Chekhov's Mistress

About Chekhov’s Mistress

July 2nd, 2007 - Edited by me, Bud Parr, Chekhov’s Mistress began its life in July, 2003, named briefly “Bookenomics & Policulture.” Looking for focus in what already seemed a crowded blog world, I soon changed the name to Chekhov’s Mistress and devoted the site with few exceptions to discussing literature. With my involvement in the ”Gaddis Drinking Club,” the ”Litblog Co-op” and my own group-blog devoted to discussing Don Quixote, ”400 Windmills,” and my network of literary blogs, ”MetaxuCafe," I’ve become firmly entrenched as one of the blog-people with this site as the center of my online activities.

However, I’ve long felt that beyond its value as my own chair in a big conversation, this site should have more than one contributor. With the newest iteration of the site’s design, I intend to make Chekhov’s Mistress a friendly place for ongoing contributions from thoughtful voices. Soon, we’ll have postings of potential topics ("On Deck” in the fashion of Open Source Radio’s site) and anyone who wants to engage in a conversation about one of those topics or another is welcome to. Hopefully we’ll develop some roundtable format series of posts and/or ad hoc contributions. While participation is by invitation only, feel free to invite yourself by getting in touch - you don’t need to have a blog to write here. The idea is not for contributors to make a guest post and go away, but to feel an ongoing sense of ownership of our site.

The guiding principle for our conversation here is embodied in Adam Zagajewski’s essay “A Defense of Ardor.” If you haven’t read it, I recommend it, but no worries, the title says quite a bit. Otherwise, read the archives here, subscribe, follow along, participate. Thanks.

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Not much of lasting quality to be found on this here blog, but here are a few of my favorites:

Gombrowicz
People’s Act of Love
Gaddis Archive
Milosz
Ugresic
Harry Matthews
Why You should Buy Fair Trade Coffee