Anton Chekhov

Spring is for Jogging and Kitty Blogging

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Misty the cat here again with my every two-month guest post, which gives Dave a break to search 24/7 for The Golden Bowl. That’s a Henry James novel as well as a circular dish I want for an elite food and drink experience.

Another novelist with the same last name, E.L. James, wrote Fifty Shades of Grey. I never read it, but, as you can see in the photo atop this post, I was recently amid five shades of gray — including the color of the not-golden bowl I’m eyeing that contains liquid that’s either milk or Wilkie Collins’ novel The Woman in White minus the woman. (Photo by my adult female human Laurel Cummins.)

What am I, Misty the cat, reading now? I just finished T is for Trespass as I continue to work my way through Sue Grafton’s alphabet mysteries starring private investigator Kinsey Millhone, whose last name rhymes with Milk-Bone. (Shout-out to my dog readers, including Snoopy the Easter Beagle.) As you might know, the late Grafton didn’t allow her book series to be adapted for the screen because she had formerly worked in that business and distrusted it. Heck, Hollywood even had nowhere-near-tall-enough Tom Cruise play Jack Reacher before the physically massive Alan Ritchson more appropriately got the role in the current TV iteration of Lee Child’s thrilling book series. Ritchson IS Reacher, which creates ID confusion for the actor at airports.

While I almost always read fiction, I’ve been periodically perusing Rebecca Romney’s nonfiction book Jane Austen’s Bookshelf — which Dave received as a December holiday present from his sister-in-law Sheila Cummins. (I, Misty the cat, was gifted a $700,000 Lamborghini by Dave…in my dreams.) Romney focuses on the 1700s-born female authors who inspired Austen and why some of those excellent/pioneering writers are barely known today. These authors include Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth. All of whom are also known for founding the crack law firm Burney, Radcliffe, Lennox, More, Smith, Inchbald, Piozzi, Edgeworth, and Dora the Explorer. I want that firm in my corner when I’m on trial for purchasing a Trump pardon with catnip crypto.

Besides T is for Trespass, other novels I had Dave borrow from the library last month were Pearl S. Buck’s Sons (The Good Earth sequel I just started reading), Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (which I’ll be rereading) and Jamaica Inn, and Peter May’s The Blackhouse. All will be mentioned in future posts, with credit at that time to those who recommended two of those books. I would’ve visited the library myself, but it’s hard for a cat to drag books home when they’re no longer printed on yarn.

Speaking of high-tech things like knitting, it has been suggested that I comment on Artificial Intelligence’s relation to literature — especially after the Shy Girl novel was recently pulled by a major publisher for reportedly including lots of AI-generated content. But I’m no AI expert, which contrasts with my deep knowledge of 14th-century automobiles. Curiously, Chaucer only featured one Lamborghini in The Canterbury Tales; maybe he was more into mass transit. Dave does periodically receive seemingly AI-generated emails offering marketing help for his books — for a not-small fee, of course. Dave looked in his wallet, consulted with George Washington and other notables pictured on American currency, and was advised to…get a roomier wallet. With a kitchen so those long-dead notables can eat.

In conclusion, I’ll mention that I’m now an older cat (10) who recently starting doing three things to keep myself healthier: eat a prescription diet, get a monthly arthritis shot, and read fiction by writers who had also been medical doctors — among them Khaled Hosseini, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Anton Chekhov. Anton even appeared on the TV series Scrubs.

As I fend off a lawsuit claiming Chekhov did NOT appear on Scrubs, Dave will reply to comments.

Misty the cat says: “My favorite comedy trios are The Marx Brothers and The Pine Cones.”

My and Dave’s comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

Dave is also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about “No Kings” rallies and more — is here.

Russian Fiction Is Much Better Than Trump’s Diction

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With the corrupt Trump administration’s ties to Russia all over the news, I’d like to offer a different Russia-related topic this week: Russian literature.

Which includes an amazing array of dark/compelling/unforgettable fiction, particularly in the 19th century. Even Trump would be impressed reading Crime and Punishment — as long as Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel was shortened to a one-paragraph memo.

Crime and Punishment is my favorite Russian novel, and one of my favorites from any country. Riveting, feverish, psychological (it was said to have influenced Sigmund Freud). The high points of The Brothers Karamazov may be even better, but there are some slog-through pages and chapters that the never-a-dull-moment Crime and Punishment doesn’t suffer from. Dostoyevsky reportedly planned to make The Brothers Karamazov the first of a trilogy, but death intervened.

There are several other Dostoyevsky works well worth discussing, so please have at it in the comments section! But now I’ll turn to Leo Tolstoy, whose War and Peace and Anna Karenina are as famous as novels can be. I was impressed with those two classics (though I’m more a fan of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov) as well as with several of Tolstoy’s magnificent short stories, some almost novella length. “The Kreutzer Sonata,” “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” “Master and Man” — wow!

Speaking of short stories, you can’t go wrong with Tolstoy’s pal Anton Chekhov. A pioneering writer of tales that are more character-oriented and human-emotion-focused than plot-oriented, plus Chekhov of course was also a master playwright.

Earlier-in-the-19th-century Russian authors can also knock your socks off (though I wouldn’t advise that during a Moscow or St. Petersburg winter). Alexander Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter novel is among that writer’s great reads, as is Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls novel and his “The Overcoat” short story. Dostoyevsky contemporary Ivan Turgenev also wrote some really good novels, including Fathers and Sons.

Moving near/into the 20th century (experienced by the 1910-deceased Tolstoy for a decade), we have socialist-realist writers such as Maxim Gorky and Nikolai Ostrovsky. The latter’s How the Steel Was Tempered (a novel I purchased during a 1980s trip to Russia) is quite gripping for a while before getting a bit tedious.

Then there was Boris Pasternak, whose Doctor Zhivago novel drew the ire of Soviet officials despite it being somewhat nuanced about socialism; and the dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was adept at both fiction and nonfiction (and the subject of this “Mother Russia” song by Renaissance). I’m not fond of the way Solzhenitsyn’s politics turned very right-wing, but he did go through imprisonment hell.

Renaissance has a lead female singer and a female lyricist, but Russian literature (unlike fiction from a number of other nations) has been dominated by men. Unfortunately, lots of patriarchy, machismo, and sexism in that country — which might be one reason why Trump is so attracted to Putin and Russia’s oligarchs.

Russia’s history of authoritarianism and oppression certainly has had an effect on its writers, as has that country’s politics, poverty, income inequality, geographic size, high rate of alcoholism, aforementioned machismo, and huge war casualties — including the carnage resulting from Napoleon’s and Hitler’s invasions. But the most famous Russian writers would most likely be literary geniuses no matter where they had lived.

Obviously I’ve left some writers out, so please fill in some of those blanks in your comments. Who are your favorite Russian authors, either ones I mentioned or didn’t mention?

Here’s a review of, and a video interview about, my new literary-trivia book Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com, which covers Montclair, N.J., and nearby towns. The latest weekly column — set in the year 4034 AD! — is here.