The Party and Other Stories

The five stories of this volume are "The Party", " A Woman's Kingdom" "My Life: A Provincial Story" "An Unpleasant Business" and a "Nervous Breakdown". In them Chekhov shows his sympathy and understanding for human nature under strain and in great life- difficulty. The opening story " The Party" focuses on a character in late - states of pregnancy who observes by mistake her philandering husband's talk with a young attractive girl. The long story " My Life" has many elements of Chekhov's own youth in it, including the cruel beatings administered by the father. In "The Woman's Kingdom" a former worker and now factory owner thinks of escaping her isolation through marrying one of the workers, only to understand how socially this has become impossible. Characters imprisoned and frustrated in their own desperate world of feelings whose every minor gesture of the soul the master portrays with insight and elegance.

..."The Party & Other Stories," volume 4 of The Ecco Press edition, contains eleven stories written during the period from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s. These are stories from Chekhov's so-called "middle period," the years after Chekhov had finished his medical studies and began writing and publishing the longer, more serious psychological studies whose characteristics became a universal ascription for short stories of that sort: "Chekhovian." As Harold Bloom has written, "the formal delicacy and somber reflectiveness [of Chekhov's stories] make him the indispensable artist of the unlived life, and the major influence upon all story-writers after him."Every one of the stories in this volume is a remarkable example of Chekhov's ability to write in simple, straightforward fashion, while, all the time, illuminating with almost microscopic precision the internalized, psychological lives of his characters. As one commentary on Chehov's writing during this period has noted, apropos of the stories in this volume (and in contrast to Chekhov's early humorous stories): "Characters are no longer perceived satirically, as social archetypes, but seen from within. And the inner life revealed is often an unhappy one, the characters' 'real life' being in sharp contrast with their 'world of desire,' reached only through memory or fantasy."The stories range from long to short, each a near-perfect model of the short story, worthy of enjoyment and careful study. The longest of the stories, "A Woman's Kingdom," tells of Anna Akimovna, the daughter of a factory owner who, as a young girl, mingled with the working classes, only to find herself the lonely, single, middle-aged heiress and proprietor of those same factories later in life. It is a remarkable exploration of Anna's loneliness and of her yearning to return to the life of her childhood, as well as of the separation between owner and worker in an industrialized Russia. As Anna says, longingly: "Yes, I'll go and get married. I will marry in the simplest, most ordinary way and be radiant with happiness. And, would you believe it, I will marry some plain working man, some mechanic or draughtsman."In the title story, "The Party," Chekhov brilliantly probes the mind, the thoughts, the silent unhappiness and dissatisfaction of Olga Mihalovna, a pregnant, married woman who clearly does not like her philandering, brash husband or her social obligations. In a passage that strikingly illustrates both the luster of Chekhov's art and the deep-seated discontent of the character of his story, Olga stands watching her guests, the partygoers of the story's title, glide by in boats:"Olga Mihalovna looked at the other boats, and there, too, she saw only uninteresting, queer creatures, affected or stupid people. She thought of all the people she knew in the district, and could not remember one person of whom one could say or think anything good. They all seemed to her mediocre, insipid, unintelligent, narrow, false, heartless

In 1984, The Ecco Press published a handsome thirteen-volume edition of The Tales of Chekhov containing the highly respected, if somewhat dated, English translations of Constance Garnett. The original thirteen volumes were subsequently supplemented by two additional volumes, "The Unknown Chekhov: Stories and Other Writings," translated by Avrahm Yarmolinsky (a volume which is still in print under the auspices of another publisher) and "Notebook of Anton Chekhov," translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf. While I was fortunate to have purchased the entire paperback set at a pittance during a remainder sale (and it remains one of the favorites of my book collection), it is, alas, sadly out-of-print."The Party & Other Stories," volume 4 of The Ecco Press edition, contains eleven stories written during the period from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s. These are stories from Chekhov's so-called "middle period," the years after Chekhov had finished his medical studies and began writing and publishing the longer, more serious psychological studies whose characteristics became a universal ascription for short stories of that sort: "Chekhovian." As Harold Bloom has written, "the formal delicacy and somber reflectiveness [of Chekhov's stories] make him the indispensable artist of the unlived life, and the major influence upon all story-writers after him."Every one of the stories in this volume is a remarkable example of Chekhov's ability to write in simple, straightforward fashion, while, all the time, illuminating with almost microscopic precision the internalized, psychological lives of his characters. As one commentary on Chehov's writing during this period has noted, apropos of the stories in this volume (and in contrast to Chekhov's early humorous stories): "Characters are no longer perceived satirically, as social archetypes, but seen from within. And the inner life revealed is often an unhappy one, the characters' `real life' being in sharp contrast with their `world of desire,' reached only through memory or fantasy."The stories range from long to short, each a near-perfect model of the short story, worthy of enjoyment and careful study. The longest of the stories, "A Woman's Kingdom," tells of Anna Akimovna, the daughter of a factory owner who, as a young girl, mingled with the working classes, only to find herself the lonely, single, middle-aged heiress and proprietor of those same factories later in life. It is a remarkable exploration of Anna's loneliness and of her yearning to return to the life of her childhood, as well as of the separation between owner and worker in an industrialized Russia. As Anna says, longingly: "Yes, I'll go and get married. I will marry in the simplest, most ordinary way and be radiant with happiness. And, would you believe it, I will marry some plain working man, some mechanic or draughtsman."In the title story, "The Party," Chekhov brilliantly probes the mind, the thoughts, the silent unhappiness