Little Apples: And Other Early Stories

by Anton Chekhov, Peter Constantine (Translator), Cathy Popkin (Introduction)

Overview

In the follow-up to his National Translation Award–winning collection The Undiscovered Chekhov, translator and scholar Peter Constantine brings us more little-known work from the Chekhov's early days as a magazine writer, pseudonymously turning out pieces for Russia's small middle class.  These stories are fresh, yet mature, snapshots of the style with which Chekhov would come to be associated, both uproariously tragic and darkly comic, and lit from within by a deep feeling of fellowship for all of humanity. As his readers have come to expect, Constantine has translated this work with a masterly command of both languages' subtleties, capturing the shadings and intricacies of Chekhov's writing that flash and recede like sunlight on an orchard, offering Chekhov's tough and amused perspectives on love, aging, class, and work. With moments that seem to presage the most contemporary writing, Chekhov's Little Apples reveals one of the world's greatest writers as we have rarely seen him, an author both deeply of his times and far ahead of them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609806644
Publisher:	Seven Stories Press
Publication date:	02/02/2016
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

ANTON CHEKHOV (1860–1904) is regarded as one of the world's modern masters of both the play and the short story.
PETER CONSTANTINE's recent translations include The Essential Writings of Rousseau (Modern Library), The Essential Writings of Machiavelli (Modern Library), Sophocles' Three Theban Plays (Barnes and Noble Classics), and works by Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Voltaire. His Complete Works of Isaac Babel for W. W. Norton received the Koret Jewish Literature Award and a National Jewish Book Award citation. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Six Early Stories by Thomas Mann. He co-edited A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900–2000, and the anthology The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present, which W. W. Norton published in 2010. He is currently a fellow in Greek/Classics at Columbia University.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Translator's Note xix

Because of Little Apples 3

À l'américaine 13

The Temperaments (According to the Latest Science) 17

Salon des Variétes 23

An Idyll-But Alas! 29

A Doctor's Romance 33

An Editor's Romance 35

The Turnip (A Folktale) 37

Easter Greetings 39

Twenty-six (Excerpts from a Diary) 43

The Philadelphia Conference of Natural Scientists 47

My Nana 49

Flying Islands 53

A Brief Anatomy of Man 65

A Children's Primer 69

Soothsayer and Soothsayeress 77

The Vaudevillian 81

Dirty Tragedians and Leprous Playwrights (A Dreadful, Terrible, and Scandalously Foolhardy Tragedy) 85

Maria Ivanovna 95

Troubling Thoughts 101

Letter to a Reporter 103

Russian Coal (A True Story) 105

The Eclipse 111

A Problem 115

On the Characteristics of Nations (From the Notebook of a Naive Member of the Russian Geographic Society) 119

A Modern Guide to Letter Writing 123

Man and Dog Converse 129

Feast-Day Gratuities (From the Notebook of a Provincial Scrounger) 133

May Day at Sokolniki 137

The Marriage Season (From the Notebook of a Marriage Broker) 141

Letters to the Editor 143

Visiting Cards 149

The Foolish Frenchman 151

Persons Entitled to Travel Free of Charge on the Imperial Russian Railways 157

The Proposal (A Tale for Young Ladies) 161

Man (A Few Philosophical Musings) 165

From the Notebook of a Country Squire 167

Nadia N.'s Vacation Homework 171

Words, Words, Words 175

The French Ball 179

About the Author 185

About the Translator 185

About Seven Stories Press 187