Tag Archives: character

The Top Score

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Lists, rankings and ratings eliminate some of the guesswork in life. For example, instead of chancing a bad experience, I check rating websites for a restaurant, a movie or even a church. Goodreads and other online forums allow readers to post comments and ratings about novels or collections of stories. How would the general population rank Chekhov’s short stories?  The half-dozen books on my desk about Chekhov or Chekhov’s anthologies are the old way of researching. I need guidance on where to begin, what is considered the best of Chekhov and how to do all of this in the quickest amount of time.

An Editor’s Choice

Books like The Essential Tales of Chekhov edited by Richard Ford offer a method for reading the best of Checkhov. Ford, a temporary Michigan transplant from the South, attended Michigan State University and writes in his  introduction to the Chekhov anthology that Chekhov is a writer for adults. Chekhov’s most frequent themes of adultery, poverty and illness are not exactly the hero’s journey that Hollywood pumps into most movies. Chekhov’s plots pale and blur while his characters are noteworthy. My Russian dentist who inspired this literary trek says Chekhov descriptions, such as in “A Man with a Case,” have become Russian cultural references for describing personality types. After reading every Chekhov story, Richard Ford chose his favorites. He admits to adding a few stories that were not as polished and complete as Chekhov’s later works. In Ford’s opinion, “The Lady and the Dog” is one of Chekhov’s finest short stories.

Ranker.com

Since I read Ford’s number one pick, I wanted to compare other lists. ListVerse.com which compiles top ten lists of the bizarre to scientific failed in the literary realm with only three lists:

Top Ten Books of All Time (#9 The Stories of Anton Chekhov)

Top Ten Greatest Writers (#3 Pushkin with Russian runner ups of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky)

Ten More Strange Moments In the History of the Novel Awards (no Russians until 1933)

My prize discovery is Ranker.com. This website allows viewers to vote for their favorites on people, entertainment, sports, culture and videos. Curious if the general public could be trusted to rank a literary giant like Chekhov, I find the ratings are generous for a guy who died in 1904. Here are the lists containing Anton Chekhov:

Best Anton Chekhov Short Stories

The Best Writers of All Time (#25 Chekhov)

Best Novelist of All time (#50 Chekhov)

Best Short Story Writers of All time (#3 Chekhov)

Dying Words Last Spoken by Famous People (#69 Chekhov)

The Greatest Playwrights in History (#2 Chekhov)

The Best Russian Authors (#3 Chekhov)

The Hottest Dead Writer (#3 Chekhov)

Every Person Who Has Been immortalized in a Google Doodle

I confess to spending more time on Ranker.com than in Chekhov’s actual writings. In regards to the primary mission of finding Chekhov’s best short stories, the survey says . . . the following stories received the most votes:

The Lady and the Dog (18 pages written 1889)

The Bet (9 pages written 1888)

Ward No. 6 (48 pages written 1892)

The Death of a Clerk (4 pages written 1883)

Misery (6 pages written 1886)

Fast Pass to Chekhov

If narrowing the reading to a handful of stories is still too much, then do what theme parks call the “fast pass.” Similar to a theme park’s shorter line, this method makes the classics very easy, fast and fun. I can listen to more stories than I have time to read.

The Duel (an independent film made in 2010 with an 81% on the Tomatometer)

“The Bet” (produced by ITV’s “The Short Story”)

The Seagull (a live performance by the Michigan Shakespeare Festival)

The Seagull  (a 1975 production with a Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score of 50%)

Both professional and school productions of Chekhov’s stories are found on YouTube.  Fans of silent movies will want to watch the short 2012 adaptation of Death of a Government Clerk by Ethan Unklesbay. Audio recordings are also on YouTube including the free online digital libraries of Librivox.org, read by volunteers. “Misery” is a good recording.

NPR produces Selected Shorts. The July 2017 program, hosted by Krista Tippett, begins with a Sherwood Anderson short story, continues to two poems by Tracy K. Smith and stories by David Whyte and Elizabeth Crane and finally ends with “An Enigmatic Nature” by Anton Chekhov. I veer off track to listen to Stephen King’s “Batman and Robin Have An Altercation.” This story is on Selected Shorts Too Hot For Radio. (I’m not counting this as a complete diversion because Stephen King’s Misery came to mind when I first saw the short story title of “Misery” by Chekhov.)

