Customer Reviews

Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey

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"Reading Chekhov" is a beautifully written book, with sparkling insights on Chekhov's work in every chapter. It is less an academic or scholarly investigation than a meditation and exploration, which might have been titled, "Travels Through Russia While Thinking About Chekhov". Chekhov is certainly a writer who has been thought about quite a bit, and I was skeptical at first about how much Janet Malcolm would be able to contribute to a field which is glutted with critical studies and appreciations, but her book is unique (though at its best it shares qualities with V.S. Pritchett's fine study from 1988).

Malcolm offers just enough biographical information for the reader who knows little about Chekhov to be able to appreciate this book, and she is also able to give an interesting enough perspective for her book to be worthwhile for someone who knows as much about Chekhov as she does. Aside from the short story "The Lady with the Dog", which serves as a touchstone for the book's narrative, Malcolm doesn't explore any of Chekhov's work in depth. The beauty of what she has created here, though, is that she is able to give a sense of Chekhov as a whole: his life, his writings, and the varied responses to his works and life. For instance, one of the most fascinating passages of the book compares how various biographers have portrayed Chekhov's last moments and death, and then what these portrayals might say about how Chekhov's entire life is portrayed, and how his works are interpreted.

Unlike many studies of writers and their work, this one is subtle and repays rereading. Malcolm wastes no words, which is, on the whole, admirable (particularly when writing about such an efficient writer as Chekhov), but at times is tantalizing -- some of her ideas could be spun into entire books of their own. Nonetheless, this is a fine book, a pleasure to read,resonant and even Chekhovian.

I am a huge fan of Chekhov, a taste that was cultivated during a two year stint working in Russia, and will read pretty much anything I can find about him. I'm also a fan of literary journalism & travel writing in general, so you can imagine my enthusiasm as I picked this gemm off the shelf and settled into the nearest comfie chair. Malcolm attempts to weave back and forth between journalism, travel narrative, and literary criticism, but this book is a lightweight in each of those genres, and at times is even embarrassing. I know Malcolm is a fairly well-respected writer, which just adds to my surprise at how weak this book really is. The first issue I have with this book is that her "experience" in Russia seems to have been limited to guided tours. What kind of a journalist would conduct all her research on a guided tour? Can you imagine Joan Didion or Paul Theroux doing such a thing? The problem with this is that all her insights, such as they are, are relegated to what she saw while being lead around by her tour guides, including one named Sonia with whom Malcolm seems to have a very strange and at times even disturbing relationship. "Sonia saw her job as a guide as an exercise in control, and over the two days I spent with her I grew to detest her ... my struggle with Sonia was almost always over small-stakes points of touristic arrangement; and her power to get to me was, of course, by my journalist's wicked awareness of the incalcuable journalistsc value of poor character." It's always nice to see a wealthy tourist squable with the locals who were probably once skilled professionals now forced to work menial jobs to support their families. All of her observations seem to be very surface-level things that any tourist with limited experience would pick up on. She has no unique perspective on Chekhov or Russia primarily because she is not able to get past the minor inconveniences she faces along the way. Note one scene where she is "unhappily" climbing a hill that Chekhov used in "The lady with the Dog." She's unhappy, you see, because her luggage was lost the previous day... interesting that someone who was out for adventure would get so bent out of shape over a few missing shirts (they do have clothing stores in Russia). She does, of course, try to use these "mishaps" to help her with her readings of chekhov and analysis of life in modern Russia, but it falls flat simply because she doesn't appear to be a sympathetic or even likable character in her own story. She comes off as being smug and aloof most of the time. The idea for the book, I think, is an interesting one, but it helps to get off the beaten path once in a while, to get out there and do some exploring. Meet some some people who aren't being paid to walk you around and you might get a deeper sense of what their life is like. Spend some quality time in the places Chekhov wrote about and they might take on greater significance. I picked up this book expecting an homage from one writer to another -- a labor of love, so to speak -- but the result feels more like a throw-away side project with little value to anyone with a genuine interest in Russia or Checkov... I suspect that, deep down, even Malcolm knows this is true.

Few readers have time to wrestle with the long biographies and academic treatises that proliferate on beloved writers. Lack of time trumps the best intentions. Janet Malcolm has saved Chekhov enthusiasts the trouble by doing the reading herself, adding her own insights, and throwing in a bit of travel writing as well.

Literary criticism predominates in this 200-page book, with biography taking second place and travelogue third. Malcolm weaves the biographical details around comments about the stories and plays; so, for example, we learn that Chekhov was steeped in Russian Orthodoxy--more so, apparently, than even Tolstoy. What makes that especially interesting is the contrast between Chekhov's self-proclaimed nonbelief and the way he handles religious themes in the stories; there is some evidence, presented in this book, that these matters were not as settled in Chekhov's mind as one might think just based on his statements. (I, for one, have always been impressed with the sympathy Chekhov shows to the characters who appear in The Bishop, a story not discussed by Malcolm.)

