"A Doctor's Visit" (1898)

In many ways this story by Anton Chekhov is another that speaks to the gathering social unrest in Russia at the turn of the 20th century. The doctor of the title, a young man still in the early part of his career, is called to the house of a factory owner to attend the family's only daughter, who is 20 and showing symptoms of heart problems. The family patriarch is dead, but the estate is vast, with the factory itself and accommodations for the workers as well as the family mansion, which now houses only the widow, the daughter, and a governess. The story has a good deal of social awareness, as the doctor observes the poor living conditions of the workers, the constant din of the factory, how much the governess enjoys the fine dining and living conditions and how it contrasts with the lives of everyone else there. But the story seems most alive when it involves the doctor's interactions with the young heiress, Liza. It appears the heart malady is more the result of anxiety, with some suggestion that she is suffering from the disparity of her wealthy life contrasted with all around her (the social focus again, with Communist revolution less than 20 years away, though Chekhov did not know it). There seems to be a connection, perhaps even love, between the doctor and Liza, though it is noted the doctor has a family waiting for him at home. The story could be the beginning of a novel about their romance, so likely does it feel. At first the doctor dismisses Liza (and her mother) as hysterical, but then a second impression of Liza overtakes that: "He saw a soft, suffering expression which was intelligent and touching: she seemed to him altogether graceful, feminine, and simple; and he longed to soothe her, not with drugs, not with advice, but with simple, kindly words." This happens early and immediately charges the story with a tension that is at odds with the subtle critique of income distribution. These two elements continually pull at one another even as Liza and the doctor make their tentative connections. The doctor is implored to stay overnight even though it is inconvenient for him. I have the impression it's his budding interest in Liza that ultimately convinces him to stay. As he broods and frets about her and the troubling factory scene, unable to sleep, the essential tension always remains central: "One is shy of asking men under sentence what they have been sentenced for," he thinks; "and in the same way it is awkward to ask very rich people what they want so much money for, why they make such a poor use of their wealth, why they don't give it up, even when they see in it their unhappiness." For a story that doesn't appear to have that much going on, there is a fair amount going on here.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

Little Trilogy (1898)

"The Man in a Case" / "Gooseberries" / "About Love"

It's tempting to make a joke about the efficiencies of Anton Chekhov writing a trilogy of short stories rather than novels. You can read this trilogy in an hour or less. He did intend the stories to be linked but for me it's more of an excuse to read three instead of just one, particularly as they are from one of his strongest periods. It is not one of those accidental trilogies, yoking together three unrelated things later under some semi-fabricated conceptual umbrella (e.g., random William Burroughs novels, Bugs Bunny cartoons, or Roman Polanski movies set in apartments). Chekhov wrote these stories consecutively, they are linked by continuing characters, and they are unified by a theme of people's tendency toward self-delusion (admittedly a theme in a lot of Chekhov). The frame is two sportsmen hiking the Russian countryside on a hunting trip, the younger schoolteacher Burkin and the elder veterinarian Ivan Ivanovitch, who are familiar companions. In "The Man in a Case," Burkin tells a story of another teacher, Byelikov, a social misfit who has an opportunity for marriage which he blows. Burkin sees the man as someone trembling forever inside a protective shell but Ivan Ivanovitch thinks he may not be so different from anyone else. "Isn't our living in town, airless and crowded, our writing useless papers, our playing vint—isn't that all a sort of case for us?" he says. It reminds him of another story, which he tells the next day in "Gooseberries." Now they are sheltering from rain in the country home of a third, Alehin. The story involves Ivan Ivanovitch's brother, a civil servant in a lifeless clerk's existence who dreams of a farm with gooseberry bushes, which he finally obtains through various unscrupulous means. He proudly serves the berries to Ivan Ivanovitch on his first visit at the farm. The berries are bitter, but Ivan Ivanovitch's brother cannot stop snacking on them and commenting how good they are. In "About Love," Alehin gets a chance to tell a story, with full membership now in this trilogy. It's the story of his own thwarted love affair with a neighbor who is married with children. It went on for years, until she and her family finally moved away for reasons unrelated. The affair was one of those cow-eyed unconsummated things, felt on both sides. The two often spent time together on walks and such but never came close to acknowledging their feelings until the very end. In fact, over the years it became so curdled that they had periods of being unpleasant to one another. Yet they always felt a bond of attachment. Alehin quite evidently still does, even as he tells the story years since her departure. After Alehin's story the rain finally stops and they can step outside and enjoy the fresh air and the view. All three stories, separately but even more so together, are a great example of the way Chekhov tells just enough to suggest vast interior worlds lost inside the equally vast exterior of the Russian countryside. He is always so quiet about being so remarkably good.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

