In The Chekhovian Intertext, Lyudmila Parts explores the mechanisms contained in Russia's ongoing national conversation about its native literature and finds that an important change took place over the course of the twentieth century. She posits that Russian authors view their creative works of fiction as being in dialogue with the established canon of national literature, and up through the early parts of that century, this meant that they were reacting primarily to the works of Aleksandr Pushkin. Parts believes that a shift in Russian cultural attitudes has resulted in the Russian intelligentsia placing Anton Chekhov at the center of their canon. Her journey through Chekhov's works attempts to chart the reasons for this change, and her method of analysis is to examine how he has become central to Russian cultural memory, active in the development of Russian cultural myth, and omnipresent in terms of Russian intertextuality.

After establishing her theoretical approach in Chapter 1, which centers on the theories of Barthes, Bloom, Bakhtin, and Kristeva, Parts moves on to explore first the Pushkin Myth (Chapter 2) and then the Chekhov Myth (Chapter 3). In Chapter 4, “The Chekhovian Intelligent: The Burden of Being a Hero,” she discusses the current state of Chekhov's reputation in Russia before providing close readings from some of his stories. This section is dominated by her reading of “Ward No. 6,” which she examines in relationship to Vyacheslav P'etsukh's “Ward No. 7.” Through this analysis, Parks convincingly advances her argument about Chekhov's centrality to contemporary Russian writers.

Parts's only sustained discussion of Chekhov's theatrical output comes in Chapter 5, “The Cherry Orchard: Paradise Abandoned,” which examines how both the play and its primary metaphor have endured in contemporary Russian culture. Parts provides an excellent historical context for The Cherry Orchard and even suggests a critically ignored passage of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina as one of Chekhov's many sources of inspiration for the play. She offers a detailed overview of the ways that the metaphors of the play were constantly reimagined in major productions throughout the past century and demonstrates how contemporary Russian perceptions of the cherry orchard metaphor have been utilized in a variety of media, from Russian pop songs to sales pitches for gated communities. Her analysis clearly demonstrates that Chekhov's last major play is an artifact that looms large in Russian cultural memory, myth, and intertextuality.

This thesis is further supported by Parts's explication of two of Vladimir Arro's plays that are obviously in dialogue with Chekhov's play: The Orchard (1979, rewritten for television in 1988 and titled Forgive Us, Orchard) and Look Who's Here (1981). In the former, Arro has moved the action of Chekhov's play to a contemporary Siberian town that was originally built up around an electrical plant and contains an apple orchard planted by the town's original inhabitants. Like Chekhov's orchard, this one is also threatened with destruction, this time by a Russian bureaucrat named Matushkin who wants to turn it into an agricultural co-op, and he is clearly Arro's stand-in for Lopakhin. In Look Who's Here, which is not directly tied to Chekhov's play yet clearly evokes similar themes, a writer's widow is forced to sell the family dacha to a hairdresser, a clear nod to Chekhov's concept of a privileged family forced to sell out to someone from a lower class. Arro's texts are virtually impossible to encounter without also considering Chekhov's play. They were also amazingly prescient in describing the Russia that emerged after glasnost, perestroika, and the fall of the Soviet Union, and Parts asserts that they would have been received very differently had they appeared ten years later. Parts's thesis is further developed in Chapter 6, where she examines Chekhov's “The Lady with a Dog,” and then in her afterword entitled “Chekhov without Borders,” where she details Chekhov's influence on contemporary American writers.

Despite the superb content concerning The Cherry Orchard, performance scholars and practitioners may be disappointed by the overall book, as literary theory and Chekhov's short stories receive far more attention than either his plays or performances based on his fiction. There are only a handful of passages about Stanislavsky, the Moscow Art Theatre, The Seagull, and Uncle Vanya and not a word about The Three Sisters. Although information about this aspect of Chekhov's career can be found elsewhere, additional commentary about his other major plays hardly seems beyond the purview of this work. This lack is particularly noticeable because Parts's multigenre analysis of The Cherry Orchard is extremely well-researched, full of new insights, and is an important reading for both scholars and practitioners interested in the play. Another area largely ignored is Chekhov's influence on Russian cinema, and one might expect to see some mention of Russian-language film directors such as Nikita Mikhalkov and Kira Muratova, whose work is decidedly Chekhovian in content, and who both have also created films based on Chekhov's works (including Mikhalkov's An Unfinished Piece for a Player Piano and Muratova's Chekhovian Motifs). Even when she does discuss Joseph Heifits's film version of Lady with a Dog, she does so mainly in her endnotes.

The Chekhovian Intertext: Dialogue with a Classic is primarily for advanced students and scholars of Russian language, culture, and literary theory and should also be of particular interest to Chekhov and Pushkin scholars. While lacking in details about Chekhov's influence on the performing arts, the book is still worthwhile for readers seeking to learn more about his status in his own culture. Parts's study is valuable for her expert readings of Chekhov's works, for her familiarity with and frequent use of Russian cultural critics (many of whose writings are not available in English), and for her thorough integration of theory, biography, literature, and history in crafting a convincing argument as to Chekhov's place in Russian culture.