“Unavailable to account for himself, Anton Chekhov has become the invention of his admirers, who may variously prefer him tentative or exuberant, skittish or implacable, walking as delicately as a girl or tough as old boots. Some get excited about the new Chekhov, now that those old-maidish Soviets have got their hands off him to reveal new warts on the familiar face; all this does to others is to prompt a smile. For what, I think, could be more natural for a man with delicate physical difficulties in a barbarous age than to complain daily to his sister about water closets? What more obvious for a consumptive whose euphoria turned erotic at inconvenient times than occasionally to turn down some discreet alley in a Siberian town? Thank God for the loss of sanctity.”