Chekhov's Gun

Very nice 2006 Folio edition of The Shooting Party by Chekhov.  Cheaper copies available through amazon and abebooks.  Couldn't find an on-line version. 

This looks like a fun new book about one person's obsession with Russian literature.  The cover seems to give it a more comic feel, but apparently Elif Batuman literally explores Russian literature and its sphere of influence, taking her on journeys to Uzbekistan and beyond.

Looks like Chekhov is hot property these days.  Here's a review by Manhola Dargis on the latest adaptation, The film appears to have come out of nowhere — it hasn’t been making the usual rounds on the festival circuit — so it’s welcome news that it’s been given a berth at Film Forum in Manhattan for its world premiere. It’s the third feature by Dover Kosashvili, a Georgian-born Israeli who made a strong debut with his 2001 “Late Marriage,” about an Israeli man hiding his affair with a divorced mother from his domineering family. Once again, Mr. Kosashvili mixes moments of bitterness and laughter with strong dramatic passages, creating a social milieu in “The Duel” that is believably inhabited, consistently surprising and true-feeling in detail and sweep. (Its most unattractive feature is that ungainly title.)  Anyone up for The Duel ?

Ward No. 6 is a short story written by Chekhov in 1892.  It has appeared in various collections of Chekhov short stories, including The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories translated by Constance Garnett in 1921.  In this story, Chekhov explores the inner working of a run-down lunatic asylum in a provincial town.  He  introduces the readers to a coarse porter who speaks mostly with his fists, various patients, a doctor who presides over this ward, and expresses his thoughts with a local postmaster.  It was recently made into a movie , featuring Vladimir Ilyin.  Here's a clip . There's also this very recent short film (30 min.) by Suzana Purkovic, with English subtitles.

A noted Russian scholar takes on Chekhov in what looks like an intriguing book.  According to Kataev , The key to understanding Chekhov is to understand his epistemology or philosophy of knowledge. Basically, in Chekhov’s world the characters do not have access to a privileged perspective or to ultimate truth. "The relative, conditional nature of ideas and opinions, and of stereotyped ways of thinking and behaving; the refusal to regard an individual solution as absolute; and the baselessness of various claims to possession of ’real truth’: these are constants in Chekhov’s world." (p. 164) Thus, the characters communicate poorly and often end up inadvertently causing pain, or sabotaging their own life projects.

I noticed this critical journey by Janet Malcolm, which incorporates her impressions of post-Soviet Russia, ca. 2000, with Chekhov.  Don't know how much are her impressions and how much is a study of Chekhov, but the book looks interesting.

This is a nice collection of short novels , translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky, although The Shooting Party is missing.  It includes The Steppe , the Duel and three other stories written between 1888 and 1893.  He also published Sakhalin Island during this time.  Unfortunately, on-line texts of The Shooting Party and Sakhalin Island don't seem readily available, but Read Print has a pretty extensive library of Chekhov .