Told in the first person, the narrator of “My Life,” Misail, is the son of a rich man who has rejected the expectations of society. Uninterested in the sorts of jobs his father arranges for him, he winds up becoming a simple laborer. His rough life brings shame on his family; his sister loves him and wishes him well but nevertheless asks that he try not to work in their town. It’s just too embarrassing.
The narrative gets janky at the halfway point, as Misail becomes involved with a young woman of means and moves with her to a summer cottage. It all feels muddled and pointless: The workingman has become a man of leisure but no mention is made of it nor does the change seem to register with him or the other characters.
The strength of this novella is in the earlier sections, in its illustration of Russian class structure, and in its descriptions of a workingman’s days, and in details of the degraded life that a laborer was forced to live.
For the rest, it’s mainly a meandering mess. It circles back to the Misail’s fractured family at the close, but by then some 100 or more pages have passed – with disquisitions on social inequity, descriptions of country life, and a dozen more offshoots – and I for one just didn’t care much at that point.
If I were to rank Chekhov’s novellas from worst to best, I think it would be thus:
No. Ten – The Steppe
No. Nine – My Life
No. Eight – LIghts
No. Seven – Ward No. 6
No. Six – The Wife
No. Five – An Anonymous Story
No. Four – The Duel
No. Three – Peasants
No. Two – Three Years
No. One – A Woman’s Kingdom
I’ve said it before: There are a lot of misfires in Chekhov’s longer works. Of the ten listed here, only four are really good. And the other six range from meh to downright bad. And some people wouldn’t count “A Woman’s Kingdom” or “Peasants” as novellas, in which case, only two of his novellas, “Three Years” and “The Duel,” are any good!
READ THIS? READ THAT!
It’s hard to believe you have the energy to read anything after slogging through “My Life.” But let’s say you do… Something I liked about the novella is Chekhov’s appreciation for work well done. For a portion of his life, Misail works for a painter named Radish, a deeply moral man who is fearless in his work, clambering over roofs and working on high church domes without a rope. Chekhov seemed to admire anyone who worked hard and well at something – it didn’t matter what – and he found the act of work intrinsically fascinating. “The Cattle-Dealers” is essentially a piece of reportage about the intricacy of transporting cattle via rail and selling the animals at a central market. Like “My Life,” it’s baggy and slow-going, but it does illustrate Chekhov’s focus on the act of doing a job.
A Chekhov Circus 