How to Write Like Chekhov: Advice and Inspiration, Straight from His Own Letters and Work | 
 enlarge | Author: Anton Chekhov
Creators: Piero Brunello, Lena Lencek
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $5.24
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 139552
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Da Capo Press Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 1569242593
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.02
EAN: 9781569242599
ASIN: 1569242593
Publication Date: November 10, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
"Conciseness is the sister of talent"--and other essential, illuminating observations and advice from Anton Chekhov, one of the most deeply revered writers of all time. Maxim Gorky said that no one understood "the tragedy of life's trivialities" as clearly as Anton Chekhov, widely considered the father of the modern short story and the modern play. Chekhov's singular ability to speak volumes with a single, impeccably chosen word, mesh comedy and pathos, and capture life's basic sadness as he entertains us, are why so many aspire to emulate him. How to Write Like Chekhov meticulously cherry-picks from Chekhov's plays, stories, and letters to his publisher, brother, and friends, offering suggestions and observations on subjects including plot and characters (and their names), descriptions and dialogue, and what to emphasize and avoid. This is a uniquely clear roadmap to Chekhov's intelligence and artistic expertise and an essential addition to the writing-guide shelf.
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| Customer Reviews:
A How-To Book For Hacks Only November 18, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Chekhov didn't like to preach or teach; he also didn't like his readers trying to turn his writing into morality tales either, but the editors of this book have done to Chekhov's writings everything this Pushkin Prize winner and great playwright and short story writer despised. The editors have used Chekhov's writings to preach, teach, and turn excepts, pulled largely from his unsuccessful and inconsequential nonfiction book, "The Island of Sakhalin," (a travel memoir about a large Russian island full of depressed and poor people living as prisoners or exiles in various penal colonies on the island) into tedious, uninsightful, and treacly advice on how to write.
What the editors do is take a piece of writing by Chekhov and then deceptively infer from it an illustrative piece of advice, not intended by the author, on the proper procedure by which to write -- like Chekhov.
In one instance, Chekhov describes the hideous flogging of a prisoner. The editors title the passage "Share Your Emotions," asserting that the writer describe his or her emotions when a participant in an episode. This title is the editors' special, technical advice to the would-be Chekhovian writer. The passage excerpted is more than three pages long, but the reader discovers --after 90 lashes of the whip -- that Chekhov used the word "heartrending" -- once -- to describe his emotions for and throughout the entire episode. Chekhov was a restrained, even "cold" writer. He did not indulge in emotional descriptions, yet the editors advocate the reader to follow their own advice contrary to Chekov's distinct and actual practice.
In another useless example, the editors advise the reader to "Use your sense of taste," titling another passage from "The Island of Sakhalin" this time as "Taste." Here, Chekhov describes greasy pancakes as (merely) "unpalatable." Even generic Writer's Digest how-to books are prone to give better advice to would-be writers than this illustration, offering such detailed words as "bitter," or "salty," as better substitutes for the more abstract "unpalatable." Again, the editors advice to readers runs contrary to Chekhov's practice.
The first 54 pages (excerpted from letters and notebooks) contain the most relevant, intimate, and juicy bits by Chekhov on his views of writing. These excerpts are delightful if not particularly useful (and are surrounded by less hokum from the editors), and can quickly be read while browsing in front of the writer's reference section at your local bookstore. The remaining 113 pages are a deceitfully dreadful, dreary drag to digest.
As a Postscript, it was ironic to find Chekhov using the cliche (using contemporary standards) in one passage from his writing in his memoir, "...lock, stock, and barrel," but nowhere in this dull book full of bromidic advice about writing is there even one warning to the beginning writer to avoid cliches or bromides. The editors exhibit no respect for Chekhov's writings, and they, sadly, certainly have no understanding of them. What you have with this book is a bunch of Chekhov's writings tossed at the reader's feet with cheap and generic editorializings added to them for a fast, easy buck.
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