In conclusion, Chekhov’s short stories are for the reader to experience many times and in many ways. Ranker.com and Richard Ford helped begin my journey, but there are many stories remaining for me to enjoy. Each different story makes me fall a little bit more for the #3 Hottest Dead Writer.

The Revenant – A Good Idea for a Novel – Part 1 of 2

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screenshot-2016-10-05-06-39-34Michael Punke found enough good ideas in the journals about Hugh Glass to write a novel. At the end of the book, the author acknowledged his historical uncertainties. Alejandro G. Inarritu also found good ideas in The Revenant about the life of Hugh Glass. Inarritu strayed far enough from the Punke story to barely (or shall I say bear-ly) resemble the novel. For weeks, I wondered why Inarritu changed the story. Why mess with a good thing?

The answer to that question came unexpectedly in a screenwriting class. In this two part series, Part One explores the highlights of the novel.  Then, Part Two will show why the screenplay requires a different story and where the screenplay excels. In terms of the classic elements of story, The Revenant is rich in conflict, characters and resolution, which is the structure of the story, the plot.

It’s a Good Book When . . .

1) The action scenes are hazardous to my health.  Mesmerized by each blow of the grizzly bear’s paw, I listen to the audio book, slowing in my driving speed. Other cars are whipping past at 90mph. My car rocks in their wake until the bear’s final swipe. Punke’s novel drops stunning action into almost every scene. Action is conflict. And in this novel, the conflict is evenly spread between nature, man and self. In one scene, a snake strikes with deadly poison. Visualizing the scene, I can hardly grip the steering wheel. Also, I’m thankful I tackled this story in the heat of summer, because I feel cold in 90 degree weather. Other hazards include the frontier skirmishes with different tribes–a few fur trappers against what seems like an Arikara army. I want to duck for cover under the dashboard from the assault of arrows. For self-conflict, Glass battles his own desire for revenge when he finds Bridger, one of the volunteers left to care for him. Bridger’s haunted and tortured thoughts echo in my memory foreshadowing what is to come. Punke writes, “Stunned silence filled the room as the men struggled to comprehend the vision before them. Unlike the others, Bridger understood instantly. In his mind he had seen this vision before. His guilt swelled up, churning like a paddle wheel in his stomach. He wanted desperately to flee. How do you escape something that comes from inside? The revenant, he knew, searched for him” (p. 201).

2) The characters’ problems are larger than life. As I open the refrigerator to pull out a ready-made dinner in my heated house with clean running water, I lose appreciation for the survival challenges of two hundred years ago. The Revenant is written about fur trappers in 1823. Survival requires creativity, skill and courage. Glass must somehow find food without a knife, gun or a fast food restaurant on every corner. The descriptions of ways to trap small animals, catch fish and defeat other predators draw in the mystified urban reader. Along Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Glass must find shelter and eventually transportation. I marvel at the “live or die” mentality that forces Glass to confront wolves feeding at a buffalo carcass. Without food, Glass will be too weak to heal, to live, and most importantly to seek revenge.

3) When revenge is not so sweet. The Revenant is an object story. This revenge-fueled obsession is because of a stolen gun. Punke devotes pages to describing the Anstadt, “a so-called Kentucky flintlock, made, like most of the great arms of the day by German craftsmen in Pennsylvania” (p. 18). Two hundred years ago, a gun was life, and Glass trusted his life to his reliable and beautiful gun. That’s why the novel’s bear attack has Glass drop to one knee and aim to shoot the bear’s heart at exactly the right distance to kill. Punke builds rich backstories for Fitzgerald and his motive to take the gun and continue in his corrupt ways. The stolen knife, however, fills Bridger with guilt. As for resolution, stories end with the character either accomplishing the goal or not. Glass finds both Bridger and Fitzgerald (not much of a spoiler). Each reader will have to decide whether Glass is satisfied with the non-Hollywood ending.

In summary, the novel adds a rich historical perspective of life on the frontier. Scenes with French voyageurs, Yellow Horse and an unlucky Captain Henry heighten this storytelling. A quick internet search on Hugh Glass brings poems, songs, historical accounts and movies. The lore and fictional accounts elevate Hugh Glass to legend. Each fictional remake of the fur trapper and mountain man adds to his story. In Part two of “The Revenant – A Good Idea for a Film,” the legend shifts in a new direction.