780 Chekhov on Writing (with Bob Blaisdell)

Summary

The History of Literature: "Chekhov on Writing" (with Bob Blaisdell) – Episode #780
Aired: March 2, 2026 | Host: Jacke Wilson | Guest: Bob Blaisdell

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the life, craft, and literary philosophy of Anton Chekhov through his personal letters, conversations, and advice to fellow writers. Host Jacke Wilson welcomes Bob Blaisdell—professor, editor, and longtime Chekhov devotee—to discuss his new Dover edition, Chekhov on Writing. The conversation dives into Chekhov’s creative processes, his artistic credo of objectivity, his roles as mentor and literary advisor, and his enduring influence. Listeners are treated to Chekhov’s wisdom on literature, glimpses of his daily life, and stories from the Russian literary world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Value of Objectivity in Writing

• Chekhov’s Artistic Motto:
  Chekhov insisted on truthfully depicting people "as they are" and resisting the temptation to moralize or sermonize in fiction. (03:03)
  • "Let the jury judge them. It's my job simply to show what sort of people they are." – Anton Chekhov (quoted by Jacke Wilson) [01:03]
• Chekhov believed in presenting life’s complexity, neither judging his characters nor imposing his own values:
  • "Above all else, Chekhov clung to this belief...show the people as they are. Don’t judge, no sermons. Let the people live on the page and let them speak for themselves. And you, the author, get out of the way." – Jacke Wilson [03:58]

Chekhov’s Advice to Writers

• On Describing Nature and Character (08:16–09:18):

  • Avoiding literary clichés and capturing life with precise, vivid details.
    • "One ought to seize upon the little particulars...so that in reading when you shut your eyes you get a picture." – Chekhov (quoted by Jacke Wilson) [08:23]
  • Show, don’t tell:
    • "Best of all is it to avoid depicting the hero’s state of mind; you ought to try to make it clear from the hero's actions." – Chekhov (quoted by Jacke Wilson) [09:18]
    • Focus your narrative:
      • "The center of gravity should be in two persons, him and her." – Chekhov (quoted by Jacke Wilson) [09:13]

• Volume and Practice:

  • Chekhov encouraged aspiring writers to develop skill through relentless output:
    • "You need to write maybe 100 or 200 or 300, then you’ll know something." – Bob Blaisdell [16:33]
  • He mentored strangers, actively helping novice writers find publication and improve their craft, sometimes even advocating to editors for them. [17:55–18:28]

The Writer as Mentor and Literary Citizen

• Chekhov’s mentorship went beyond advice—he provided contacts, feedback, and professional support.
  • "He would pester his own editors and say, how about giving her a shot?...And if they stuck with it, he would stick with it too." – Bob Blaisdell [17:55, 18:48]
• His principle of objectivity and self-effacement was reinforced in advice to friends and relatives, especially his brother Alexander. [20:37, 21:01]
  • "No one's interested in you. They're interested in these people that you’ve put on the page." – Bob Blaisdell [20:37]

Objectivity Versus Subjectivity

• The problem of authorial ego versus authentic creation:
  • "He wants you to restrain yourself...so that the characters and...the plot, you’re not getting in the way." – Bob Blaisdell [19:15]
• Host Jacke Wilson compares Chekhov’s philosophy to the songwriting styles of Paul McCartney (third-person storytelling) and John Lennon (autobiographical), suggesting Chekhov valued stepping back from the self. [22:04]

Chekhov’s Life and Letters: Authenticity and Generosity

• Despite his relentless productivity, medical career, and financial trials, Chekhov remained generous, supportive, and humble in correspondence:
  • "He was funny, he’s kind, he’s extremely generous with his time. He’s humble, he occasionally is proud. He above all is self-aware." – Jacke Wilson [05:14]
• Chekhov supported his family and insisted on continuing his medical work, even when writing earned him financial stability. [24:32–25:38]
  • "When he does succeed financially with his writing, he says, well, now I can do medicine pro bono." – Jacke Wilson [24:33]

Relationship with Tolstoy and Other Writers

• Deep admiration for Tolstoy along with recognition of his flaws:
  • "Chekhov sees Tolstoy’s flaws, but he accepts them as untouchable, as unreachable as Tolstoy’s greatness." – Jacke Wilson [10:11]
  • Tolstoy valued Chekhov for his accuracy and mysterious talents, e.g., during the drafting of Resurrection:
    • "[Tolstoy] couldn’t read The Darling without, you know, laughing and crying. So they had an interesting friendship." – Bob Blaisdell [29:39]
• Chekhov didn’t hold other writers to his own principles rigidly and saw genius as sometimes existing outside the ‘rules.’

