Lunchtime read: Selected Stories

The lunchtime read this week is going to come from a collection of short stories by Anton Chekhov. Before we begin, which will be tomorrow after today’s wine fuelled business lunch, it is a good idea to put the great man in some sort of context thanks to the introduction.

The points to pick up are that Chekhov was a sort of bridge between not only 19th and 20th century literature but between the idea of aristocrats writing literature and normal people like grocer’s sons and doctors (exactly what Chekhov was). The other difference with Chekhov’s style was that he often did not have a message so he would allow the reader to be in a position to condemn or praise the subjects of the stories.

The other point the introduction by Joe Andrew makes is that Chekhov wrote a huge amount of low-brow stories that were designed to earn him extra money to fund his medical studies under a different name but once he moved to Saint Petersburg then he received the encouragement to go for writing more seriously and that is the point at which the short story collection starts and where things will get picked up tomorrow…