At the start of his twenties, when he was still in medical school, Anton Chekhov
was also busily setting himself up as a prolific and popular writer. Appearing
in a wide range of periodicals, his shrewd, stinging, funny stories and sketches
turned a mocking eye on the mating rituals and money-grubbing habits of the mid
dle classes, the pretensions of aspiring artists and writers, bureaucratic corru
ption, drunken clowning, provincial ignorance, petty cruelty on Russian life, in
short. Chekhov was already developing his distinctive ear for spoken language,
its opacities and evasions, the cliches we shelter behind and the cliches that b
etray us. The lively stories in "The Prank" feature both the themes and the char
acteristic tone that make Chekhov among the most influential and beloved of mode
rn writers."