Chekhov’s Personality in Letters and in Life

• Chekhov’s correspondence reveals a person as sincere and large-hearted as his fiction suggests.
  • "I think that’s who he was." – Bob Blaisdell [32:28]
  • His tone varied, depending on the recipient—sometimes playful, sometimes brotherly, sometimes formal—but always authentic and considerate. [32:30–33:36]
  • Preservation and censorship of Chekhov's letters reflect family and Soviet concerns about privacy and legacy. [35:05–36:33]

Stage vs. Page: Chekhov as Playwright

• Chekhov showed vulnerability regarding his plays, reacting intensely to failures or perceived failures in the theater.
  • "The description of the opening night of Ivanov and then of the Seagull, especially...the moral of this is, one ought not to write plays." – Jacke Wilson [37:15]
  • The initial flop of The Seagull and Chekhov’s reaction became the stuff of literary legend. [38:38–39:08]

Chekhov’s Use of Writers as Fictional Characters

• Sometimes a writer character allowed Chekhov to explore or parody his own experiences, but he generally maintained objectivity and comic distance:
  • "Most of them are comic versions of him...a kind of distance, that objectivity." – Bob Blaisdell [41:14–42:18]

Self-Effacement and Humility

• Chekhov modeled the balance between offering advice and recognizing its limitations:
  • "When he gets too dogmatic almost, he will often then undermine himself and say, but what do I know?...he takes a playful attitude toward himself..." – Jacke Wilson [42:21]
  • Bob Blaisdell sees this as a model for teaching and interacting with others, emphasizing openness and humility. [43:00–44:08]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Artistic Integrity:
  "To depict horse thieves in 700 lines, I must all the time speak and think in their tone and feel in their spirit. Otherwise if I introduce subjectivity, the image becomes blurred..." – Anton Chekhov (quoted) [01:03]

• On Literary Commonplaces:
  "Commonplaces such as the setting sun bathing in the waves...one ought to abandon." – Chekhov (quoted) [08:21]

• On Growth Through Work:
  "You need to write maybe 100 or 200 or 300, then you’ll know something." – Bob Blaisdell [16:33]

• On Mentorship and Humility:
  "He would be patient. And if they stuck with it, he would stick with it too." – Bob Blaisdell [18:48]

• On Self-Effacement:
  "Just that kind of reminder that Chekhov is...taking that kind of approach to working with people and interacting with people just makes me...I just found it kind of inspiring. Wow." – Jacke Wilson [44:25]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:03] – Chekhov’s letter on objectivity and the role of a writer
• [08:16–09:18] – Chekhov’s advice on description and showing character
• [14:41–15:22] – Sourcing and translating Chekhov’s letters
• [16:33] – Chekhov’s recommendation to write hundreds of stories
• [18:48] – Chekhov’s mentorship style
• [19:15–21:01] – The meaning of objectivity for art and the pitfalls of self-insertion
• [22:04–22:40] – Comparison to McCartney/Lennon: write about the self or others?
• [24:32–25:38] – Chekhov’s life as doctor/writer and family supporter
• [29:39–30:53] – Chekhov’s relationship with Tolstoy
• [32:28–33:42] – Chekhov’s personality as shown through different letters
• [37:07–39:33] – Chekhov’s reactions to stage performances of his plays
• [41:14–42:18] – Chekhov writing about writers as fictional characters
• [44:08–45:31] – The impact of Chekhov’s humility and approach on teaching and living

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Tone & Style

True to Jacke Wilson’s voice, this episode is warm, reflective, and deeply appreciative of both literary craft and authorial character. Blaisdell’s scholarship is clear but approachable, interwoven with personal anecdotes and practical admiration for Chekhov’s humanity and artistry.

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For New Listeners and Writers

This episode stands as an accessible guide not just to Chekhov’s writing but to his ideals as a writer, mentor, and person. It’s both an inviting primer and a heartfelt homage, encouraging listeners to read Chekhov, write with discipline and humility, and to seek objectivity, compassion, and generosity in all creative pursuits.

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglomerate Network and Lit Hub radio

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[Jack Wilson]

