To A. S. Lazarev, 20 October 1888. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 20 October 1888 to Alexander Semyonovich Lazarev (who wrote under the pen name "Gruzinsky"), the young humorist and fellow "Oskolki" contributor Chekhov had already been advising and promoting through 1888. Lazarev had evidently written to congratulate Chekhov – likely on the recently awarded Pushkin Prize for his story collection "In the Twilight" – prompting Chekhov both to reflect wryly on his own literary standing and to give Lazarev a blunt craft critique of his own recent work.

2 Chekhov thanks Lazarev for his congratulations and denies ever having called him a flatterer, then turns self-deprecating about the risk that any prolific writer – himself very much included – runs of writing himself out; he credits the prize less to his own lasting work, which he expects to be forgotten within years, than to having opened a path to the "thick journals" that other writers, presumably including Lazarev, can now also follow toward literary respectability. He reports that their mutual colleague Yezhov has sent in another "Saturday piece" for "New Times," praises the middle section of Lazarev’s own recent "Saturday piece" (a mother teaching a girl), tells him not to have bothered with return postage, and notes he has passed the manuscript along to Suvorin’s son, currently in Moscow. He asks, half-teasingly, why Lazarev decided against publishing under his own surname (as opposed to his pen name "Gruzinsky"), and urges him to work faster before his moment passes. The letter’s core is an extended craft critique (NB, section 11): Chekhov diagnoses Lazarev’s besetting fault as an excessive caution – over-polishing his prose and hedging bold or sharp phrasing behind parentheses and quotation marks – and recommends the em-dash as the properer tool for asides. He singles out the writers Nefedov and (to a lesser degree) Boborykin as examples of the untalented over-user of scare quotes, and warns Lazarev against imitating the humorist Bilibin’s overly whimsical, old-womanish tone, urging him instead toward a freer, more masculine directness in his descriptions of both women and nature. He closes with good wishes, regards to Lazarev’s wife, and a note on his own health.