Ben Stroud, author of “Eraser,” Issue 119, has a new story out in the Boston Review

Ben Stroud, author of “Eraser,” Issue 119, has a new story out in the Boston Review. “The Moor”

addresses issues of assumption, identity, and bias, through a truly imaginative work of historical

fiction. Set in the mid to late 19th century, “The Moor” follows the tragic, beautiful and, at times,

ludicrous life of detective Jackson Hieronymus Burke. Stroud creates a piece which uplifts the mystery

that is history. History and fiction can seem quite close at times and Stroud investigates this line

astutely. Check out the latest Boston Review!

OS author Ben Greenman’s (issue #113, “The Tremulant”) latest book, Celebrity Chekhov, just out from

Harper Perennial, takes classic Chekhov stories and reworks them to include a range of celebrities

clouding our everyday American existence–from Oprah to Tiger to Brittney Spears. Here, OS intern Conor

Mesinger asks Mr. Greenman a few questions about the project.

CM: What inspired you to augment Chekhov with current celebrities? Why

Chekhov in particular?

BG: What inspired me, initially, was the spirit of Why Not. Do you know

that spirit? It’s a benign spirit. Chekhov in particular because

there’s a kind of anonymity in his fiction. I am sure that Russian

literature scholars will appear immediately brandishing their weapons

(pens? samovars for scalding?) and say that I am an idiot for

believing this, but I have read Chekhov’s stories a number of times,

and what sticks with me are the situations, the moments where

character is revealed, and not necessarily the characters themselves.

Take a story like “The Beggar,” which I love and have always loved.

The main character is a lawyer named Skvortsov. I never remember that.

It’s partly a language barrier, and partly because Skvortsov could be

any officious man who believes he’s helping an unfortunate. So I

started thinking about his stories, and how they seem to me more

satirical than self-important, and that suggested to me that they

could survive an update, particularly one involving celebrities, which

would contort them in all kinds of strange ways. But I hoped, and

hope, that the contortion is a form of exercise rather than a form of

torture.