we begin today with a quotation. This comes from the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov in a letter dated April 1, 1890. Chekhov was 30 years old and he was writing to his publisher, you abuse me for objectivity, calling it indifference to good and evil, lack of ideals and ideas, and so on. You would have me, when I describe horse thieves, say stealing horses is an evil, but that has been known for ages. Without my saying so, let the jury judge them. It's my job simply to show what sort of people they are. I write, you are dealing with horse thieves, so let me tell you that they are not beggars but well fed people, that they are people of a special cult and that horse stealing is not simply theft but a passion. Of course it would be pleasant to combine art with a sermon, but for me personally it is extremely difficult and almost impossible, owing to the conditions of technique you see, to depict horse thieves in 700 lines, I must all the time speak and think in their tone and feel in their spirit. Otherwise if I introduce subjectivity, the image becomes blurred and the story will not be as compact as all short stories ought to be. When I write, I reckon entirely upon the reader to add for himself the subjective elements that are lacking in the story. End quote. Let the jury judge them. It was Chekhov's job simply to show what sort of people they are, and so he did, setting a standard for the short story that has never been surpassed. Above all else, Chekhov clung to this belief through all kinds of temptations to do otherwise, show the people as they are. Don't judge no sermons. Let the people live on the page and let them speak for themselves. And you, the author, get out of the way. Trust your readers to supply the judgment. It's a great humanist belief, by one of our greatest humanists. But one of the consequences of this practice is that we can lose sight of Chekhov, the person, or maybe I should say the figure. This isn't a narrator who chats with us. It isn't a wise elder or a young braggart or a comforting friend. We don't know Chekhov in the way we might feel. We know an author who pauses the story to assure us that he or she, the writer, is here with us too, and we're all enjoying our time together and everything is going to be okay. And did you happen to notice that the protagonist has gotten into a little trouble? I noticed it too. Fear not, dear reader. Oh, and by the way, stealing horses is wrong, etc. Etc. That's not Chekov. And it's not Chekov. By deliberate and sometimes ruthless choice, he scrubbed himself out of these stories. He is a God that we await, but who never appears, unless you could say that he appears through every detail of his creation. He is always there, just not in the way we might sometimes want. Which is why, when one has read the stories and fallen in love with the sensibility of the man who wrote them, and the plays too, one eagerly turns to the letters and conversations as they were recorded by others. Here we find Chekhov the person, the doctor seeing patients as well as writing masterpieces, the brother, the supporter of his family, the success story, the celebrity, and above all, the writer. How did he write? What did he think about his writing? What do we think about Chekhov when we see what he thinks about his writing? We'll talk to Bob Blaisdell, editor of a book called Chekhov, on writing today on the history of literature.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast.

[Jack Wilson]

I'm Jack Wilson, if you haven't guessed already. I revere this person, this guy, this man, Anton Chekhov, who is one of the great human beings to ever walk this planet, in my humble opinion. I don't know how you can't love the guy, but I love him through his stories. What is it like to read his letters? Is it the case of you shouldn't meet your heroes to find that the great souled writer of Gusev and the lady with the Little Dog and Gooseberries. Oh, these stories for me, well, man, they're not quite as important as the sun, I guess, but they're up there with the moon and the stars. But what is it like to read Chekhov when his guard is down, when he's not trying to be so ruthlessly objective? Will he seem petty or entangled in gossip, or cruel or dull? Will he turn out to be a small person in his letters, making me think that his largeness as a writer, his majestic neutrality, his generosity with his characters, will it make me think that. That all that was just a trick, a disguise he wore when he sat down to write? No, it turns out, although I should say that I'd have dealt with that too. I don't need my writers to be great people or even interesting people in real life, although it's awfully nice when they are. Or maybe I should say it's a relief when they're good. It's more that I've avoided the disappointment upon finding out that they're lousy. So, Chekhov, in these letters, and there are also recorded memories of those who knew him. He talks about his love for Shakespeare and Tolstoy. He talks about the creative spark and what it does for him and what it means to him when it's not there. He discusses his finances, his ongoing progress of various works, the reception that his plays received. He's funny, he's kind, he's extremely generous with his time. He's humble, he occasionally is proud. He above all is self aware. He knows who he is. He knows his strengths and weaknesses, although he underplays his strengths a little 10%, and he overplays his weaknesses just slightly, another 10%, enough to account for observer bias is what it seems like. And we see in this selection of this book that Bob Blaisdell edited what a writer Chekhov is. We're handed the keys that unlock the secrets of how his prose works. In a famous letter he wrote to his brother Alexander, who was a talented writer, but not the devoted artist that Chekhov was. Chekhov is always chiding him, suggesting that Alexander, who is older, could do a

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

little better, could be a little more

[Jack Wilson]

rigorous, could rely a little more on the power of fiction and a little less on the power of personality. He says, in my opinion, a true

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

description of nature should be very brief

[Jack Wilson]

and have a character of relevance. Commonplaces such as the setting sun bathing

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

in the waves of the darkening sea

[Jack Wilson]

poured its purple gold, etc. Or the swallows flying over the surface of the water twittered merrily. Such commonplaces one ought to abandon in description of nature. One ought to seize upon the little particulars grouping them in such a way that in reading when you shut your eyes you get a picture. For instance, you will get the full effect of a moonlight night if you write that on the mill dam a little glowing star point flashed from the neck of a broken bottle, and the round black shadow of a dog or a wolf emerged and ran, etc. Nature becomes animated. If you are not squeamish about employing comparisons of her phenomena with with ordinary

