The Party and Other Stories

Tales of Chekhov #4

by Anton Chekhov, Ronald Wilks (Introduction)

'Chekhov is like an Impressionist painter and has a style all hiw own,' wrote Tolstoy.

‘At first glance it appears as if the painter has merely smeared his canvas with the first colour that came to hand, indiscriminately, so that the brush-strokes seem to bear no relationship to each other. But as soon as one steps back and surveys the work from a distance, one has the remarkable impression of a colourful, irresistible painting.’

Chekhov’s painterly sensitivity to atmosphere, sensations and emotional light and shade is most brilliantly demonstrated in ‘The Party’, in which he draws on his experience as a doctor to portray the tense and conflicting feelings of a pregnant woman; or in ‘A Nervous Breakdown’, in which he describes how a morbidly shy young man reacts to the brothels of Moscow. All the stories here are vivid, pungent, memorable and, as Gorky described them, ‘like exquisite cut-glass bottles, with all the different scents of life in them’.

Includes: The Party, A Woman's Kingdom, My Life: A Provincial's Story, An Unplesant Business, A Nervous Breakdown

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Russia, Russian Literature, Literature, Classic Literature

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Antón Chéjov (Spanish)

Dramas, such as The Seagull (1896, revised 1898), and including "A Dreary Story" (1889) of Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, also Chekov, concern the inability of humans to communicate.

Born ( Антон Павлович Чехов ) in the small southern seaport of Taganrog, the son of a grocer. His grandfather, a serf, bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught to read. A cloth merchant fathered Yevgenia Morozova, his mother.

"When I think back on my childhood," Chekhov recalled, "it all seems quite gloomy to me." Tyranny of his father, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, open from five in the morning till midnight, shadowed his early years. He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog from 1867 to 1868 and then Taganrog grammar school. Bankruptcy of his father compelled the family to move to Moscow. At the age of 16 years in 1876, independent Chekhov for some time alone in his native town supported through private tutoring.

In 1879, Chekhov left grammar school and entered the university medical school at Moscow. In the school, he began to publish hundreds of short comics to support his mother, sisters and brothers. Nicholas Leikin published him at this period and owned Oskolki (splinters), the journal of Saint Petersburg. His subjected silly social situations, marital problems, and farcical encounters among husbands, wives, mistresses, and lust; even after his marriage, Chekhov, the shy author, knew not much of whims of young women.

Nenunzhaya pobeda , first novel of Chekhov, set in 1882 in Hungary, parodied the novels of the popular Mór Jókai. People also mocked ideological optimism of Jókai as a politician.

Chekhov graduated in 1884 and practiced medicine. He worked from 1885 in Peterburskaia gazeta.

In 1886, Chekhov met H.S. Suvorin, who invited him, a regular contributor, to work for Novoe vremya, the daily paper of Saint Petersburg. He gained a wide fame before 1886. He authored The Shooting Party , his second full-length novel, later translated into English. Agatha Christie used its characters and atmosphere in later her mystery novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . First book of Chekhov in 1886 succeeded, and he gradually committed full time. The refusal of the author to join the ranks of social critics arose the wrath of liberal and radical intelligentsia, who criticized him for dealing with serious social and moral questions but avoiding giving answers. Such leaders as Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov, however, defended him. "I'm not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all..." Chekhov said in 1888.

The failure of The Wood Demon , play in 1889, and problems with novel made Chekhov to withdraw from literature for a period. In 1890, he traveled across Siberia to Sakhalin, remote prison island. He conducted a detailed census of ten thousand convicts and settlers, condemned to live on that harsh island. Chekhov expected to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. Hard conditions on the island probably also weakened his own physical condition. From this journey came his famous travel book.

Chekhov practiced medicine until 1892. During these years, Chechov developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgmental author. He outlined his program in a letter to his brother Aleksandr: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; flee the stereotype; 6. compassion." Because he objected that the paper conducted against [a:Alfred Dreyfu

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well imagined inner lives. “Love would define my duties, my work, make clear my conception of life. I want from love peace of soul.”

[Alsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's the perfect anti-cure for depression on days you want to be melancholy and reflective. You can't help but drown with the mishaps and sorrow of each character. My favorite story in here is, My Life. The lead character, Misail automatically resigns himself to defeat and you realize that with each Chekhov character, it's not so much the external setting or environment that sets the tone of sadness and unfullfillment, it's the characters themselves that allow and accepts without hesitation what they believe is their ill-fate in life.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

The goodreads description incorrectly lists the stories included in this edition. In reality, they are: The Party, A Woman's Kingdom, My Life: A Provincial's Story, An Unpleasant Business, & A Nervous Breakdown.
Short story collections are tough for me. Often I feel bludgeoned by the author's style & pet themes to the point of not wanting any more for a while, or ever. This one isn't too bad in that respect, but the common theme that flows thru these tales is the intensity of emotion felt by the protagonists, & that does prove a bit harrowing by the end. The centerpiece of the book & also the longest story in it - My Life: A Provincial's Story - is the one exception to that rule, standing alone here in its dispassionate detailing of the life of a young man born to a respected family & scorned for taking up common labor as an occupation. The surrounding stories practically hyperventilate with anxiety, but throughout them all Chekhov skillfully communicates the thoughts & conflicts of his memorable characters, making them leap off the pages with a startling vivacity.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5!!
Just when you thought it'll turn out romantic, Chekhov reminds you how life really is.

Favorites:
The Party, Terror, A Problem, The Kiss, Typhus

[sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Done some Dionysian -> done some Apollonian -> done some Dionysian -> done some Apollonian -> done some Dionysian ->

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Short stories, so some are better than others. I loved "My Life: A Provincial's Story", while others were mediocre. Vibes are rather sad.

[Pádraic · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised how much I enjoyed these, given my mostly negative experience with Chekhov's plays a few years back. But these stories are really quite something, sometimes touching, sometimes funny, always painfully human.

'The Party' is the best of the bunch, about the hostess of a party dealing with her pregnancy, her distant husband, these insufferable guests, her own life sliding away from her. The conclusion is completely emotionally devastating -- if the collection had kept this up I would have needed a good long lie down afterwards.

The three other shorter stories are all good too: 'A Woman's Kingdom' concerning a rich heiress struggling with her emotional needs as she rules the house and business she inherited from her father; 'An Unpleasant Business' concerning a doctor's ultimately consequence-free outburst at one of his orderlies; and 'A Nervous Breakdown' concerning a student's reaction of dismay and outrage to the brothels of Moscow.

But the bulk of the collection is taken up with 'My Life: A Provincial's Story', a sort of first-person picaresque about a man's desire to do labour with his hands, in spite of his father's vehement protestations that he do work of the mind. A series of misadventures take him from painting houses, to working on the railways, to running a farm and building a schoolhouse, to painting houses again. It's often miserable in its developments but has this air of black comedy about it all -- the characters are all completely absurd, and the reaction to all this piled-on misfortune is ultimately to laugh. I like Chekhov, it turns out.

[Teddy Monacelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not know anything about Chekhov beyond the famous "Chekhov's gun" trope. I was very happy to have started with this collection of stories as it was a fairly quick read and I enjoyed each story within. The book consists of two novella length stories and a few much shorter ones. Although Chekhov is writing for an age and culture that is so vastly different from modern day America, this felt remarkably familiar to people I have encountered and conflicts I have observed. He reminds me a lot of Alice Munro's stories in that little details in how people speak, or joke with each other, or do small, strange unkind things to one another somehow make them seem like a person no one has described before but yet someone you are intimately familiar with. It probably has to do with tone, atomosphere, dialouge, unexplained and momentous decisions of non-POV characthers. They are very readable, captivating, funny, frustrating but inspiring character stories. I especially liked, "My Life (The Story of a Provincial)", an at turns black comedy and bitter coming of age story (Catcher in the Rye but in a dirt-poor Russian village).

