A Chekhov Circus

A guide to the short stories of Anton Chekhov

Category: Published in Volume 11 of the Garnett translations

No. 186 – Boots

A whiny piano tuner is humiliated repeatedly after a hotel porter misplaces his boots.

October 8, 2022
No. 191 – Joy

A ninny is excited to be featured in a newspaper story. Unfortunately, it’s a story about him being injured while drunk out of his mind.

October 8, 2022
No. 194 – Hush!

A self-important scribbler requires absolute silence to create his art.

October 8, 2022
No. 196 – The Examining Magistrate

A doctor deduces the solution in the mysterious death of a married woman.

October 8, 2022
No. 197 – A Mystery

A bureaucrat drives himself practically mad trying to figure out how a stranger’s signature keeps turning up in his guest book.

October 8, 2022
No. 198 – A Play

An aggressive amateur writer forces a successful playwright to listen to her work

October 8, 2022
No. 199 – Malingerers

A charitable homeopath realizes that her patients are using her for their own purposes.

October 8, 2022
No. 190 – Strong Impressions

A group of jurors, sequestered for the night, trade stories from life but seem not to learn from them.

October 8, 2022
No. 146 – Ladies

On occasion, Chekhov’s stories are almost impossible for a current day American (moi!) to parse. In this brutal and yet weirdly antic story, we meet a schoolmaster and one of his teachers. The teacher–who has been employed by the school for 14 years–has lost his voice, supposedly from drinking a cold beer while he was…

October 7, 2022