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

human activities in the sphere of psychology,

[Jack Wilson]

details are also the thing. God preserve us from commonplaces.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Best of all is it to avoid

[Jack Wilson]

depicting the hero's state of mind, you ought to try to make it clear from the hero's actions. It is not necessary to portray many characters. The center of gravity should be in two persons, him and her. I write this to you as a reader having a definite taste also in order that you, when writing, may not feel alone. To be alone in work is a hard thing. Better poor criticism than none at all. Is it not so? End quote. He helped his brother. He helped strangers who wrote to him and asked for advice. He tried his best to make other writers as good as he was, which is another way of trying to make them as good as they could be. For nobody was better. Maybe only Tolstoy comes across, in Chekhov's

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

view, as being someone who is extraordinary

[Jack Wilson]

and beyond Chekhov's editing eye. Chekhov sees Tolstoy's flaws, but he accepts them as untouchable, as unreachable as Tolstoy's greatness. Many of Chekhov's ideas are unsurprising. He values concision, the stories of Maupassant real life, some are surprising. All are worth our attention. We'll dive in with Bob Blaisdell, who's been paying a lot of attention to Chekhov after this.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Foreign.

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[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Okay? Joining me once again is Bob Blaisdell, who is professor of English at the City University of New York's Kingsborough Community College. He was previously here in episode 597 to discuss his work editing the book Conversations with Karl Ove Knausgard. And before that, he was here in episode 468 to discuss the miraculous two

[Jack Wilson]

year period when Chekhov became Chekhov. He's here today to discuss Chekhov on Writing the Mentor, the Self Critic, Literary

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Questions and Fictional Writers, which is one of the 22 poetry and literary collections that he's edited for for Dover.

[Jack Wilson]

Bob Blaisdell, welcome back to the History of Literature.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Thank you very much. It's good to be here.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

So you were kind enough to send me some of the Dover Thrift editions you've edited, and I fell in love all over again with these classics.

[Jack Wilson]

What a great series.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I have so much affection and nostalgia for these Dover Thrift Editions.

[Bob Blaisdell]

So do I. They started just after my wife and I moved to New York and just before I started working for Dover as a freelance editor and proofreader. And I remember I bought Heart of darkness for $1.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

$1. That's what they used to be. Always a dollar. They'd have their own rack at the bookstore. They probably still do in a lot of bookstores. And it's just kind of nice to

[Jack Wilson]

pick one up and throw it in

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

a jacket pocket or carry it along.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yeah. And then almost immediately after this was in the beginning of 1993, I started. I started working for the editor who had started that, that project, the Thrift Editions. And first I did a lot of children's adaptations, abridgments for him while proofreading some of the new Thrift Editions. And after a couple years, he let me edit and select some projects on my own.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

That's what I was going to ask you, whether you suggested ideas for books or if there was an editor who was suggesting them to you. And let's pivot to Chekhov on writing. Was that something that you thought would make a good Dover edition, or was there an editor who said we got to do Chekhov on writing? And Bob, you're the guy.

[Bob Blaisdell]

I think I've done more than 50.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Oh, more than 50. Okay. My information was outdated and I think

[Bob Blaisdell]

probably 20 of them were my. Were my ideas or my push and the checkoff on writing. I'd been pushing, I think, for 25 years.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Right. And they finally, finally it was time. So how difficult was it to find the source material for this? What were you looking for and what sources did you have to find it? Where, where were these things located?

[Bob Blaisdell]

Most of the quotations are from his letters. I had them. I've been reading his letters since maybe the mid-1980s, and I. I used to just copy down quotes. And when I read writer's letters, it made me want to write. And Chekhov was even then, he was a kind of mentor. So sometimes there were letters that were in copyright. And I worked for the last 20 years at learning Russian, so I translated maybe 20 of the passages.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Right. Chekhov's letters would be out of copyright, but the translations could still be under copyright.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yes. And the best translation, they were in the 1970s or early 80s. There were three different collections of selected letters of Chekhov in English, and they were all good. But the best one is now published, or was published more recently by University of California Press, was by a couple of Slavicists, including Michael Henry Heim. And their notes on the letters make it a kind of biography. And they were particularly interested in him as a writer and giving advice and taking himself to task. Taking his. His older brother to task.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Right.

[Bob Blaisdell]

I've read almost all of his letters.

[Jack Wilson]

How many are there?

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

He seems like he was writing a lot of letters to a lot of different types of people.

[Bob Blaisdell]

If you were a aspiring writer and you wrote to Chekhov, he would write you back.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

He would write you back, and he

[Bob Blaisdell]

would read your stuff, and he would read your stuff, and he. The primary advice was usually, especially to young people, you got to write more.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, right.

