Find today’s 1622 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/101.html Travis Review: If it weren’t for the title of today’s story, I would have thought that the content was intended as a groan-worthy comedy. The plot concerns a young peasant boy desperately trying to get his blacksmith brother out of jail by appealing to anybody who seemed to have …
Today’s 100th installment comes in at 5604 words and can be found here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/100.html Travis Review: Today’s 100th story is a dark and brutal tale that has a noir core. It is a tale of two men suffering losses and the tunnel vision it produces in each of them. In the case of the bereaving …
Today’s story is 2132 words and can be found here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/099.html Travis Review: Today’s story is about Skvortsov, a successful lawyer, challenging a young, drunken beggar he caught in a lie the opportunity to work for money. It seems that he is trying to impart a little of the mantra “Give a man a fish …
Today’s story is 2557 words and can be found here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/098.html Travis Review: As we’ve seen, Chekhov is good at creating new and interesting characters. Today has made an another unique creation, a chatty, happy-go-lucky 70 year old mayor. Typically his older men have been tired and forlorn, the exception being Terenty from A Day …
Find today’s 2263 word story, the first from 1887. http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/097.html Travis Review: Today’s story has both a title and a subtitle which Chekhov rarely has done. The story, told in first person, delves into an area of superstition I had never heard of before: dropping a bottle of champagne on New Year’s eve brings bad luck …
Find the last story from 1886 that we’ll read here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/096.html It comes in at 6669 words (including a poem.) Travis Review Today’s story felt like a Dostoyevsky tale. It features Liharev, a passionate, unhappy man whose unanchored soul craves to travel, learn, and experience as much as possible even though he knows it will put …
Find today’s 1654 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/095.html Travis Review: Today’s story is a heartbreaking tale of an orphaned nine year old boy that is worthy of Dickens. Vanka writes a letter to his grandfather. The story vacillates between the boy writing about his awful experiences a shoemaker’s apprentice and memories of his grandfather and the …
Find today’s 1419 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/094.html Travis Review: I believe that today’s story is more an indictment against Latin instructors than tale of animal cruelty. Since Steve has taken Latin, I’ll let him confirm or deny whether all Latin instructors are as merciless as Pyotr Demyanitch. I also don’t remember if in any other stories, …
You can find today’s 1585 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/093.html Travis Review: Today’s comic tale is similar to the journey of an American fruitcake. Specifically, it’s a gift to give that nobody wants and so it passed for another to another. In every situation, it is funny how the work of art is forced upon the recipient and …
Find today’s 1269 word story here: http://www.chekhovshorts.com/stories/092.html Travis Review: Because Grigory Petrovitch Zapoikin “possesses a rare talent for impromptu speechifying“, he is called upon to give a speech at funeral. Chekhov sets the comic tone for the story when he mentions that the deceased “had died of the two afflictions so widely spread in our country, a bad …