[Klara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me ages because there was one story in the middle that I just DIDNT CARE FOR and it happened to be the longest too
His main characters are so emotionally overstimulated all the time in what seems to be a banal life I love it he writes it so well - funny to think of because I genuinely never considered that emotional freaks (non-derogatory) existed in the 19th century
I see why he’s a good introduction to that broody and emotional Russian/Ukrainian/eastern literature
RIP Chekhov you would’ve loved shoegaze dark academia and posting DHMU real ones know on ur Snapchat priv 💔

[Kanwar Anand · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my 1st book by Chekhov. It's a collection of stories about human emotions. Varied plots, simple yet wonderous, honing in on sands or irony, lathered with well captured expression. Worthy introduction to the author. My favourite story is "the kiss" as it was enjoyable because our hero's life changes so sudden.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

These were very good. I knew he had written many interesting plays but never knew about any short stories until now. They are interesting little vignettes on life of the characters in Russia for his time period. I read a copy of this book from the early 1900's. But the paperback edition here seems to match the old hardback exactly.

[Hifza · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

The Party: 3/5

A Woman's Kingdom: 3.5/5

My Life: A Provincial's Story: 4/5
^this story is the reason this book makes it to my favourites

An Unpleasant Business: 3/5

A Nervous Breakdown: 2/5

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense...conflict

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible - especially the long story ‘My Life’. One of the greatest ever writers.

[aman grewal · Rating 3 out of 5]

meh meh meh

[alara · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really liked the story called "a nervous breakdown" but overall there is a lot of meaning in his works

[Lola · Rating 4 out of 5]

20 books in 30 days
Book #6

The hypocrisy of almost every character was worth reading (in The Party).

[Moss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bad start w this dude. He will get another go in a while.

[Ellarie · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is almost worse than Gone Girl i’m so afraid of marriage

[Sung-Gi Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quotes from the book

TERROR

"Tell me, my dear fellow, why is it that when we want to tell some terrible, mysterious, and fantastic story, we draw our material, not from life, but invariably from the world of ghosts and of the shadows beyond the grave."

"And do you understand life? Tell me: do you understand life better than the world beyond the grave?"

"Our life and the life beyond the grave are equally incomprehensible and horrible. If any one is afraid of ghosts he ought to be afraid, too, of me, and of those lights and of the sky, seeing that, if you come to reflect, all that is no less fantastic and beyond our grasp than apparitions from the other world. Prince Hamlet did not kill himself because he was afraid of the visions that might haunt his dreams after death. I like that famous soliloquy of his, but, to be candid, it never touched my soul. I will confess to you as a friend that in moments of depression I have sometimes pictured to myself the hour of my death. My fancy invented thousands of the gloomiest visions, and I have succeeded in working myself up to an agonizing exaltation, to a state of nightmare, and I assure you that that did not seem to me more terrible than reality. What I mean is, apparitions are terrible, but life is terrible, too. I don't understand life and I am afraid of it, my dear boy; I don't know. Perhaps I am a morbid person, unhinged. It seems to a sound, healthy man that he understands everything he sees and hears, but that 'seeming' is lost to me, and from day to day I am poisoning myself with terror. There is a disease, the fear of open spaces, but my disease is the fear of life. When I lie on the grass and watch a little beetle which was born yesterday and understands nothing, it seems to me that its life consists of nothing else but fear, and in it I see myself."

What chiefly frightens me is the common routine of life from which none of us can escape. I am incapable of distinguishing what is true and what is false in my actions, and they worry me. I recognize that education and the conditions of life have imprisoned me in a narrow circle of falsity, that my whole life is nothing else than a daily effort to deceive myself and other people, and to avoid noticing it; and I am frightened at the thought that to the day of my death I shall not escape from this falsity. To-day I do something and to-morrow I do not understand why I did it.

I don't understand men, my dear fellow, and I am afraid of them. It frightens me to look at the peasants, and I don't know for what higher objects they are suffering and what they are living for. If life is an enjoyment, then they are unnecessary, superfluous people; if the object and meaning of life is to be found in poverty and unending, hopeless ignorance, I can't understand for whom and what this torture is necessary. I understand no one and nothing. Kindly try to understand this specimen, for instance," said Dmitri Petrovitch, pointing to Forty Martyrs.

"Why have I done this?" I kept asking myself in bewilderment and despair. "Why has it turned out like this and not differently? To whom and for what was it necessary that she should love me in earnest, and that he should come into my room to fetch his cap? What had a cap to do with it?"

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me for the title story, which was the best of the group. The dynamic between the husband and wife is nicely nuanced, and the wife's sequence of emotional states in this late stage of her pregnancy is well done. Likewise, the actual pregnancy and labor are painted in just the right amount of detail, and with just the right details.
"My Life" was a decent read, although began to feel a little long and tedious by the end. There's a sense that maybe the author was aware of this, as the final sequences of events feel quite rushed, where earlier sequences were dealt with more patiently and carefully.