[Bob Blaisdell]

You need to write maybe 100 or 200 or 300, then you'll know something.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yes. That really made me nostalgic for a particular era, because I think he would have said, you need to write a hundred or two hundred short stories in general and just throw them away if you have to. But he was basically kind of describing it as, you know, you publish in these newspapers.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I mean, he had. There were so many outlets for short stories and humor pieces and all of these journals, and it just kind of made me miss that era where there was room for fiction and observational pieces and so on. There was just a healthy market for it.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yeah. That time has passed, hasn't it?

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I guess. Yeah. I mean, now it's expected you would sort of. You could post it on the Internet and give it away for free, but the idea that you'd be sending this off to editors who would be accepting it for publication and then publishing it, and a huge public that would be reading stories. It does seem like when Chekhov is telling people to just keep writing, write more and more and more, he's thinking you're not going to have to sit in a room by yourself and just write a lot of stories and put them all in a drawer, but that they'll find their way into the world.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yes. And I should also say for him, he was practically an agent. Sometimes for young, completely unconnected writers, he served as an agent. He would pester his own editors and say, how about giving her shot? And he would get back to the writer and say, let's listen. It's got to be shorter. You got to be more objective. No slop. This is not funny, but there's a little opening at this humor magazine where there's not so funny pieces.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, right.

[Bob Blaisdell]

He said you asked and if you're willing to the work, I'll give you a lot of feedback for free. And they would be upset that he said something critical and he wouldn't renounce them. He'd be patient. And if they stuck with it, he would stick with it too.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah. I do want to talk about the type of mentor he was, but before that, you mentioned the word objective. And that is something he returns to again and again. And it's kind of the closest thing I think he has to an artistic credo is that objectivity is something to strive for. He cites Maupassant as a model. First of all, what do you think he meant by that?

[Bob Blaisdell]

You were right. It's something to strive for. He uses those terms, objective and subjective. He wants you to restrain yourself partly so that the characters and the movement of the plot, you're not getting in the way, in the way of your own creation.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

One of the things he seems to object to is people who turn themselves into a hero and then give themselves the funniest lines or the, the sharpest observations or, you know, give themselves the happy ending or whatever it is. And he's kind of saying it's not authentic. It's not. Everybody, everybody knows that the, you know, the wise person is often well fed and happy and in a good marriage or something, you don't have to project your desires or your self conception onto a protagonist like that. It feels like you're kind of. You have your thumb on the scale, so to speak.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Right? He does. I'm thinking of examples with his brother.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, he says this all the time to his brother Alexander, even though he seems to have a lot of respect for his brother and his talents. But he's always saying, you could be so much better.

[Bob Blaisdell]

You could be so much better if you would work at it and keep from gushing, using the story to justify yourself. I Mean, it reminds them no one's interested in you. They're interested in these people that you've put on the page. And that's how you also need to focus yourself.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Now, what's interesting about that is he will make the claim for it that. As if it's part of his artistry or part of the artistry of a writer to view writing in that way. But it made me think about. Because I am often kind of one thought away from the Beatles, the dynamic with Paul McCartney and John Lennon. And Paul McCartney would write these songs in the third person. Eleanor Rigby or Another Day. And it's describing a paperback writer, and it's talking about someone who's not him. And it's somebody he kind of wants to see through this lens, and he's interested in her life or his life and. And so on. And John Lennon would say, I don't know how he does that. I can only write about myself. I can only dig deep and examine my own emotions and my own feelings. And, you know, it's a. I use these two. But this is a dynamic that artists are always wrestling with.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Is it. You know, should you. Should you find yourself, write about what you know or, you know, have a breakthrough where you're. You're letting your real self onto the page and so on. But we often say that the John Lennon method is kind of what we value more, that that's the real artist, and it's not kind of pretend or not courageous that it's more courageous to dig deep and find the truth inside yourself and that kind of thing. That's like the opposite of what Chekhov is arguing for.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yeah, I like the comparison. The John and Paul.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah. Okay, so I'm jumping it all over the place here, but I just kind of wanted to get a sense from you of the scope of the book as well. It seems like the earlier letters are when he's younger, and he seems kind of established when they start, but. And then towards the end, it starts to feel like he's no longer as strong a writer as he was, or. Or writing is not coming as easily. What's the scope of these letters? Is it. Is it from a particular time period or. Where was he in his life and his career during these letters? Or is this basically his entire adult life?

[Bob Blaisdell]

I think the earliest ones are from when he's 23 years old, when he already is an established humor writer, and the last ones are when he's 44 and he's dying. So in the sections I reread the book the other day, and as I was reading it, I was thinking, there's other ways I could have arranged these quotes. I could have not have sections, just run it all chronologically. But early on, I thought, no, there's topics.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, right. Well, he's. I mean, one of the things that really comes across here is how busy he is as a practicing physician as well, and that he insists on it. He. He. I thought we would see a lot of, well, if only I could quit practicing medicine.

