostoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Nikolai Gogol. This modernity is evident in the very first lines of the titular tale, which follows the title character- a vagrant, and his young `understudy' Gavrila through a series of adventures that bonds the two men before fate rend them from each other. The basic crux of the tale is how far should a person go simply for money....Gorky's reputation has suffered in and outside of Russia due to his relationship with the 1917 Russian Revolution, but whether or not he was a good man is beside the point. These tales, at least, display he was a talented writer, and a worthy successor to Anton Chekhov and his predecessors in the Russian short story.