Selected Stories by Anton Chekhov

In the improv class I took a couple years ago, one of our activities involved creating scenes around lines from Chekhov plays. Two people would be given some sort of theme to begin a scene and then at some unspecified point, our instructor would give a signal and we'd have to stop in the middle of our action or dialogue, pull a slip of paper from our pocket, recite the line written on that slip of paper (which we had not seen beforehand, and which was always from a Chekhov play), and figure out how to work it into the scene so that it made sense.

So, for example, you and your partner might improvising a conversation between two people standing in line at the grocery store when all of a sudden the signal sounds, and you pull a slip of paper out of your pocket and find out that your next line is: "You have found your way, you know where you're going, but I'm still drifting in a chaos of images and dreams." And suddenly you have to work that existential business into a conversation about carrots.

When our instructor first explained it to us I was dubious about using Chekhov instead of someone more contemporary, but it turned out to be one of my favorite activities. It also made me curious about Chekhov. When I was in Seattle, I stumbled across a little used bookstore where I stumbled across a book of Chekhov plays, and remembered that I was curious, and picked it up. But I don't do so well with reading plays and I never made it past page 5. Months and months later I came across a book of short stories at the BYU Bookstore and decided that this was my in.

I actually really enjoyed the stories. They're they're mostly plotless. I think we modern readers take it for granted that short stories don't necessarily have a plot, but my understanding (I may be on shaky ground here) is that Chekhov wrote at a time when stories that were more about place and character than about what happened were kind of novel. And that's what his stories are. They paint pictures of places, or of people, that are rich enough and interesting enough that you care less about what happens. It's interesting to read the stories chronologically (which is how my book was organized) and to see how he moves gradually from telling his stories as an outside observer, to really getting into the head and heart of his characters.

Chekhov isn't a total downer, but his stories aren't really happy portraits of happy people. In fact, I found some of the stories absolutely heartbreaking, particularly "The Kiss" and "Three Years." These were the stories where I think Chekhov was most adept at putting the reader into the mind and circumstances of the characters. And even in the stories that lacked the same strong empathy with the characters, I enjoyed the picture that Chekhov painted of Russia coming up on the turn of the 20th century, and how he seemed able to capture people in a wide range of life circumstances.

Overall, though I'm not much of a short story reader, I really enjoyed these stories. And I think maybe it gave me the motivation to pick up that book of plays again and give it another try.