person
Kulakov
also: Кулаков
A new contributor to Leikin's Oskolki whose debut story Chekhov reads and judges promising in craft but ill-advised in choosing drunkenness as its subject; not otherwise identified in the surviving correspondence.
Reading notes
- To N. A. Leikin, 24 December 1886. Moscow. §6 he made his debut with drunkenness
Chekhov's objection is craft-based, not moralistic: he faults Kulakov not for depicting drunkenness but for doing so "for the sake of drunken little words" (\emph{radi p'yanyh slovechek}) -- i.e. leaning on a colorful vice for cheap local color and easy laughs rather than earning the material, which he calls "a certain kind of cynicism." Chekhov's own fiction returns to drink and drunkenness constantly; the complaint is about a lazy, exploitative treatment of the subject, not the subject itself.