Most of the time, I turn to a story for some sense of security. For an explanation or a way to orient myself. If I’m not sure how to think about something, how to feel about a situation, sometimes reading about it in fiction has allowed me to temporarily
When I requested Dear Writer, Dear Actress, a collection of letters exchanged between Anton Chekov and Olga Knipper, I expected them to arrive when Bill and Bron and I were reading “Gooseberries”. (Our project page is here.) If they had, my note-taking would have revolved around connections with their friendship and
There is just one more story left in our project—and it’s the shortest, only six pages, the second by Tolstoy. In the course of looking for a cover image, I learned that it was published after Tolstoy’s death, and that it was based on a real person. (Inadvertently, I
On the evening I read this short story, I was also reading May Sarton’s 1938 novel Single Hound (more about that tomorrow), in which one character affectionately calls another a “gooseberry”. Even though there’s no such moment in Chekov’s short story and, indeed, the gooseberries themselves are a disappointment—I
In the middle of July, Bill and Bron and I will be chatting about “Gooseberries”, the third of Chekov’s stories we’re reading, and the second-to-last story that George Saunders considers in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (its title apparently drawn from this very story). These last
