Forty StoriesIf any writer can be said to have invented the modern short story, it is Anton Chekhov. It is not just that Chekhov democratized this art form; more than that, he changed the thrust of short fiction from relating to revealing. And what marvelous and unbearable things are revealed in these Forty Stories. The abashed happiness of a woman in the presence of the husband who abandoned her years before. The obsequious terror of the official who accidentally sneezes on a general. The poignant astonishment of an aging Don Juan overtaken by love. Spanning the entirety of Chekhov's career and including such masterpieces as "Surgery," "The Huntsman," "Anyuta," "Sleepyhead," "The Lady With the Pet Dog," and "The Bishop," this collection manages to be amusing, dazzling, and supremely moving—often within a single page. |
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... darker or brighter according to his mood, and the iris of one eye is always a little lighter than the other, giving him sometimes an expression of absentmindedness when he is in fact all attention. His eyelids are a little too heavy ...
... darker or brighter according to his mood, and the iris of one eye is always a little lighter than the other, giving him sometimes an expression of absentmindedness when he is in fact all attention. His eyelids are a little too heavy ...
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... dark and menacing. As soon as he could walk Chekhov had to help out. He hated the long hours and the beatings he received from his father when he was inattentive, but it was in this dark and squalid room, with its overwhelming smell of ...
... dark and menacing. As soon as he could walk Chekhov had to help out. He hated the long hours and the beatings he received from his father when he was inattentive, but it was in this dark and squalid room, with its overwhelming smell of ...
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... dark unless one of the guardians accompanies him. (The lay brother may be a projection of Chekhov himself.) So Chekhov tells a story which seems at first sight to have only a remote connection with the scene he had described in the ...
... dark unless one of the guardians accompanies him. (The lay brother may be a projection of Chekhov himself.) So Chekhov tells a story which seems at first sight to have only a remote connection with the scene he had described in the ...
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... . All we have is the fragment which seems to have been written in his heart's blood on one of those long nights when he suffered from insomnia and gave himself up to despair. He wrote: SOLOMON (alone): Oh how dark life is!
... . All we have is the fragment which seems to have been written in his heart's blood on one of those long nights when he suffered from insomnia and gave himself up to despair. He wrote: SOLOMON (alone): Oh how dark life is!
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Anton Chekhov. despair. He wrote: SOLOMON (alone): Oh how dark life is! No night since the days of my childhood has terrified me so much as this darkness terrifies me in my incomprehensible existence. Dear God, Thou who gavest to my ...
Anton Chekhov. despair. He wrote: SOLOMON (alone): Oh how dark life is! No night since the days of my childhood has terrified me so much as this darkness terrifies me in my incomprehensible existence. Dear God, Thou who gavest to my ...
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