Tolstoy
Tolstoy

Author: Rosamund Bartlett

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2011-11-08

Total Pages: 581

ISBN-13: 0547545878

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This biography of the brilliant author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina “should become the first resort for everyone drawn to its titanic subject” (Booklist, starred review). In November 1910, Count Lev Tolstoy died at a remote Russian railway station. At the time of his death, he was the most famous man in Russia, more revered than the tsar, with a growing international following. Born into an aristocratic family, Tolstoy spent his existence rebelling against not only conventional ideas about literature and art but also traditional education, family life, organized religion, and the state. In “an epic biography that does justice to an epic figure,” Rosamund Bartlett draws extensively on key Russian sources, including fascinating material that has only become available since the collapse of the Soviet Union (Library Journal, starred review). She sheds light on Tolstoy’s remarkable journey from callow youth to writer to prophet; discusses his troubled relationship with his wife, Sonya; and vividly evokes the Russian landscapes Tolstoy so loved and the turbulent times in which he lived.

Russia's Capitalist Realism
Russia's Capitalist Realism

Author: Vadim Shneyder

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2020-10-15

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0810142481

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Russia’s Capitalist Realism examines how the literary tradition that produced the great works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Anton Chekhov responded to the dangers and possibilities posed by Russia’s industrial revolution. During Russia’s first tumultuous transition to capitalism, social problems became issues of literary form for writers trying to make sense of economic change. The new environments created by industry, such as giant factories and mills, demanded some kind of response from writers but defied all existing forms of language. This book recovers the rich and lively public discourse of this volatile historical period, which Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov transformed into some of the world’s greatest works of literature. Russia’s Capitalist Realism will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth‐century Russian literature and history, the relationship between capitalism and literary form, and theories of the novel.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

Author: George Saunders

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2021-01-12

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1984856049

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves—and our world today. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Time, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Town & Country, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, Thrillist, BookPage • “[A] worship song to writers and readers.”—Oprah Daily For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

Tolstoy and Chekhov
Tolstoy and Chekhov

Author: Logan Speirs

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1971-03-02

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0521079500

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A study of the great literary relationship between two great Russian authors: Tolstoy and Chekhov, first published in 1971.

Chekhov
Chekhov

Author: Rosamund Bartlett

Publisher: Pocket Books

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13:

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What made Chekhov tick? What served as a source of creative inspiration in his life? In answering these questions, Russian scholar Rosamund Bartlett focuses on the writer's intimate relationship with the places where he lived and traveled--Taganrog and the southern Russian steppes, Moscow, Petersburg, Siberia, the French Riviera, and Yalta. By looking at his life through the prism of these landscapes, it is possible to gain a far greater insight into one of the most enigmatic writers who ever lived. Chekhov: Scenes from a Liferestores the humor and warmth to a man too often seen as merely melancholic, and reminds us why many consider him to be the greatest short-story writer of all time.

Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov

Author: Donald Rayfield

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2013-11-07

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 0571309291

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The description 'definitive' is too easily used, but Donald Rayfield's biography of Chekhov merits it unhesitatingly. To quote no less an authority than Michael Frayn: 'With question the definitive biography of Chekhov, and likely to remain so for a very long time to come. Donald Rayfield starts with the huge advantage of much new material that was prudishly suppressed under the Soviet regime, or tactfully ignored by scholars. But his mastery of all the evidence, both old and new - a massive archive - is magisterial, his background knowledge of the period is huge; his Russian is sensitive to every colloquial nuance of the day, and his tone is sure. He captures a likeness of the notoriously elusive Chekhov which at last begins to seem recognisably human - and even more extraordinary.' Chekhov's life was short, he was only forty-four when he died, and dogged with ill-health but his plays and short stories assure him of his place in the literary pantheon. Here is a biography that does him full justice, in short, unapologetically to repeat that word 'definitive'. 'I don't remember any monograph by a Western scholar on a Russian author having such success. . . Nikita Mikhalkov said that before this book came out we didn't know Chekhov. . . The author doesn't invent, add or embellish anything . . . Rayfield is motivated by the Westerner's urge not ot hold information back, however grim it may be.' Anatoli Smelianski, Director of Moscow Arts Theatre School 'It is hard to imagine another book about Chekhov after this one by Donald Rayfield.' Arthur Miller, Sunday Times 'Donald Rayfield's exemplary biography draws on a daunting array of material inacessible or ignored by his predecessors.' Nikolai Tolstoy, The Literary Review 'Donald Rayfield, Chekhov's best and definitive biographer.' William Boyd, Guardian

Reading Chekhov
Reading Chekhov

Author: Janet Malcolm

Publisher: Granta Books

Published: 2011-12-01

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 1847085652

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In Reading Chekhov Janet Malcolm takes on three roles: literary critic, biographer and journalist. Her close readings of Chekhov's stories and plays are interwoven with episodes from his life and framed by an account of a recent journey she made to St Petersburg. Malcolm demonstrates how the shadow of death that hovered over most of Chekhov's literary career - he became consumptive in his twenties and died in his forties - is almost everywhere reflected in the work. She writes of his childhood, his relationship with his family, his marriage, his travels, his early success, his exile to Yalta - always with an eye to connecting them to his themes and characters.

Memories of Chekhov
Memories of Chekhov

Author:

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2011-10-14

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0786486449

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This revelatory documentary biography of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), one of the world's best playwrights, collects more than 100 written recollections of Chekhov's close friends, family and colleague writers and artists, such as Ivan Bunin, Konstantin Stanislavsky and Maxim Gorky. Drawn from rare periodicals and obscure archival sources from the 1880s to the 1930s, these accounts, few of which have ever before been translated to English, address his affairs with female admirers, his passions and hobbies, his visits to shelters for the homeless, his support of aspiring writers, as well as his advice to theater directors, actors and writers. A complement to the wealth of scholarly material on Chekhov, this work offers new discoveries for both specialists and general enthusiasts.