"Ionitch" (1898)

It's possible that my favorite part of this wry story of love and courtship by Anton Chekhov is that the girl's father is an early but recognizable version of a Dad jokester. "Bongjour," he appears prone to say in greeting. "Not badsome," he assesses things. Chekhov writes, "He knew a number of anecdotes, charades, proverbs, and was fond of being humorous and witty, and he always wore an expression from which it was impossible to tell whether he was joking or in earnest." He's the father of Ekaterina Ivanovna, called Kitten, the girl / woman love interest out there in the isolated hinterlands, where Ionitch has arrived as the village doctor. The story cuts pretty close to the bone on vagaries of love. At first, for no discernible reason other than her family is charming and Kitten is attractive and of age, Ionitch (not to be confused with "bee-yotch," as the father might say in the 21st century) is nutty for her. He's in hot pursuit, steals kisses when he can, and presses her to marry him. As a doctor he is a good prospect. But Kitten is only 18 and desperate to leave the village and study music. She turns him down. Ionitch never saw it coming. Four years later, things are different. Ionitch has discovered he likes his bachelorhood and Kitten has learned she is not an exceptional talent. Now Ionitch looks good to her, but alas her chances with him are not what they were. In fact, he treats her as a bullet dodged, and avoids her after she declares herself. There is an interesting and familiar complexity to this. In many ways it's classic Chekhov because in many ways it's classic human psychology. I have the impression Ionitch is not spiteful about his rejection, though he is unfeeling toward her, which could well be spite. On balance it seems more like he has just realized he doesn't want to be in a relationship. Kitten's declaration is full of humility and pathos. Ionitch's fear of intimacy is palpable. Isn't it thus, perhaps, the better idea for him to live out his days as a single man? Maybe. That's part of what makes this a good story. At the end Ionitch seems to be denying that he ever even knew Kitten's family, which is pathetic, if not pathological. So maybe he is only a weak man after all. Kitten also lives out her life single, with her parents. Sad day when they die! A lot packed into this one.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" (1898)

Read story by Stephen Crane online.

Stephen Crane's story more resembles a Western tall tale, broken into four distinct theatrical acts that fit together like puzzle pieces, telling a story of frontier life that is wry, even sardonic. Told third-person omniscient, the first part observes the groom, Jack Potter, with his bride on a train in Texas, headed for Yellow Sky. We learn that "The bride was not pretty, nor was she very young." But they appear happy. We learn, privy to Potter's thoughts, that they have married impulsively. Then we learn he is town marshal of Yellow Sky. As the train arrives in town, they are both quiet and pensive. The second section of the story takes place at a saloon in town, just as the train is pulling in. The people drinking there learn that "Scratchy Wilson's drunk, and has turned loose with both hands." This is a dangerous situation and the saloonkeeper immediately shutters the place and advises everyone to stay there and prepare to go to the floor if necessary. Scratchy (with too good of a first name to use the last) is "a wonder with a gun—a perfect wonder." They wish Potter were in town. In the third section, Scratchy appears, shooting, carrying on, and intimidating the people in town, including those in the saloon. He's looking for Potter himself. He has a grudge to settle. And the fourth section is the confrontation between Potter and Scratchy. I hesitate to give it away, in the name of spoiler protection for a 118-year-old short story, but this is the point where it feels more like a tall tale, or a story from a song or something. For God's sake go read it now I'm going to give it away. Potter is unarmed because he is returning from his wedding with his wife. When Scratchy learns that Potter is not only unarmed, but also newly married, he puts up his gun and leaves the scene. Under the circumstances, Scratchy can't kill him. "His feet made funnel-shaped tracks in the heavy sand." Over and out, that's it. The turn is so abrupt and surprising it almost seems silly, and then just as quickly charming. We don't know enough about Potter and his bride to say they are in love, but they bear a kind of tentative self-consciousness that makes it plain they have regard for one another. Potter is well liked in the town too. So is Scratchy, for that matter, except when he's drunk. Potter already had to shoot him once on account of that, which is the source of the grudge. The scene from inside the saloon in the third part showed how potentially dangerous he really was. Crane sets our expectation for violence almost perfectly. We're just wondering how bad it's going to be. The relief when it all turns out to be a lark is palpable—and overwhelms, at least for the moment, any disappointment that it's just a lark and stunt after all. It's a good story—lots of good color too.

