- Save $10 when you spend $50 and pay with Bill Me Later. The fast and convenient way to buy without using your credit card. Offer limited to items purchased from Amazon.com between July 14, 2008 and July 21, 2008. One per customer account. Enter code BMLSAVES at checkout. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.
|
|||||||||
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Anton Chekhov began writing comic sketches for newspapers when he was in school, continuing this practice for years to help support his family. Many of those short comic works were humorous variations on what became his most memorable, serious themes. Pitcher has dipped into the hundreds of Chekhov's short pieces to select the 40 stories included here, most of them written in the 1880s (and some translated into English for the first time). They run the gamut from the unexpectedly jaunty to prototypes of the darker "comic-absurd" elements often considered characteristic of Chekhov. "He Quarreled with His Wife," written in 1884, features a man who mistakes his dog's affectionate embrace for his wife's touch. Some of the sketches have a similarly jokey feel, but most are more potent. Many take their satiric cues from Gogol, as in "The Exclamation Mark," which concerns a civil servant who is accused of not understanding punctuation and develops a paranoid fantasy in which everyday objects transform into malevolent exclamation marks; or "The Death of a Civil Servant," which reworks a theme from "The Overcoat." More generally attuned to Gogol's example is Chekhov's usual choice of subject: the "little man" compromised by his immersion in the social ranking system; the classic juxtaposition of the ignoble with the socially elevated. But Chekhov's originality and fresh comic timing emerges clearly as well. Pitcher closes the collection with two of Chekhov's better-known, later stories, "The Darling" and "Encased," connecting these tragicomic tales with Chekhov's humorous forms. It is in part this volume's comprehensive and intelligent structure that allows the reader to better explore this exuberant side of the Russian master.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Philip Gambone
...a few ... are little more than sketches, [but] most of these tales offer far greater pleasures, among them penetrating social satire and trenchant character analysis.
See all Editorial Reviews
Anton Chekhov began writing comic sketches for newspapers when he was in school, continuing this practice for years to help support his family. Many of those short comic works were humorous variations on what became his most memorable, serious themes. Pitcher has dipped into the hundreds of Chekhov's short pieces to select the 40 stories included here, most of them written in the 1880s (and some translated into English for the first time). They run the gamut from the unexpectedly jaunty to prototypes of the darker "comic-absurd" elements often considered characteristic of Chekhov. "He Quarreled with His Wife," written in 1884, features a man who mistakes his dog's affectionate embrace for his wife's touch. Some of the sketches have a similarly jokey feel, but most are more potent. Many take their satiric cues from Gogol, as in "The Exclamation Mark," which concerns a civil servant who is accused of not understanding punctuation and develops a paranoid fantasy in which everyday objects transform into malevolent exclamation marks; or "The Death of a Civil Servant," which reworks a theme from "The Overcoat." More generally attuned to Gogol's example is Chekhov's usual choice of subject: the "little man" compromised by his immersion in the social ranking system; the classic juxtaposition of the ignoble with the socially elevated. But Chekhov's originality and fresh comic timing emerges clearly as well. Pitcher closes the collection with two of Chekhov's better-known, later stories, "The Darling" and "Encased," connecting these tragicomic tales with Chekhov's humorous forms. It is in part this volume's comprehensive and intelligent structure that allows the reader to better explore this exuberant side of the Russian master.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Philip Gambone
...a few ... are little more than sketches, [but] most of these tales offer far greater pleasures, among them penetrating social satire and trenchant character analysis.
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Citations
(learn more)
2
books
cite this book:
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss on page 134
- Emergence of a Free Press by Leonard W. Levy in Back Matter