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Ivan’s speech is the stuff of an excellent essay: articulate, earnest, precisely expressed, supported with examples, infused with sincere intent. That’s why we believe it and why we’re moved by it. But then Chekhov makes double use of the speech by attributing it to Ivan. When Ivan, speaking throug…

So, one way to get a story out of “the plane of its original conception” is to try not to have an original conception. To do this, we need a method. For me (and, I like to imagine, for Gogol, when he was in skaz mode) that method is to “follow the voice.” But there are many methods. Each involves…

So, life is mostly rational, with occasional bursts of absurdity.

Or, maybe: an assumption of rationality holds under normal conditions but frays under duress.

Some stories show us the process of rationality fraying under duress (Kolyma Tales, set in a Siberian work camp; The Handmaid’s Tale,…

Every soul is vast and wants to express itself fully. If it’s denied an adequate instrument (and we’re all denied that, at birth, some more than others), out comes…poetry, i.e., truth forced out through a restricted opening.

That’s all poetry is, really: something odd, coming out. Normal speech,…

Once, I was teaching a flawed but considerable Gogol story called “Nevsky Prospect” and a student said she didn’t like it because it was sexist. I responded with a rare bit of teacherly wisdom by asking, “Where?” And she showed us exactly where, by offering two examples of places where a character …