Is this minimalism as a stylistic statement, or something? Is it not what’s there, but what isn’t there? (Like action, personality, conflict?) This is a well-regarded piece of literature, but it passed me right by. This is a story in which nothing much happens, and the black monk bits I found uninteresting. He gets caught talking to himself (as it seems – he’s talking with his imaginary black monk) and “treated” for his “illness,” which frustrates him. Our protagonist sees the black monk, talks with him, and uses their conversations as fodder for his own writing (oh yes, he is a writer by profession). At a party somebody shares the legend of the black monk, who is imaginary but shows up… sometimes, some places. The father figure encourages him to marry the daughter of the estate (so, the sister figure?), and he does. In The Black Monk, our protagonist visits the estate where he was raised family-like by non-relations. At any rate, the Russian society on the estate felt very much like the same background, transferred from Anna Karenina to Chekhov’s short stories. I don’t know if it’s Russian writers with shared characteristics, or that they both evoke the same world and that’s what bothers me. It was remarkable to me how much these stories reminded me of Tolstoy (who, if you recall, I also did not like). I listened to The Black Monk and Gooseberries. It’s funny when things turn out that way: when I turn out not to like an author who is Classic, or in this case, revered as one of the best short story writers of all time (I can’t remember where I’ve heard this, but I have. Meaning, I don’t seem to be a Chekhov fan.

I am tagging this as a did not finish, although I did, in fact, finish two short stories (and barely started a third).

The Black Monk by Anton Chekhov