Short Story Masterpieces, ed. Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine

The War of the Worlds (1898)

I've been through the movie and radio theater versions of this ambitious tale according to Byron Haskin, Steven Spielberg, and Orson Welles, but never until now the source novel by H.G. Wells. I struggled some with the ponderous language—among other things, Wells appears to be at pains to shore up his scientific bona fides with a lot of jargon and abstruse theorizing. No real problems there as long as a dictionary is handy. A little more troublesome for me is the "stay calm and carry on" tone in the face of a full-on assault on the planet by hostile aliens from outer space. That said, and recalling that this novel appeared well before either of the world wars of the 20th century, it's remarkably vivid in its conception and execution. I like, for example, how Wells takes into account the effects of the different levels of gravitational force on Mars and Earth, with "the Martians" (so blithely referred to all the way) visibly struggling with and attempting to compensate for Earth's much greater gravity. (As a side not, and I suspect I'm one of the very few who thinks in these terms, I'm always surprised when I travel that gravity is the same wherever I go.) I also like the loathing that the narrator bears these creatures, although, again, he's altogether a little too calm to be believed. The famous resolution—you probably know it, but in case not I will leave it as a surprise (it's in every version I've encountered)—is a shrewd and clever stroke. Otherwise, with such elements as "the Heat-Ray" and "Black Smoke," it's typical fanciful science fiction (of the more or less "hard science" type), an opportunity to illustrate in fictional context technology that doesn't exist, but might. Lots of science sprinkled all through—biology mainly, but physics and chemistry and more, including the ostentatious, such as spectrum analysis. Worth chasing down for fans of science fiction with some tolerance for 19th-century language.

In case it's not at the library.

The Turn of the Screw (1898)

I think there's a powerful undercurrent of the modern in this deceptive classic American horror story of and for children. I remember reading it for school at some point, I think in junior high (it couldn't have been easy!). But the more you look at the thing the more sophisticated and almost impenetrable it becomes. Perhaps the most modern part of it is the way it is actually the story, not of two children, or a possibly mad governess, or a haunted house and ghosts, but of a manuscript. The manuscript is in the possession of one "Douglas," who reads it for the entertainment of a gathering on a country outing, though none of them are ever heard from again once the governess' story, told in her manuscript, begins. At that level, of course, one soon loses all bearings, occupying the fevered brain of a frightened and/or hysterical young woman in her first real job, which she has taken (or claims to have taken) under unsettling circumstances and conditions. She sees ghosts. No one else does. She thinks the children do too. But that's not entirely clear. On the other hand, when the governess confides in the housekeeper about her experiences and describes the ghosts, strangers to her, the housekeeper recognizes them as people who have previously been involved with the children but are now dead. All this is gleaned from typical enough late James dense passages, a blizzard of intricate cross-hatching language with long tangled sentences in fat paragraphs that sprawl across most of a page, constantly qualifying anything that resembles a direct assertion. It is a kind of narrative optical illusion which looks like many things depending on how you look at it, but each with some flaw that throws the whole thing into ambiguity: A ghost story, except only one person seems to see the ghost. A woman coming undone but she's not the only one. At the end, she might even offer a flavor of the Jim Thompson psychopath, casually killing, but talking about it so elliptically you almost miss the horror show. And it's even possible here to see the children themselves as rageful aggressors, manifesting symptoms of sexual abuse. It's practically anything you want it to be and it's just a real corker.

"interlocutor" count = 3/97 pages

In case it's not at the library. (Library of America)