Someone Loves Chekhov

Someone loves Chekhov - at last! It's Louise Erdrich who carries a portable edition anywhere, for literary solace. I remember a hero from a book of Mauriac (Thérèse Desqueyroux) who was missing Paris because he was longing for the plays of Chekhov.

What is that, literary solace? Open any book of Chekhov at random, and read some paragraphs, and you'll find the answer. The author who gives his characters total freedom and only observes them with such a deep insight, and tells then us his findings, with such a great discretion!

Louise Erdrich is a Native American novelist and poet describing in her books the reservation life; her characters are often victims of racist realities. Her most recent novel, The Plague of Doves, recounts the slaughter of a farm family in a North Dakota town (Newsweek). Here is her list of five most important books, along with her reasons:

1. The Portable Chekhov edited by Avrahm Yarmolinsky (she can easily carry it anywhere for literary solace).
2. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald (the final novel of a fractured and supernal mind in search of its own history).
3. Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor (says Ms. Erdrich, this line electrified me, go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog; it made me want to write).
4. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (Ms. Erdrich: the most shattering and consoling book I read this year).
5. Winter in the Blood by James Welch (a book of terse and desperate grace, perhaps the best novel about reservation life).

And the reason given by Mr. Erdrich for the fifth book could probably apply also to many pages from Chekhov: a terse and desperate grace.

• Aniuta de Chéjov / Chekhov's Anyuta
• Lady with a Doggie
• Ozu and Chekhov
• Ozu and Chekhov - Differences
• Austen, Chekhov, Ozu, Hopper, Chardin

(Жизнь в Kнигах)