[Jack Wilson]

I would.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I would be able to really write something good, or I can't write a long piece because of this wretched financial situation I'm in, where I have to be. He's really defending being a practicing doctor. He doesn't want to give that up.

[Bob Blaisdell]

No.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

And when he does succeed financially with his writing, he says, well, now I can do medicine pro bono.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yes. He appreciated the doctors that were doing government service. They didn't make a lot of money. He never made his living as a doctor. He knew that money was necessary. He was supporting his parents. He was supporting his younger siblings, sending them to school. His family was not in good shape, but they were always. Thanks to him, they were always moving on up until finally he was able to buy an estate, you know, 100 miles south of Moscow and eventually in resort towns like Yalta, where he needed to go because he was. He was sick with tuberculosis. So money. Money was important, but not just to make sure his family was okay, Just to make sure he could have some relief and just so he could do the doctoring as he wanted. When he finally got that estate, when he was about 34, he just became like the. The local doctor.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

He sometimes seems to grumble a little bit about writing for money and. And kind of the churn of. Of having to, you know, crank out another story and that kind of thing. But for the most part, it seems like he doesn't feel like he's torn between, you know, a kind of writing for money and writing the writing that he really wants to do. He doesn't seem like it's a burden for him to write, you know, the stories that the magazines will publish or that the editors are demanding or something and feel like he has to water down his art in order to sell to those places. He seems like he's writing what he wants to write.

[Jack Wilson]

For the most part, yes.

[Bob Blaisdell]

And only frustrated with himself that for some reason he can't. He can't write a novel. But my good friend and mentor, Max Schott, who is also a novelist he said, you look at Chekhov short stories, and they pack so much into them. And his novellas have more than, you know, most long novels. There's so much mental and character action. And Chekhov did find his form. It was his own form. Those long stories are so dense. Not dense, not in the feeling of reading them, but just there's. They can occupy so much, so many topics at the same time. They're so efficient. He loved and admired Tolstoy, and he knew he was a very different artist from Tolstoy.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Bob Blaisdell]

And he held himself at a much lower position, at a whole different league from Tolstoy.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, let's talk about that. And. But let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back with more from Bob Blaisdell. Okay, we're back. So, Bob, I found his descriptions of Tolstoy very interesting, too, because it's. It's like we were saying, he's very convinced about his own art and his own methodology and his own, like I said before, almost like a credo. And he will recommend that to others, especially people like his brother, who he thinks could really benefit from it. But then when he's talking about Tolstoy, he kind of says, yes, I see, and this is Tolstoy toward the end of his career, and he's saying, yes, I see, that Tolstoy could really benefit from not being so confident about things that he doesn't know that much about. But he'll sort of agree with the writer who has pointed that out. But then he'll say, but who cares? I mean, when you can write like this, it all melts away, and we're all just swept away by this man's genius. And he kind of credits Tolstoy with being an authoritative figure in Russian literature to say, when we are lucky to have someone like this on the scene or as part of our world. And it does seem like he's. I don't think if Tolstoy wrote Chekhov a letter and said, what do you think of.

[Jack Wilson]

Of this?

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Chekhov would have applied his. His, you know, would have said, well, you're not following the right rules of art. He would have said, what you're doing is your own thing. And. And it's genius as well.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yeah. And actually, Chekhov did have a chance to, like, respond to a work in progress that Tolstoy was writing Resurrection. And part of it is a prison story. And Chekhov explained a couple of, like, factual points. And Tolstoy hated missing on facts, so he was very grateful to Chekhov. For pointing out these two things like that can't happen. It would have had to go through another agency or another institute and then this. They wouldn't have done that. So Telestoy was grateful. Besides being crazy about Chekhov as a, as a man, as a, as, as a writer that, who wrote in a way that was mysterious to Tolstoy, couldn't figure out, God, he, he just throws the words around and he's got these images just. And you don't. It looks like he doesn't know what he's doing and it all is perfect. And you got the. He, he couldn't read the darling without, you know, laughing and crying. So they had an interesting friendship.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah. Let's talk about the type of person who emerges from these letters because it's exactly what you might expect when you read Chekhov. And he seems, he always seems so mature and so wise and so generous and so self effacing and all of these qualities of him. But I was really struck by, I mean, when you read letters by writers, they often seem like they're putting on different voices for different people. And maybe when they write to one of their old friends who's also a writer, they write in kind of a slangy, jokey way that has a lot of inside jokes and kind of is kind of performative. And maybe they're writing to someone else and they pat themselves on the back a lot and brag a bit. And then someone else, they seem like they're looking for praise by running themselves down and kind of saying, oh, woe is me, why don't you. Chekhov seems like he's always authentic and kind and knowledgeable and self aware and that he. I just was struck by what a decent, generous person he seems to be. I mean, is that because you were selecting letters where he's, he's showing that, or is that basically the type of person he is when he's writing these letters?

