Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.

MOSCOW, September 30, 1889.

... I do not think I ought to change the title of the story. [Footnote: “A Dreary Story.”] The wags who will, as you foretell, make jokes about “A Dreary Story,” are so dull that one need not fear them; and if someone makes a good joke I shall be glad to have given him the occasion for it. The professor could not write about Katya’s husband because he did not know him, and Katya does not say anything about him; besides, one of my hero’s chief characteristics is that he cares far too little about the inner life of those who surround him, and while people around him are weeping, making mistakes, telling lies, he calmly talks about the theatre or literature. Were he a different sort of man, Liza and Katya might not have come to grief.