Anton Chekhov: A Life

I'm sure there are amusing names for hyper-inclusive biographies, I mean, right down to toilet paper usage (not kidding) - let us just call it the "laundry list bio". Much new information was released in the last few decades, letters etc. of Chekhov's that had been considered too racy by the Soviet state. And racy plenty of it is. Chekhov, rather like Shakespeare, arose from a class only two generations away from serfdom into precarious middle-class (shopkeeping). The parents worked tirelessly and devotedly (which includes beatings, scoldings and whatever else deemed necessary) to encourage the five boys to study hard and make something of themselves. This did not exclude occasionally abandoning them while they went elsewhere to try and show more make money. (The one sister, Masha, did receive slightly less harsh treatment although she was expected to do her share in the household.) The father, Pavel, was a religious fanatic and the boys grew up memorizing vast tracts of bible and music, reciting and singing the orthodox litany. Rayfield is so intent on laying out the new information that he does not linger over interpretation -- but many have seen that the Chekhovian story structure is musical, theme, development, return to deepened theme (at the simplest) and likely it is from this early influence. Rayfield mentions this here and there, but no deeper looks. As the boys grow up it becomes apparent that Kolia, the painter, is a genius but unstable and that Anton is the most stable and the most intelligent of the lot. Oldest brother Aleksandr is a math/science whiz but also vulnerable to substance abuse. They are all very randy and crude in ways that separate them entirely from, say, Tolstoy and the aristocratic classes. In fact there is something Elizabethan all around in a reaching after everything life could offer, as if knowing it couldn't last long. Russia at the turn of the century had, perhaps, more in common with earlier times than staid and repressed Western Europe. (About to explode into violence, yes.) In a biography of this magnitude I can hardly summarize but I will say that many things surprised me -- among them how careless Chekhov's family were with him, given that he became the de facto head of the family, a famous and admired man, the breadwinner. They were also amazingly restless always hopping on trains to Moscow, Petersburg, back to the dacha in the country, later to Yalta, now and then into Europe . . . and as Chekhov grew more ill these jaunts didn't cease. The weather in Russia is truly appalling most of the year and he found himself stuck in terrible circumstances waiting for trains -- no doubt these speeded on his death. The contradictions are endless. Chekhov knew how important he was: he never let Masha marry (she was not sure she wanted to and he played on it so she would stay head of domestic affairs for him). Everyone knew he was ill and that he should be kept warm and well fed, and yet Masha would go off, or later his wife Olga, and the house would go cold and the food would revert to potatoes and indigestible fatty stews he couldn't stomach . . . His mother was rather hopeless at caring for him too. Dogs were adored then cruelly abandoned. There were interludes, a few years at the dacha Melikhovo where they played at being estate owners and enjoyed themselves but it all proved to be incredibly hard work. I'm rambling -- Rayfield does provide the information for the knowledgeable Chekhovian to draw the parallels between what went on in his family life, love life, and travels and what he put into his works. An exhausting and exhaustive read but worth it for any Chekhovian admirer, which I am. The writing is never anything but solid, clear and so a degree above pedestrian, but Rayfield was trying to get in every scrap of information and he succeeds. ****1/2 show less

I listened to this book on tape (from Audible) and parts of it were hard going. Either the narrator or the writing has a flat, relentless quality to it, hard to tell which The book grew on me though. By the end I thought the tone was actually appropriate to the tragic, relentless aspects of Checkov's life: his brutal childhood, his almost comically dysfunctional family (if it weren't so tragic), the waste of his tremendous talent through disease. Some of the reviewers below mention they felt the author did not like his subject. I didn't feel that. What I thought the book was excellent at was showing the obstacles both large and small that Checkov overcame to become the great writer he was. Amazing to me was how contolled Russian society show more was, even before the Revolution and also how very many women pursued Checkov around the country. He seemed to have been irresistible. show less