Gorky’s Reminiscences of Writers.

Adam Thirlwell has a wonderful LRB review essay (25 June 2026; archived) of a book I keep meaning to read, Gorky’s Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev (the review is of the new translation by Bryan Karetnyk). It opens irresistibly: In a library​ when I was young I came across a book published by the Hogarth Press. It was so delicate I hardly wanted to touch it. It had a mottled green cover, it was maybe seventy pages long, and I read it in one amazed hour. The book was Maxim Gorky’s Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi, from 1920, which the Woolfs would later republish in a fuller volume, with two more of Gorky’s reminiscences: of Chekhov and the less world-famous Leonid Andreyev. I loved the book entirely, and surely any book is lovable that has Tolstoy on the phone to Chekhov? For a while I considered stealing it, this rare object, which seemed to contain answers to the mystery of something called literature. The translation a century ago was by S.S. Koteliansky…