Malcolm also takes on in brief compass Chekhov's trip to Sakhalin (arduous to get there; led to a rather dull, non-Chekhovian book); his death at 44 from tuberculosis in a hotel in Germany (which had various eyewitnesses and led to a variety of embellished accounts); and his relationships with women (he liked them pretty and well-dressed), with his publisher, with Tolstoy, and with his parents and siblings.

She spices it up with thought-provoking insights; one example: "In his stories and plays, Chekhov is afraid for all men. He was only in his twenties and thirties when he wrote most of them, but like other geniuses--especially those who die prematurely--he wrote as if he were old. Toward the end of Ward No. 6, he veers off--as he does in other dark and terrible works, such as Peasants and In the Ravine--to rejoice for all men in the beauty of the world."

As for her travels, Malcolm visits St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yalta, each city in the company of a different tour guide. Her observations, far from being unfairly critical, are subtle, sardonic, and on the mark--certainly anyone who has traveled to Russia will recognize her guides.

As I wrote this, I changed the rating from four to five stars--I can't really think what would improve it. An index perhaps, since despite its brevity one would like to be able to search the contents more easily. And I would disagree with the book's jacket, which claims that those unfamiliar with Chekhov could enjoy this volume. At the very least, one should have read a volume of the major stories and be familiar with the plays. Among other works, she discusses The Lady with the Lapdog, The Steppe, The Kiss, The Schoolmistress, The Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orhard, and more.

Confound it, however, you're never off the hook--the book whets your appetite for more, naturally! Those longer biographies and critical treatments beckon...and all the stories, perhaps in a different translation this time...been a while since I looked at the plays...well, good intentions count for something, right?

For any lover of Chekhov this wonderful breeze of a book is a must.
It was all the more poignant for me having, a few years ago, visited the places in the Crimea mentioned here, including Chekhov`s villa. Janet Malcolm interweaves her own journeys in Russia and Ukraine with pertinent scenes from the master`s stories and (occasionally) plays, in a way which sends one diving back to the sources once again. In the subtlest, most modest of ways, this author heightens one`s respect for Chekhov and his art, and made this reader fall in love once again with Chekhov the writer and Chekhov the man.

Sometimes I think that if Janet Malcolm decided to write a meditation about the way lint accumulates under beds, it would be an interesting book. Everything she puts her hand to becomes larger and more significant, increases in periphery, and connects to matters one would never have thought of oneself.

And so with her book on Chekhov, a writer whose transfigurations of the ordinary, whose appreciation of the extraordinary, and whose reticence in his art and his life constitute a beauty and decency that transforms. In _Reading Chekhov_ crucial data from half a dozen biographies are distilled and linked to selected precis of critical articles and by contrast to Malcolm's own observations of Russia, which she visited, one gathers, largely in homage to Chekhov himself. The pace of her treatment is just right; each subject--Chekhov's death, Olga's role in his life, the trip to Sakhalin, the relationship to Suvorin--is given brisk yet full-feeling treatment and placed in the arc of the book, which moves slowly toward the center of Chekhov's personality, which apparently Chekhov took care would be ultimately unknowable.

The story that begins and ends Malcolm's visit is the famous "Lady with a Lapdog"--a work alternately analyzed by "Aaron Green" in Malcolm's earlier _Psychoanalysis: the Impossible Profession._ The profundity, elegance, revelatory possibilities, and double-sidedness of the approach in that previous book and of that short story serve the presentation of Chekhov well. He emerges as the most delicate of perceivers, a man hesitant to say one jot more than he believes, as a twentieth century writer (as opposed to his hero Tolstoy), as a passionate moralist who understands how dubious it is to be a passionate moralist, as a devotee of loveliness and talent who respects honest, even dull and repetitious work.

The sense of the word "Chekhovian"--that mute combination of goodness and passivity--resonates throughout, with the singular difference that Malcolm conveys on every page: that Chekhov was a literary genius. After reading her fresh, reinforcing, and deeper-seeking illuminations, I pulled down my eight collections, wanting to reread everything all at once, "The Kiss," "The Steppe," "A Dreary Story," "A Duel," "Ionivitch," "In the Ravine," "Three Years," "Ward No. 6," "Little Apples," "Ariadne," the plays. (I don't have "Kashtanka," but that's what libraries are for.)

Another book by Janet Malcolm is coming out in September 2007--_Two Lives._ Just as _Psychoanalysis_ was like analysis itself, _Reading Chekhov_ is a seminar taught by a teacher in love with her subject. And look at how many stories and plays (the list above is not complete) and how much of Chekhov's life Malcolm presents in under 210 pages!

This is an intelligent study of one reader's relationship to Chekhov. She's especially insightful when reading Chekhov and comparing experience in his stories to the experience of our lives. For me, it's a keeper. This is a work of literary journalism, not investigative journalism, so I don't quite understand the comments of some of the more hostile reviewers.

This book is not an analysis of Chekov's writing or stories, so much as a leisurely travelogue through the Russian countryside where his stories unfolded. It is not a heavy work of scholarship, but provides a pleasant look at the ambiance of his stories, which should enhance one's enjoyment of them. It is worth the time.