[Bob Blaisdell]

I think that's who he was.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Bob Blaisdell]

His editor for a long time and, and a very close friend, Alexei Suvorin, who was very conservative but more than anybody else, allowed Chekov to write whatever he wanted at whatever length. Chekov knew he could do that with Su and he knew he could talk to Suvren about every issue. And Su, he, he was quite conservative and, and had a son who was kind of radically fascistically conservative. And that caused a bit of a break between Chekhov and Suverin, but not, not completely. And he liked Suverin because he could talk about really everything. And with his female correspondence, he could Be teasy and jokey. You do feel his. His friendship. And when he's writing to his older brother, it's like, yeah, that's. He kind of taught me a lot of things about siblinghood. Yeah, that's right. That's the only person in the world you could talk to like that.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, right. And. And it feels like he's the older

[Bob Blaisdell]

brother, as happens in families that, you know, the responsible one, Alexander was very talented, and the next brother was. Was also very talented. But Nikolai was a mess. He had tuberculosis. He was an artist and he drank himself to death before his time. Chekhov was very close to him. But the letters to Nikolai did not survive. There's only one.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, well, something I was going to ask you when you were mentioning that you weren't able to see the stories that people had sent to him for revision and so on, I'm guessing that a lot of people who. When they got a letter from Anton Chekhov, they kept it as well. This is something special. This is a keepsake. Did Chekhov keep the letters that he received, or have those mostly been lost?

[Bob Blaisdell]

He did, but the ones from Suverin, his buddy and editor at New Times. Suverin. After Chekhov died, Suverin went to Chekhov's sister. He gave Chekhov's sister the letters that Chekhov had written to him, and in exchange, he got the letters that he had written. He didn't want them out.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Oh, and then he destroyed them.

[Alan or Sean (Prancing Pony Podcast Hosts)]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, right.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

But.

[Bob Blaisdell]

And because Chekhov died so young and because the people he had. He had helped were also young. Yes, they. They kept their letters. And I mean, he was really the. The second greatest literary figure when he died after Tolstoy. And they kept the letters and his sister to protect his legacy. His sister lived until, I think, 1956, which puts her almost into my lifetime.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, that's. That feels very recent.

[Bob Blaisdell]

And she knew things about his life and she cut out things in his letters and she left out things that she knew about his life and his. His affairs, literally his affairs, and kept them quiet and sometimes destroyed them. She helped preserve his. His legacy. But also, the Soviets were quite. Even though Soviet Russia was not conservative in some ways, it was also very conservative about writers lives, private lives, where in America, in England, I think the writers lives became more and more open. And we're all curious about everything that they did in the Soviet Union and Russia there. They don't like all that digging and exposure of their literary heroes.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I want to shift gears a little bit because as we've been Talking about Chekhov being kind of this generous and patient and full of advice, and just the way he'll talk about. And just because of the topics you've chosen, being about art and writing and so on, that we get a lot of discussions that are about books and literature in general and so on. One place where he really emerges as a person in a way that I have not really seen before is when

[Jack Wilson]

he's talking about his plays and the

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

performances of his plays. And it is probably.

[Jack Wilson]

I think they're probably the funniest letters,

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

where you picture him as this playwright who's going to see the productions of his plays and dealing with actors who he thinks are. Are butchering their parts and are drunk and he feels annoyed at the production and all that, and yet sometimes it's a big success, and he'll say, it's never happened before, that they've called the writer out after the second act and so on. But the description of the opening night of Ivanov and then of the Seagull, especially, where he's just like, it is fallen. It's a disgrace. The moral of this is, one ought not to write plays. And he just is like, I've got some other quotes here. After the performance that night and next day, I was assured that I had hatched out nothing but idiots, that my play was clumsy, that it was not clever, that it was unintelligible, even senseless, and so on and so on. It really. You really feel the agony of a playwright watching a flop, which is ironic, since they now are some of the most revered plays in the canon.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yeah, those are very funny. With the Seagull, it was a kind of joke to his friends because he left Petersburg and got on the train and went to Moscow before the play was over. And it was only when he was in Moscow that he heard, yeah, actually, it was a hit. What are you doing? How can you. And he apologized. It's like. Well, it didn't seem like it was.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

