Forty Stories

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) has long been acknowledged as one of Russia's greatest playwrights and short story authors, a man whose expressiveness with the pen stemmed, in great part, from the hardship of his childhood experiences and, later in life, his vast globetrotting wanderings. Chekhov's family abandoned him at the age of sixteen to a fate somewhat close to wage-slavery; astonishingly, he later assumed complete responsibility for their indiscretions, and thereafter always faced financial difficulties. To help supplement his income, Chekhov began writing professionally for magazines, and over the course of his life came to scribe more than two hundred short stories. This collection, as suggested by the title, consists of forty pieces, of varying length and quality: the title is somewhat misleading, as several of these 'stories' are barely a page long and would be more aptly described as 'fragments', or, to take a cue from Turgenev, 'sketches' of Russian existence...although, in a sense, all of these stories could be described thus. With wit, compassion and keen insightfulness, the author paints a painfully accurate portrait of the Russian character: hardy, proud, generally inconsistent and very often drunken; and Russian environment, from the fertile luxury of the Crimea to the frozen wasteland exile of Siberia, from provincial predicaments to cityscape cluster-catastrophes. Like his contemporaries Gogol, Turgenev and Tolstoy, Chekhov wrote as he saw it, and his fiction now exists as literature - an invaluable testament of a bygone age. *Forty Stories* covers Chekhov's artistic span from 1880-1903. The progression of skill and storytelling becomes readily apparent as one ploughs deeper into the text: with the exception of Green Scythe, the first third of this book is generally underwhelming, given the author's reputation. Many of the pieces in this section fall under the fragment banner, too small and sparse for effective insight or even basic narrative enjoyment. From 'The Huntsman' on, however, the stories gradually gain expert polish, with wonderful descriptiveness and a strong sense of character, and the last seven or so are probably the best of the collection. Yet I still advise one to read this from beginning to end - there are a few gems in the beginning section, and the evolution of Chekhov's technique is in itself interesting to observe.An overview of some of the best stories: Green Scythe: Every summer the Princess of a certain villa at Green Scythe summons a host of gentlemen for vacation and entertainment. One of them (the least favored by the Princess) eventually falls in love with her daughter, and the rest of the men conspire to bring the two together in holy matrimony. Sergeant Prishibeyev: The military man of the title has been drawn up before court for disturbing the peace. Between the lines, one receives a feeling of how difficult it was for some members of the Russian military to return to a 'normal' life aft

I like Robert Payne's translations of Chekhov because he has a good ear for the flow of beautiful writing. He does not bog Chekhov's prose down with needless commas like Constance Garnett and others. Payne's Chekhov reads seamlessly. He understands that good storytelling is about how the words flow together as in speech. Beautiful translations. (By the way, they are perfect for teaching Chekhov to high school or college students.)Rosa La Luna