After this, there are two other stories, neither as long as "My Life," and their quality may be just as good, the writing just as strong, but they don't seem to add anything to the first two stories in this collection. Since they don't add anything new or expand significantly on these first two, and since the writing quality/voice/style feels the same through all the stories (with the exception of "The Party" itself, which relies on a slightly different voice and seems to have the strongest writing), they end up feeling somewhat flat and easy to gloss over.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chekhov still fails to impress me with his longer stories. The one I found of most interest here was "An Unpleasant Business," but even that lacked the kind of character developed through action and interaction that was a major part of Chekhov's brilliance on the page. "My Life" is a long string of first person narration that doesn't really show much control of the perspective, with lapses into rather classically styled Chekhov's 3rd POV (however, this could be as much the fault of the translator), and again a long time before any reall yinteresting events happening. It seems that a lot of the works here have the kernel of a classic Chekhov story, but is simply elongated rather than filled further, making for a lot of matter to glance over rather than dig into. It would seem that the introduction also lacks spirit for these stories, in that the main comment given about the title story is that Chekhov got the feeling of labor pains down on the page pretty well. A nice feat, but not much of a premise for a story.

[Shubh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short stories made a significant impact on me.
For the first time, I enjoyed short stories. I was never a fan and always thought them to be facile and lifeless. I carried this prejudice until now, and I'm glad I got over it.
Although this particular collection of short stories is not Chekhov's most famous ones still they were really enjoyable and thought-provoking. Chekhov captures your interest within the first page and weaves his way through each story such that it seems like you are reading a novel and you have known the characters for a while. But yet, it is a short story, and things tumble down fast, usually tragically, leaving you slightly emotionally uncomfortable yet calm.

[Leena Arul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This compilation of select short stories, ably translated by Constance Garnett amazed me with its insights into the human mind. How diverse were these vignettes....ranging from stories beyond class,....very real, very human and raw in its honesty. I was so curious about Anton Chekhov and looked up his life snd living. A short yet rich life of 44 years portrays a man of varied experiences that life threw at him and what he deliberately explored. I think we, the readers are all the better for his writing, in understanding the thoughts and feelings of the human uninhibitedly, without any pretentions. To say it unmasks us and reveals us in all our imperfect glory would be to say the least.

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

God save me from Russian authors. I'll admit there's some great writing, turns of phrase, poetic imagery, etc. But the bleakness, the suffering, the misery... the seeming acceptance of it. Makes it easy to understand the other mental association that pops into the head when thinking of Russians, namely copious amounts of vodka. Now, I like my vodka. Quite a bit actually. Just can't seem to cultivate a taste for the Russian lit. I've tried Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and now Chekhov and no thank you. Russia, I'll take your vodka but you can keep your lit.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

The more I read the free ebooks of Anton Chekhov short stories, the more I'm noticing the thematic links in this series. The stories in this collection are focused on marriage. Most of the stories are about unhappy marriages (this is 19th century Russian literature, after all). Reading Chekhov on a theme has been enjoyable, not just because of his descriptions and narration, alternately charming and poignant.

[Nichole · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Party and Other stories is a great set of short stories. I found the stories a bit depressing, but I loved loved loved the short story/novella-My Life. The subjects/themes and the way the story flows is amazing. The relationships incredible and the descriptions spot on. Misail description and observations of his sister,Masha, are heartbreaking and beautiful. The ending broke me, very enduring and touching. One of the best short stories I have read! I will be reading more of Chekhov.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Nervous Breakdown is my favourite story from this collection. Probably the greatest ever writer. The version I have has the stories, The Party, A Woman’s Kingdom, My Life: A Provincial’s Story, An Unpleasant Business and A Nervous Breakdown.

[Zac · Rating 3 out of 5]

'My Life' is probably the most beautiful and wonderful short story I've ever read - certainly in the top two.

[Marilyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's roughly what you would expect from a book of short stories by Chekhov, but I mean that in a good way. Bleak and a bit dystopic and leaves the reader feeling nothing short of ambivalent.