To a Distant Island

By James McConkey and James H. McConkey

Book Overview

"One of our finest writers."--Annie Dillard

"What a pleasure, and how much there is to learn from this short book " --Denise Levertov

"A deeply moving, exquisitely written book."--Washington Post Book World

"Exceptionally serene prose...leveled with sharp observation and subtle wit...neither history nor fiction, but rather a kind of reimagining of the past."--Michael Dirda, Smithsonian Magazine

"We have had many straight biographies of writers in recent years...that leave their subjects curiously diminished. Mr. McConkey's achievement...is to send the reader back to the Russian master with renewed wonder."--Harvey Shapiro, The New York Times

In 1890 Anton Chekhov--thirty years old and already a famous writer--left his home and family in Moscow to travel 6,500 miles across Russia, over frozen land and sea, by train, ferry, and troika, to visit the island of Sakhalin, a penal colony off the coast of Siberia.

What was Chekhov seeking by undertaking such a harrowing journey to that God-forsaken island? Ostensibly, he went in his role of physician, to observe the medical conditions and to collect statistical information (Indeed, Chekhov wrote that during his stay he filled out more than 10,000 census cards based on interviews with prisoners and exiles.) But his motivation, as James McConkey reflects, was more likely escape: escape from the sense of confinement that fame, fortune, and family had brought--a search, in other words, for freedom in a place where no one was free.

In To a Distant Island, McConkey recreates Chekhov's remarkable journey in all of its complexity, while interweaving a journey of his own. As McConkey guides us through the Russian wilderness and into the soul of this great writer, he uncovers the peculiar and hidden forces that shaped two lives.

"The genre in which McConkey does his best writing has no name. He invented it...What McConkey does is to create meaning out of ordinary life. He'll take a tiny incident...and by linking it through memory with a series of past events, he'll create what is not exactly a story but a pattern in time. By then the incident is no longer small; it has become the focus for a revelation...His books should be famous." --Noel Perrin, U.S.A. Today

James McConkey is the author of Crossroads, The Tree House Confessions, The Novels of E.M. Forster, and Court of Memory (a continuing biography that appeared serially in various magazines, primarily The New Yorker), and many other books. He is Goldwin Smith Professor of English Literature Emeritus at Cornell University.

Jay Parini is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College. He is the author of The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year and Robert Frost: A Life and many other works of fiction, criticism, poetry, and biography.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0966491351
• ISBN13: 9780966491357
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Paul Dry Books
• Length: 203 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

An elegant, affecting book

In 1890, Anton Chekhov traveled across Russia to the island of Sakhalin to visit a prison colony there and write a book about what he found. The trip was so arduous as to be almost suicidal, and no-one has ever clearly understood why Chekhov desired such a journey.James McConkey's To a Distant Island is partially a chronicle of Chekhov's journey, but there is much more to the book than that. McConkey uses Chekhov's letters, the book he wrote when he returned, and various biographies to weave a speculative narrative. There are many gaps in the documentary evidence, and McConkey fills these gaps in with fictional scenes and suppositions, adding color and depth where previously there have only been shadows. He links moments in the journey to Chekhov's own stories and plays with tremendous insight -- indeed, McConkey's odd book offers some of the best literary criticism of Chekhov written in English. Additionally, the book is a sort of memoir. McConkey first discovered Chekhov's Sakhalin letters while traveling in Florence and fleeing depression and discontent with his life, a confluence of psychology and situation which allowed him to be particularly empathetic to Chekhov's journey. At first, his discussion of himself within the book seemed anachronistic and intrusive, but I came to enjoy and even relish the memoiristic elements of To a Distant Island as much as I did the material about Chekhov.I don't know of another book like To a Distant Island. It is lyrical, surprising, informative, and deeply affecting. Chekhov comes alive far more in this slim volume than in all the hundreds of pages of Donald Rayfield's exhaustive recent biography. This book could serve as a fine introduction to Chekhov's life and works, it could be tremendously fascinating to people who are already familiar with Chekhov, and I expect it would even prove to be a rewarding read for lovers of literature in general who have no particular interest in Chekhov. At the very least, if you appreciate fine writing, you will appreciate this book.