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Love in the Time of Numbness; or, Doctor Chekhov, Writer | The New Yorker

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Chekhov’s quest to inoculate himself against ennui offers lessons for writers working in our current climate of desensitization.

Save this story Save this story The following text is adapted from a keynote address given to the recipients of the 2017 Whiting Awards for emerging writers . When my mother’s mother began to die of a mysterious, undiagnosable neurological illness, the first thing she lost was her sense of taste. For most families, perhaps, this would be a rather inconsequential loss, but this had severe repercussions for us. As the matriarch of our heaving, multi-generational family, she had always helmed the kitchen with an efficient, if somewhat despotic, hand. Because all the food in that household was coo

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