Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey - Hardcover

Malcolm, Janet

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375506683 ISBN 13: 9780375506680

Publisher: Random House, 2001

Synopsis

A perfect match of author and subject. In an effort to know one of her favorite writers better. Janet Malcolm -- who has brought light to the dark and complicated corners of psychoanalysis and has exposed the treacheries inherent within journalism--traveled to Russia and the places where Chekhov lived and worked. Out of her encounters with modern-day Russians she builds bridges backward in time to Chekhov and to the characters and ideas in his unexampled short stories and plays. The chapters are like pools of thought that coalesce into a profound, unified vision of one of Western literary culture's most important figures. For example, Chekhov's self-effacement prompts a consideration of his characters' odd un-pin-down-ability and then a discussion of limitations in writing biography.

One need not know Chekhov's writing to enjoy and be enlightened by Reading Chekhov (though anyone who does will find it doubly edifying). It is a work in which as we watch one outstanding mind try to understand another, we learn more about ourselves--our own ways of reading, thinking, and behaving: generally, what it means to be human.

About this title

From the Back Cover

“One of the most gratifying things about Reading Chekhov is its quiet, vigorous defense of the prerogatives of criticism against the imperial banality of biography.” —The New York Times Book Review

“[A] thoughtful and sensitive study . . . A great part of the charm and the skill of Janet Malcolm’s book lies in the very Chekhovian way she mingles personal with critical comment, taking us not only through Chekhov’s stories but through the removals and journeys of his life and her own travels in quest of his Russian haunts.” —The New York Review of Books

“With the gentle inevitability of a balloon lofting skyward, the discourse effortlessly ascends from chatter to contemplation to genuinely brilliant critique. . . . With its balance of distilled perception and companionable spirit, Reading Chekhov embodies the same qualities it celebrates.” —San Francisco Chronicle
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author

Janet Malcolm's previous books are Diana and Nikon: Essays on Photography; Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession; In the Freud Archives; The Journalist and the Murderer; The Purloined Clinic: Selected Writings; The Silent Woman: Slyvia Plath and Ted Hughes; and The Crime of Sheila McGough. She lives in New York with her husband, Gardner Botsford.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0375506683
• ISBN 13: 9780375506680
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 190