It also seems a little bit like he's. I mean, he's so confident when it comes to his short stories, and he's so willing to say, yeah, that one, you know, wasn't my best or something. He wrote so many. But he seems especially vulnerable when it's his place, as if those are his children that he's worried about sending out into the world. And it's him at his most vulnerable, I think.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. But he has a different attitude.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, it's a very public thing to go and watch your play being performed, and to hear the audience coughing or hissing or laughing or, you know, laughing in the wrong parts or whatever is. You don't really have to experience that as a writer who's sending your fiction out into the world through a book or a newspaper.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Right? Yeah. They didn't do literary readings, as far as I know. He never read a short story aloud, and he warned somebody against reading them aloud before you're finished, but he didn't perform his stories.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

One other place to look for for Chekhov is in his writing where he has a fictional writer and you have a section on this where he puts writers into the story. And you say in your note that. I mean, although committed to the principle of not writing about himself in his fiction, Chekhov acknowledged that his own experiences infused those of his characters. And I guess that's the thing. Are the writers that you found in these stories kind of the one place where he lets down his guard and. And does get subjective, and these writers are kind of stand ins for him, and you can kind of see him giving his point of view through these writers? Or is this a place where he's objective to. And maybe he's writing about a writer who has nothing in common with himself. It might be somebody he knew, or maybe somebody he's just invented, or. Or is this the place where you think we're kind of seeing an alter ego?

[Bob Blaisdell]

Most of them are comic versions of him, at least one of them. He's completely taking off on his brother Alexander. And so I think he's just creating a comic character because in those fictional passages, there's passages where he's essentially saying the same thing. A writer complaining about the pressures and a writer complaining about the money. So he's making fun of himself as a character. He does have that rule, which I think is a really good rule, and it's not always true. He doesn't always hold to it of, don't write about yourself. If you were going to write about your own experience, you got to give it to somebody else. You give it to somebody with completely different circumstances. But there's a lot of experience, Chekhov's own experience in. In his fiction, in his plays. But he tries to put it at a distance, as a comedian would.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

So it's.

[Bob Blaisdell]

It's a kind of distance, that objectivity,

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

you can see that sensibility in his other letters as well, where he'll. When he gets too authoritative or too critical or too dogmatic almost, he will often then undermine himself and say, but what do I know? Or, you know, but ignore me if you want. This is just these. Just offering these thoughts, or he takes a playful attitude toward himself when he. I think he feels like, well, this might sound like I'm pulling rank on this person here or. Or that I'm condescending to this person. I'll make sure that I puncture my own balloon here.

[Bob Blaisdell]

I think it's a sincere acknowledgement from Chekhov that that's the best he could do with. With what he's got. And I won't blame you if you don't take it. I've learned from that, too, as a teacher. I mean, you work very hard to come up with an assessment and a suggestion and criticism, and you do it enough, and you realize you're not always right. You put all your energy into solving the problem of this paper, of this essay, of this story. And maybe, like, this is a very subjective thing, this grading business, you know, and if you're really trying to be a better writer, I've got ideas to help you, but just, I don't know, everything. So I. I like that in him.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah. There's so many things to like about Chekhov, and. And this fairly slim book is just rich with things that made me smile and made me nod with appreciation and made me want to pull out my. My Chekhov stories and read them all over again.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Oh, good. Yeah, that's. That's. That's the best. And I hope. I hope it makes you want to write, too.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Yeah. And to just be a better person, to be, you know, to be better in interpersonal relationships with people.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Can you think of an example of that?

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Well, I think you just gave one. In your description of how it has molded your teaching to kind of say this is going to be a more effective way to communicate with someone is to not say, well, guess what? I've been doing this a long time, so I have the answers. And if you will open your ears and listen to me, I will give you some. And instead to kind of meet people at their level and say, well, this has to make sense to you. I can offer some advice, but I also want to make sure you understand that I know there's more than one way to do things, and I might not be getting this right, and it might not be a way that works for you. And just that kind of reminder that Chekhov is. You see that in almost every letter, that he's taking that kind of approach to working with people and interacting with people just makes me. I just found it kind of inspiring. Wow.

[Bob Blaisdell]

You said that. So much better than I could have. I completely agree with it. That's very good. That's very good.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Okay, well, let's leave things there. The book is called Chekhov on writing one down and 50 some to go on these Dovers. Bob, I'm just kidding, but we would love to have you back again. Bob Blaisdell, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Thank you, Jackie.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Okay, that will do it for this

[Jack Wilson]

episode of the History of Literature.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

My thanks to Bob Blaisdell as always.

[Jack Wilson]

He'll be here again for a conversation about John Ruskin that is scheduled for later this month. Also this month, the Cherokee novelist John Rollin Ridge, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

will check in with Lawrence Stern, the

[Jack Wilson]

celebrated author of Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey. Mike and I are going to read some Opusan soon, speaking of him as we were earlier today.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

And a high school teacher will stop

[Jack Wilson]

by to tell us about how things have been going. He's been teaching Proust to high school students. That's going to be in April. How has that worked out? We will hear. We will also hear the passages that his students have been working their way through. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

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