Great writer, and nice gy …

… The Vast Humanity of Anton Chekhov | The New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Bob Blaisdell’s new biography, Chekhov Becomes Chekhov, is absorbing, pleasurable, and as unaffected as its subject; and while describing Chekhov’s life through close readings of his multitudinous stories and correspondence over two years—1886 to 1887—he doesn’t simply (as the title promises) explain how Chekhov came to be Chekhov but rather how impossible it was for him to become anybody else.