Chekhov's Mistress
Chekhov’s Mistress and the Prisoner of Myownmind
The following is the official Chekhov’s Mistress editorial proclamation (if the first blather is too long for you, the bottom blather is better, as it has more specific information):
1st Blather of the 1st Part:
Many years ago, I read something that Anton Chekhov wrote in a letter: “I look upon medicine as my lawful wife and literature as my mistress.” That quote lodged itself into a cranny of my cranium and only resurfaced at about the time I decided to devote my weblog to literature. I was thinking about who might be reading the site [insert humble comment] and what the concept might be. I have to confess that I didn’t really know what it would be like, but I did know who I was writing for: People like me, those that eat their daily bread from a job and feed themselves from the art of the word on the page.
2nd blather of the 1st part:
Now literature seems like a pretentious word and a literary blog seems a bit oxymoronic, being that a blog, the ultimate egalitarian anti-Orwellian and ephemeral construct, is anything but literary, at least in the Samuel Johnson sense (who said of Shakespeare, “He has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit.”). But what’s a little pretentiousness when you already use enough SAT words to throw an 11th grader into paroxysms.
Literature though, is a perfect subject for a blog because it doesn’t seem there are many people who would want to talk about books every single day anywhere else, unless you’re Dave E. and everybody you know is a famous or soon-to-be famous author.
Last blather of the 1st part:
With the exception of Dan Green’s interesting essays, I think my posts are longer than average among lit-blogs. I’m not sure if anyone reads my indulgences, but I can’t seem to do it any other way. I’m also not sure where this blog fits in with the general universe of these bookish blogs, but I can say that mine is a personal and anecdotal approach, with an emphasis on my own take on things – I’m not trying to be all things to all people, but if you have similar interests, you’ll know pretty quickly. My intent is to have one post or more, five days a week.
I’m trying to vary the content by putting up some lists, maybe on Mondays, and Events on Wednesdays if there are any that I think are interesting in the NYC area, maybe a single book recommendation on Friday and all that interspersed with reading notes or thoughts, critic’s criticisms, witticisms, and quoticisms on other days. That’s what you can expect here, except I may do the Monday stuff on Friday and the Wednesday stuff on…
1st blather of the 2nd part: Categories
26 factorial: writing is about writing. I also include in this category anything about blogging because I couldn’t come up with a clever name for a blogging category. And for those of you who didn’t suffer through enough math classes to cap off your kopf, a factorial is “the product of all the whole numbers, except zero, that are less than or equal to that number.” It’s used for, among other things, to determine say, the number of ways that a specific quantity of books can be arranged on a shelf. The number is nothing more than a symbolic gesture of the letters of the alphabet. That’s what a writer does, after all, is arrange letters into words, words into sentences, and so on.
Bad Habits: Bookstores If you read this site, you know all about this. I have found though, that even the best book types I know do not know about some of the great bookstores in NYC, like Gotham, or Mercer or Three Lives, so I intend to mention them when I can and maybe even make some specific posts about them and my opinions on the independent bookstore thing. Sorry if you don’t live in NYC, but that’s the extent of my knowledge, except for some great used bookstores in the Hudson River Valley and Western Mass, and of course, I’ve heard stories about the mythical Powell’s Books in Oregon.
Chekhov’s Mistress Recommends Self explanatory, I suppose. I put books up that I’ve read, or maybe just skimmed through in the bookstore (not really), and you click through and buy them. Simple. Sooner or later, I will earn enough through this to get a free book from Amazon and then I’ll feel good. This really is the great benefit of the community of bookish blogs, finding new things to read, so I may also put up some suggestion by well-read friends, because I haven’t read enough books to keep doing it for too long otherwise.
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature This little saying I shamelessly stole from my favorite bookstore, Gotham Book Mart. Technically everything on the site fits here, so if something doesn’t fit in one of the other categories and it’s not uncategorically uncategorical (meaning that it’s not related to anything), then it goes here.
2nd blather of the 2nd part: Comments
Chekhov’s Mistress loves comments. I have this romantic notion that blogging is about creating dialogue, albeit disjointed asynchronous overly brief dialogue, but I have so far gained as much from getting comments as I have from writing posts. I intend to respond to each comment, as appropriate, in the comments section from where it came. Many of the visits to the site come from searches on Google and other engines, so I imagine that someone looking at an archived post will also benefit from the legacy of comments.
Last blather of the 2nd part:
Read widely, think well, and write often.
Yes, it’s corny, but it’s my little homage to Garrison Keillor’s protestant homily. If you don’t know about it, check out the Writer’s Almanac that the mellifluous Mr. K put’s out every day.
comments
I like your editorial proclamation. So far you are doing a great job. I like reading your long posts. Your focus is so much better than mine. I just thought that since I read so much, other people might want some recommendations on books. But it is harder than I thought to post every day. I feel the need to be interesting and catchy sometimes. Anyway, enough blathering about me. Good job. Keep up the good work!
– bookdwarf (08/05 at 11:35 AM)
I love the heads up on good indie bookstores - wherever they may be so I’m happy they have their own section and that you’re hoping to write more on them. Wahoo!
– Ll (08/05 at 04:58 PM)
I think the longer posts are interesting. Other sites seem to do a great job on the links and what’s happening sort of things. Yours does remind me more of The Reading Experience, but maybe more for a slightly less critical (that is, studied in critical theory) reader.
Enjoy,
– Dan Wickett (08/07 at 07:52 PM)
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