The Pragmatics of Insignificance: Chekhov, Zoshchenko, Gogol

by Cathy Popkin

What makes a tale worth telling? When is a detail significant and when extraneous? And how much irrelevant detail can a reader take in stride? This book addresses tellability by looking at texts that raise the question themselves, works by Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and Gogol.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1993

About the author

Cathy L. Popkin is the Jesse and George Siegel Professor in the Humanities, Department of Slavic Languages, Columbia University. Her research specializes in Russian prose, literary theory, and early Russian psychiatric care histories.

Reviews

[Lisajean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Traditionally, short stories are about events: something happens in them. Cathy Popkin considers the nature of an event and concludes that it can also be something that fails to happen or something that does not happen as we might predict. Masters of the short story such as Chekhov deviate from expected plots by including a plethora of seemingly insignificant details, changing the reader's focus from what's happening to what isn't happening and why. The reader can no longer trust their first instinct and must examine every word for clues to how the story might unfold. This is one of my favorite studies on Chekhov and I would recommend it to anyone interested in understanding what makes him such a brilliant and innovative author.