My Life (The Art of the Novella series) - Softcover

Chekhov, Anton

3.92

2,124 ratings by Goodreads

9780974607825: My Life (The Art of the Novella series)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0974607827 ISBN 13: 9780974607825

Publisher: Melville House Publishing, 2004

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...perhaps I was not living as I ought.

Renowned as the greatest short story writer ever, Anton Chekhov was also a master of the novella, and perhaps his most overlooked is this gem, My Life—the tale of a rebellious young man so disgusted with bourgeois society that he drops out to live amongst the working classes, only to find himself confronted by the morally and mentally deadening effects of provincialism.

The 1896 tale is partly a commentary on Tolstoyan philosophy, and partly an autobiographical reflection on Chekhov's own small-town background. But it is, more importantly, Chekhov in his prime, displaying all his famous strengths—vivid characters, restrained but telling details, and brilliant psychological observation—and one of his most stirring themes: the youthful struggle to maintain idealism against growing isolation.

The Art of The Novella Series

Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.

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About the Author:

Anton Chekhov was born into a large family in 1860 in Taganrog, Russia, the grandson of serfs. He supported the family by writing stories for magazines while simultaneously putting himself through medical school – where, tragically, he contracted tuberculosis. He published his first collection, Motley Stories, in 1886, and his second, In the Twilight, a year later. He continued to practice medicine, often pro bono, leading friends to complain about the line of peasants constantly at his door. He also wrote plays, but when critics attacked The Seagull, he vowed to give up playwriting. He did not, and while staging The Cherry Orchard Chekhov collapsed, dying shortly thereafter, in 1904.

Review:

"I wanted them all, even those I'd already read."
—Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer

"Small wonders."
—Time Out London

"[F]irst-rate...astutely selected and attractively packaged...indisputably great works."
—Adam Begley, The New York Observer

"I’ve always been haunted by Bartleby, the proto-slacker. But it’s the handsomely minimalist cover of the Melville House edition that gets me here, one of many in the small publisher’s fine 'Art of the Novella' series."
—The New Yorker

"The Art of the Novella series is sort of an anti-Kindle. What these singular, distinctive titles celebrate is book-ness. They're slim enough to be portable but showy enough to be conspicuously consumed—tiny little objects that demand to be loved for the commodities they are."
—KQED (NPR San Francisco)

"Some like it short, and if you're one of them, Melville House, an independent publisher based in Brooklyn, has a line of books for you... elegant-looking paperback editions ...a good read in a small package."
—The Wall Street Journal

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