figure
Gnekker
also: Гнеккер
The professor-narrator's son-in-law in Chekhov's novella "A Boring Story" -- a fortune-hunting swindler whose one internal thought, "the old man's gone soft in the head!", Chekhov singles out in this letter as the single opinion in the whole novella that he, as author, personally shares, while insisting every other view voiced in the story is invented/contrived rather than his own -- the letter's key statement of authorial objectivity.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 17 October 1889. Moscow. §9 мошенника Гнеккера, это -- "спятил старик!"
Gnekker, the professor-narrator's fortune-hunting son-in-law in "A Boring Story" (referred to throughout this section only as "the story"/"the novella" and identified via the professor and Gnekker references), is cited as the single character whose one internal judgment -- that the old professor has "gone soft in the head" ("спятил старик!") -- is the only opinion in the whole novella that Chekhov, as author, personally shares. Everything else, he insists, is invented and contrived, in service of the letter's larger argument for authorial objectivity.