About Love and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
Though “Gusev” certainly isn’t the title that comes to most people’s minds when they think of the father of the modern short story, there must be something by him on this list. Ward No 6, “The Bishop,” and “The Lady with the Little Dog” are all worthy contenders for Chekhov’s best narrative. However, “Gusev” is a favourite among poets and is likely his most lyrical tale. The fact that it is set on a ship at sea in the tropical Far East makes it an extremely distinctive piece. This is hardly what one would anticipate from a writer whose regular setting is an unremarkable provincial Russian town.
About Love and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
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Chekhov created “Gusev” in 1890 while returning from Siberia by ship. In the pre-train era, he had just returned from an extensive overland trek to investigate the notorious prison colony on the island of Sakhalin. The only work of fiction that came out of this expedition was “Gusev,” which he completed during a port stop in Ceylon, where he afterwards boasted of seeing a slender woman beneath a palm tree. The protagonist of the tale goes by the name of Gusev. He was a peasant conscript who had just completed a torturous tour of duty in the Far East and was already terminally ill from tuberculosis when he was loaded onto the ship.
The tremendous leap of imagination that brings this story to a close surprised me. Chekhov narrates how Gusev’s corpse descends to the seabed and nearly encounters a shark after being wrapped in a bag and cast overboard. Some of Chekhov’s best short stories are included in this collection, which is concentrated on three connected tales from 1898: “the man in a case,” “gooseberries,” and “about love.” These are conversations between three men about some of their acquaintances and the peculiar things that occur in their relationships with women that take place on a farm in rural Russia.
Many of Chekhov’s works have storylines that seem to be about insignificant incidents, but the results are, as is sometimes the case, far-reaching. The storylines, like many of Chekhov’s stories, appear to be about unimportant happenings, but the results are, as is frequently the case, significant and occasionally soul-crushing.
