Janet Malcolm was an author and a journalist at The New Yorker. Her books include Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey, The Crime of Sheila McGough, and The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Born in Prague, she grew up in New York. Janet Malcolm died in 2021.
“One of the most gratifying things about Reading Chekhov is its
quiet, vigorous defense of the prerogatives of criticism against
the imperial banality of biography.” —The New York Times Book
Review
“[A] thoughtful and sensitive study . . . A great part of the charm
and the skill of Janet Malcolm’s book lies in the very Chekhovian
way she mingles personal with critical comment, taking us not only
through Chekhov’s stories but through the removals and journeys of
his life and her own travels in quest of his Russian haunts.” —The
New York Review of Books
“With the gentle inevitability of a balloon lofting skyward, the
discourse effortlessly ascends from chatter to contemplation to
genuinely brilliant critique. . . . With its balance of distilled
perception and companionable spirit, Reading Chekhov embodies the
same qualities it celebrates.” —San Francisco Chronicle
"One of the most gratifying things about Reading Chekhov is
its quiet, vigorous defense of the prerogatives of criticism
against the imperial banality of biography." -The New York Times
Book Review
"[A] thoughtful and sensitive study . . . A great part of the charm
and the skill of Janet Malcolm's book lies in the very Chekhovian
way she mingles personal with critical comment, taking us not only
through Chekhov's stories but through the removals and journeys of
his life and her own travels in quest of his Russian haunts."
-The New York Review of Books
"With the gentle inevitability of a balloon lofting skyward, the
discourse effortlessly ascends from chatter to contemplation to
genuinely brilliant critique. . . . With its balance of distilled
perception and companionable spirit, Reading Chekhov
embodies the same qualities it celebrates." -San Francisco
Chronicle
Longtime New Yorker magazine writer Malcolm (The Crime of Sheila McGough; The Silent Woman; etc.) is known for her fearlessly opinionated takes on controversial subjects, from psychoanalysis to murder cases. This short meditation in 13 untitled chapters is a reflection on her reading of a favorite author, famed 19th-century playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, in the context of a recent tourist trip she took through contemporary Russia. Malcolm's considerable investigative reporting skills reveal the expected squalor and fallout from the Soviet years, though she admits that she knows no Russian and relied on tour guides as translators (whom she describes mercilessly down to their bodily flaws). However, although Malcolm admits that she necessarily reads Chekhov in English, she does not inquire how much her own perception of the author results from depending (according to the slim bibliography at the end of the book ) on the Edwardian fallibility of translator Constance Garnett. She agrees with all biographers that Chekhov was an admirably humane man, writing prolifically to earn a living because he charged his peasant patients nothing for medical care. The anecdotes may be the more compelling stuff here, however, as when Malcolm squabbles with a curator of a Moscow Chekhov Museum, who does not wish to inform the inquiring American journalist how she manages to earn a living. Readers eager for a taste of the dismal tourist experience Russia offers these days trains, to no surprise, are decorated with "cheap and ugly relics of the Soviet period" and the food served on them is "gray and inedible" will snap up these concise, somewhat bitter musings. Fans of Russian lit may squabble with some of the heavier moralizing, but will appreciate this real example of a fan's notes. And Malcolm's many regular readers are a lock. (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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