Fred

I will read anything Janet Malcolm writes, but it happens I also love Anton Chekhov. It also happens that I've never been able to put my finger on exactly why; his plays and stories seem to meander on, the characters suffering from this or that malaise, and the endings inconclusive. Now, Janet Malcolm has helped me understand the allure of this writer. "He is our poet of the provisional and fragmentary. When a story or play ends, nothing seems to be settled." She describes why we might love Chekhov's flawed heroes--they are invariably inconsequential and ineffectual men, unable to solve life's problems, but resigned to their fate in some way we find soothing and satisfactory--pleasing.

Her premise is that Chekhov was very ill during the last several years of his life and was fully aware that he would not live to old age. This would surely alter what a person sees as important, and what is not. Malcolm cites subtle clues that appear in Chekhov's plays and short stories, clues that an average reader would surely dismiss as just more of Chekhov's quirky style of observation. Those of us not living under a death sentence, writes Malcolm, "cannot know what it is like. Chekhov's masterpieces are always obliquely telling us."

Vladimir Nabokov, who knew Chekhov and is quoted in the book, described the Chekhov hero as "a queer and pathetic creature that ... combines the deepest human decency of which man is capable with an almost ridiculous inability to put his ideals and principles into action... Knowing exactly what is good, what is worthwhile living for, but at the same time sinking lower and lower in the mud of a humdrum existence, unhappy in love, hopelessly inefficient in everything--a good man who cannot make good." Who among us has not recognized and cared about this malaise, either in ourselves or others?

Malcolm's book is written as a "critical study" and contains many references to the extensive library of Chekhov lore; but it is also about her own journey through Russia to visit the places Chekhov lived and wrote about. She intersperses her observations on the author with anecdotes about this journey. Much of the fun in this book comes from Malcolm's account of the relationships she formed with her various women tour guides, casualties of the former soviet economy and its disastrous effects upon educated people--some virtuous, others petty--who struggle to make a living.

Malcolm as always writes with grace and humor and tells a good story. To anybody who likes Chekhov, whether or not they know the reason, this book is a must.

This is a slim volume (205 pages) for lovers of Chekhov who neither want nor need any in-depth analysis of the stories (which is not to say we get no analysis, just that it's measured and doesn't overwhelm the reader). This is Janet Malcolm's extended essay on why Chekhov is such a brilliant writer and why we should read him - often.

What I particularly like about Malcolm is that she manages to articulate why I like the man so much. Yet, having written that previous sentence just now I still can't paraphrase that articulation in a satisfying way that doesn't sound too simplistic or trite - you'll just have to read the book.

What I can say is that Chekhov manages to pack more complexity and depth in five pages than many authors struggle to do in 300 or more. It's a shame that tuberculosis took him in 1904 (though how he would have fared under the coming Soviet regime is problematic). Maybe he was "lucky."

Malcolm ties the book together with a minimalist travelogue recounting her adventures in Russia as she visited Chekhovian sites (his houses, museums, etc.) but the interest, for me, rests in her insights into Chekhov and his work, which are interesting and sometimes provocative. For example, she notes that there's a great deal of religious symbolism in Chekhov's stories (gardens and "miraculous" transformations, among others), though the author always claimed to be a nonbeliever.

If you're not yet a fan (shame on you :-), Malcolm's clear exposition and enthusiasm for her subject may just convert you.

What I "hated" about the book is that Malcolm graphically illustrated just how much Chekhov I have still to read - of the near 20 stories she mentions in the course of the book, I was familiar with fewer than five! A gross insufficiency I plan to correct as soon as possible, I assure you.

I do not rate Janet Malcolm's books, I read them and pass them along to friend's and relatives. The best rating of Janet Malcolm that I have read was by a man who wrote (this was a few years ago) of his experience when he heard that a new book on Sylvia Plath was coming out. He started to moan -- "Not another one!" And then he saw that the new book was by Janet Malcolm and he quickly became very interested -- that, you see, makes all the difference. The worst rating of Janet Malcolm I have ever read was by the woman who reviews in the daily Times, Machiko Kakitani (sp?), who said foolish things about "The Purloined Clinic, Selected Writings"(1992). Her review questioned the reasons for reprinting these pieces, most of which had first appeared in The New Yorker. This was a sad bit of business, for Kakitani has been writing reviews for quite a few years and probably her work will never be collected and published in book form;she has to live with this fact, but it does seem unfortunate that she could not see that unlike her work, Malcolm's work is retained and read again. On another level, it is unbecoming of the editors at the Times to allow things of that kind to be written in their pages. They should, in my view, have a roster of "National Treasures," in their offices and the names on this list should be entitled to certain considerations -- not entitled, by any means to good reviews but entitled to care and respect. Then, just as our language is given this kind of respect in the paper (We hope), writer's who have proven that they use the language at a certain level of excellence would be subject to equal consideration. This is a rather complicated way of saying that with writers of Janet Malcolm's class you shouldn't be questioning the legitimacy of the decision to publish her book. Is that 1000 words?