BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Full of Sympathy for Women, His Heroines at Least (Published 1998)

ANTON CHEKHOV A Life By Donald Rayfield 674 pages.Henry Holt & Company. $35. The popular image of Anton Chekhov that has come down to us is that of a saintly man: not only the ''nicest'' and most approachable of the great Russian writers, lacking Tolstoy's ego and Dostoyevsky's torment, but also the very model of a mensch, that rare thing, a selfless writer who expended much of the energy in his s