Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey

By Janet Malcolm

To illuminate the mysterious greatness of Anton Chekhov’s writings, Janet Malcolm takes on three roles: literary critic, biographer, and journalist. Her close readings of the stories and plays are interwoven with episodes from Chekhov’s life and framed by an account of Malcolm’s journey to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yalta. She writes of Chekhov’s childhood, his relationships, his travels, his early success, and his self-imposed “exile”—always with an eye to connecting them to themes and characters in his work. Lovers of Chekhov as well as those new to his work will be transfixed by Reading Chekhov.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 18, 2007
• ISBN: 9780307431660

Janet Malcolm

Janet Malcolm (1934–2021) was the author of many books, including In the Freud Archives; The Journalist and the Murderer; Two Lives: Alice and Gertrude, which won the 2008 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography; and Forty-One False Starts, which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. She was a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. In 2017, Malcolm received the Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Reviews for Reading Chekhov

[john257hopper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a very readable analysis of the plays and stories of Chekhov, examining his characters and themes and how they may relate to aspects of Chekhov's life, leavened with the author's own observations on her travels through modern day Russia visiting places significant to the great author, while also taking into account places significant to Dostoevsky and Akhmatova. The close relationship between Chekhov and Tolstoy is also interesting. This offered the right kind of literary criticism, stimulating my interest in a relatively undemanding way.