Today’s story is 1760 words and can be found here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/079.html Travis Review: Yvegeny Podzharov is a confident and cocky “elegant young man.” Besides being a top actor he is also ladykiller. When a guest, Klimov, comes to the party who “lived in the very town in which the jeune premier had acted for two seasons in succession,” I... Read More »
Today’s story is 2319 words long and can be found here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/068.html Travis Review: This story could be called “How I Started Drinking” or “They Drove Me To Vodka.” Zaikin starts off the story by leaving the train station to his summer villa in a foul mood and he is not the only one as “a crowd... Read More »
Find today’s 3373 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/052.html Travis Review Today’s story, like yesterday’s, starts off very Poesque with macabre atmosphere, dark rooms with flickering candle light, images of death and melancholy, and in this case, a suicide attempt. The story is also told in first person, which Chekhov doesn’t write in much (but Poe does.) After... Read More »
Find today 2059 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/048.html Travis Review: Societal prejudices can run deep, even against family members. Such is the case for Andrey Andreyitch, a shopkeeper who believed he was doing the right thing by requesting a prayer for his departed daughter. The problem is how he wrote the note. “For the rest of the soul... Read More »
Find today’s almost 2500 word story here http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/047.html Travis Review This is a comic-tragedy of a simpleton actor used more for his size than talent. He’s dying in a dilapidated room, mostly from heartbreak than from an specific illness. Shtchiptsov seems like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, a hulking man with simple thoughts. In this... Read More »
Today’s story is 1611 words. http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/024.html Travis Review: Today we have the first instance of Chekhov’s gun, and in a play too! Alcohol again causes calamity in a hotel. This time, Murkin, a piano tuner, finds that his boots are missing. Calling on the attendant who had “had a drop,” they discover the boots are in... Read More »
Relatively short story today at 884 words: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/019.html Travis Review: I saw this as a cautionary tale told from a graveyard. In one case, a person in the narrator’s party stumbles and catches himself on a titular counselor’s grave marker cross. The man had died in an accident, “a victim to his habits of observation.” Like... Read More »
This story weighs in at 1294 words. http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/011.html Travis Review: This story is only interesting in that Chekhov would later on in life write plays that revolutionized theater with understated, realistic performances. Reading the line “…he trembled all over as nobody ever trembles in reality, and gasped loudly,” I felt Chekhov was already annoyed with the... Read More »