Anton's Chekhov's Short Stories

I enjoyed my collection of Chekhov's short stories. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, as he was, after all, my favourite Star Trek character. To me, they seemed to have some of the feel of "real life" to them, which stands in contrast to other 19^th century works I've read. Chekhov isn't trying to answer questions about life. If anything, he's trying to raise them.

This lead to an interesting discussion with a Dickens fan, who seemed to like the structure of a Dickens novel, with its good guys and bad guys, beginning, middle, and end, morality, etc. Chekhov isn't like that at all. And, according to my friend, his style of writing was quite an innovation.

From my brief readings on the topic, there are two types of Chekhov stories: those in which nothing really happens in the end and those on which something does. One story that I liked was The Beggar, which can be read here. I won't say which of those two types The Beggar is. Actually, it isn't clear to me.

I may be forgetting someone, but at this point, I'll say that I think I liked Chekhov's stories better than anything I remember which was written in the 1800s. I recommend his works fairly highly, but I can see how some folks might not enjoy it as much as I did.