Chekhov was a Doctor

“Pulaski has a gift for combining the lyrical with the earthy.”—The New York Times Book Review

As Jack Pulaski is returned to the fiction of his life in the novel Chekhov was a Doctor, he’s more than surprised, but not shocked to recognize that an essential aspect of a returning obsession has pulled him back—or propelled him forward. He is only interested in the “creative process” inasmuch as it is a story. A love story.

A protagonist discovering the terms of his life, which are the always-to-be-discovered requirements of his art: a peculiar virginal state, more promising than Candide’s dogmatic optimism; he is humbled before something that feels like fate; his helplessly attentive self, like the story about to unfold, a thing in itself.

Pulaski is of necessity a slow learner, incapable of trusting illustrative thematic questions; his only option is to travel with the protagonists—Davy and Elena—to see what he can see. They bear unmistakable affinities with Laura and Isaac, the lovers in his previous novel, Courting Laura Providencia. Still, the souls of Elena and Davy are their own, as is their adventure and what they enact hopefully will provide the author with further education and the reader with a tale of significant ambition.

Jack Pulaski grew up in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. His stories have appeared in journals such as The Iowa Review, Ohio Review and Ploughshares, as well as in two anthologies: The Pushcart Prize I and The Ploughshares Reader. He is the recipient of a fiction award from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines, and his stories have twice been singled out for high praise in the Nelson Algren Short Fiction Contest. Pulaski currently lives in Vermont.