The Vulgar Eclectic

I finished reading Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends, translated and with a biographical sketch by Constance Garnett. This is just what it sounds like—a large collection of letters Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) wrote to family and various friends. He wrote to his mother, brothers, and sister, his friend and editor (Suvorin), other writers…

I just finished reading Dreamers (Sværmere; 1904) by Knut Hamsun, translated by W. W. Worster. In this short work, Hamsun tells the story of a handful of characters living in a small fishing village. With spare description he constructs a bright, crisp world that, despite the novel’s brevity, feels somehow real. I enjoyed the prose…

Book jot from January 2022: I just finished reading Youth by Leo Tolstoy (1857), translated by Judson Rosengrant. This is the third and final part of a series of autobiographical novels Tolstoy published early in his writing life. In Youth, the narrator enters university life and becomes “grown up”. As he enters this phase of…