Penguin Books: Ward No.6 and Other Stories

Last month when I was reading Gary Shteyngart’s entertaining Super Sad True Love Story, he made a reference to an Anton Chekhov short story that I was unfamiliar with, “Three Lives.” So I sought out the collection it was in, Ward No.6 and Other Stories and read it. However, since I’ve read only a couple of his stories in anthologies over the years I decided to read the rest of the stories in the collection. Overall, I think he has a great ability to describe people and their shortcomings and contradictions as well as capture the way they talk about their hopes and dreams. Thus many of the stories are timeless in how they chronicle the things that makes us all human-love, hate, envy, hope, dreams, and fears. However, Chekov is also adept at drawing a picture of life in a family run factory (in “A Woman’s Kingdom”) or the workings of a late 19^th century insane asylum (in “Ward No.6”). Mental health is another theme in another short story, “The Black Monk.” But I tend to be drawn to the stories of love or failed love like “The Grasshopper” about a capricious doctor’s wife and her shallow affair with an artist, mediations on pure love in “Arindna,” the story of mismatched love in  “Three Lives,” and the story of a cuckold’s wife's minor obsession with an aunt (a fallen woman) who becomes a nun in “The Two Volodyas.” This collection has what has been said to be Chekov’s favorite story, “The Student,” which is a sort of religious story where a student has an epiphany where he feels a strong feeling of goodwill and hope among the peasants through is brief contact with them on a cold night. It is easy to see why Chekhov is considered one of the great Russian writers, in the same league as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Then again this would be true if he had only been a playwright as well as one of the masters of the short story. The Penguin edition has an enlightening and informative introduction and competent notes throughout the stories.