What with rebuilding the lost tables for my short story reading challenges over the past few days (almost done, couple more to do), it dawned on me that I’m not being as consistent as I’d like to be with my Checkin’ Off The Chekhov Shorts challenge. Sure the deadline for this is open-ended but I seem to be ticking off these shorts in stops and starts. Something to factor in when I’m working out my weekly reading schedule? It would probably make me feel better if I did.
While my mind was fully on Chekhov I also remembered that the 201 Chekhov shorts listed on James Rusk excellent website, wasn’t the end all and be all for Chekhov stories. I’d managed to get a copy of Peter Constantine’s The Undiscovered Chekhov (Duckworth – ISBN 0715631063), which contains another 51 early stories from Chekhov, discovered by Constantine in a pile of rare Russian magazines in the New York Public Library. So that takes the original 201 stories up to 252. Another reason to get crackin’ then (and who knows what else I’ll uncover before I’m done. Anyone?).
About Rob
Take 1: Undiscovered early stories… wouldn’t that mean that these are the stories that Chekhov wrote when still figuring out his style and might therefore not be at the level we’d expect? (the pessimist in me speaks…)
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Take 2: Undiscovered early stories… wow. Leading to a total of 252 Chekhov short stories… I really do have to get on it, I’ve only read a few dozen. Now this looks like fun. (optimism!)
says:
Emm both ‘takes’ certainly get the old brain pondering, but for me an early Checkhov story is just as important as an older one. It establishes a starting point from which to ‘follow’ the evolution of his style. Besides all of these early stories were published, so they must have some level of competence to them.
So bearing that in I think that puts both of us in a ‘Take 2′ scenario.
Ahhh…the pain of it
Warmest
Rob