In Praise of the Provisional

In one of his often quoted letters, Anton Chekhov explained his philosophy of fiction: “Drawing conclusions is up to the jury, that is, the readers. My only job is to be talented ... to know how to distinguish important testimony from unimportant, to place my characters in the proper light and speak their language.”

In “Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey,” Janet Malcolm quotes the letter for those who might need the introduction to Chekhov, then provides her own spin for initiated readers. Chekhov’s lack of any obvious moral is the “bark of the prosaic in which Chekhov consistently encases a story’s vital poetic core.” Once we find that core, we see that the stories are “wild and strange, archaic and brilliantly painted.”

It is a truth that becomes quickly apparent in the course of this short book, an account of her trip through Russia, from St. Petersburg to Moscow and on to Yalta, Ukraine. She brings much of the literature available in English to bear on her interpretations, and she does it without once seeming stuffy or pedantic. And she constantly reminds us of the unassuming yet immense presence of Anton Chekhov.

In the years immediately before 1904, the year tuberculosis killed him at only 44, Chekhov had devoted himself primarily to the theater, finishing the major tragedies--”Uncle Vanya,” “The Seagull,” “Three Sisters” and “The Cherry Orchard”--on which his reputation rests, at least in this country.

But Chekhov had made his living and supported his large and often troublesome family for a quarter of a century before that as a writer of stories. Even as a very young man, he was one of the most popular comic writers in all of Russia, churning out quick tales by the hundreds, seldom spending more than a day in their composition. During the 1880s, respected editors of well-paying literary quarterlies began asking for longer, more serious work. During the last 15 years of his life, Chekhov wrote almost 100 of these, many of them among the best ever written in any language. Those stories have always had passionate readers, even among those of us who don’t speak a word of Russian. As is abundantly obvious in her “Reading Chekhov,” Malcolm is one of those admirers.

Malcolm has written for the New Yorker for years (part of this book first appeared there), and she is as good an example as exists of the better aspects of that magazine’s style. Her work is personal, yet it is never confessional. Her prose is smart without obfuscating the obvious. She researches thoroughly yet is willing to compress the effort of research for the effectiveness of her narrative. Although the subjects of her books--from murder to Freud to the life of Sylvia Plath--seem superficially random, there is an underlying concern throughout much of her work about how we tell stories about other people, whether those stories are “true” or “invented” or both.

There is a great deal of biographical information in “Reading Chekhov,” but the book is not a biography, and Malcolm readily acknowledges the work of other biographers. Although she applies her capacious intelligence critically, this is by no means a traditional book of literary criticism. And even though there are some lovely moments of Malcolm, the American observer, looking at a Russian landscape colored by Chekhovian associations, this is not a travel narrative.

Instead “Reading Chekhov” is the intensely personal and lucid encounter of a reader with a writer whose generosity toward his characters is unparalleled. Malcolm tells us that Chekhov “didn’t preach, or even teach. He is our poet of the provisional and fragmentary.” We can thank her for reminding us how beautiful that poetry can be.

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Keith Taylor is the author of five chapbooks of poetry and one collection of short stories.