Chekhov 1889-1891

    Somehow, some way, I've been able to keep this guy in the rotation of readings, along with the OTIS creative writing MFA assignments. Keeping something close by that you trust, when facing the demons and mind games of everyday life, that is what keeps you from losing yourself out there. This guy helps me remember who I am.
    By the way, I won't be writing any more reviews on the books they assign at OTIS. They started to get way too depressing, all about bigotry, racism, social injustice, and all the intolerant jerks of society, blech... Kind of started bringing me down. Plus, all the writing started to sound the same. Not a whole lot of variety of voices or execution with these things. But Chekhov keeps me grounded.
    There's something about art making that I think we all overlook, and that's how when you're looking at a creation by someone else, you are getting a lesson in how they, as an individual, experience this medium when they are engaging with it psychologically. Not really what excites them, or what makes them swoon, but rather, what type of push from the other side of the curtain compels them to cherish the experience.
    That's all it is, you know, this art looking business, is standing in front of a vacant doorway between two rooms in the house, with nothing but a curtain separating the rooms, and you place one hand against it, pushing, and feeling an anonymous push back from an invisible other. You don't see their face or hear their voice, just feel their push. It might feel weird and unexpected at first, and you might doubt if this is appropriate, or if it will change you in a way you can't un-change. But if you lose the ego, and lower your guard, and trust the person who's doing the pushing, you actually discover it is quite comforting, so long as the person on the other side of the curtain knows what they're doing.
    Don't pull away or leap back, don't recoil. Let it open you.
    The way that Chekhov, as his own person, would have enjoyed the push of good literature, the psychological "itch" that gets scratched with composition, and use of language for him, is apparent in his own execution, as it will be with anyone. He doesn't seem to obsess on the overtly ornamental or flamboyant quality of things, but the more unexpected, understated element of human interaction through scenes and scenarios.
    His characters, I can't help but adore for their unsexiness, their awkwardness, and how unlikely they are to be the heroes of any sort of nineteenth century heavy hitting literature. When you take a character like a university professor who is aging, and laments his loss of stamina, needing to take a break during lengthy lectures when he used to be able to power through, or having to take a seat now and then, or not being so quick in recalling the material as he was decades ago, you wonder what makes this guy so heroic and dashing that we need to write a story about him, but with Chekhov's writing, he makes that guy so interesting to watch, for his normalness, his unlikeliness, and we can't help but sympathize. The story I'm referring to, of course, is called "A Dreary Story" in where he deals with his adult children at home.
    Characters like this, or the other non-flashy characters, have something of an advantage in terms of sympathy over the heavy hitters of literature.
   I mean come on, when you look at Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, Jean Valjean of Les Miserables, or Emma, it's obvious that someone is going to tell your story. Your story is fucking incredible.
    If you're an orphan who's mother died in childbirth and you had to struggle to survive alone in a dingy old work house just to make it out and become a heroic figure in your own right, you're just begging for your story to be told. It's a no brainer. All inspiring and shit. Who wouldn't write that down?
  Or if you're a young girl being raised by extended family who despises you and verbally abuses you, so you can eventaully attend a boarding school for girls in the o so oppressive nineteenth century and eventually become a governess in the house of a wealthy estate owner who proposes marriage to you, only to discover he was secretly keeping another wife hidden from you, with a deranged mental illness, who tried to burn you alive while you slept, I mean come on, the drama there is insane, who isn't going to write your story? It's too juicy. It will be a mad rush to get you on the page. Such an obvious choice.
  And to be a good man wrongfully convicted and sentenced heavily for a light crime, one committed out of necessity for survival. (Stealing a loaf of bread) only to escape and become a wealthy, high ranking member of society under a different name, and adopt a little girl as your own and raise her, since her mother was flat broke and had to sell her hair and her front teeth, only to pass away all tragically, and form an everlasting bond with her, while being chased by a relentless authority figure bent on capturing you in a years long chase. That story is damn incredible, who isn't going to write that?
   There's no way those stories are not going to make their heroes look sexy and dashing. It's like your story was written specifically to make you look good. Like there's no way you're going to get through this without looking like a hero, you lousy show off.
    But Chekhov, he takes his characters and their situations straight out of the lost and found. It's like he gathered the literary hero "rejects". The ones that weren't sexy enough to be among the heavy hitters. Their situation wasn't dramatic enough, was a bit awkward, clumsy, and didn't give them a chance to look like world conquering heroes enough, so they got left behind. Perhaps that's how Chekhov saw himself as a writer, and I like to imagine him as a young man, so enthralled with the medium, that he just wanted a go at it any way he could, and saw that all the "good" characters and scenarios were taken, so he had to work with the leftovers. Luckily, he was so eager to write something, out of sheer love of the craft, that he wasn't picky about it. He was willing to take anyone, and he utilized them in such a way that he's telling their un-heroic-ness in a way that makes them a type of hero in their own right.
   The largest chunk of this particular collection is the story, "The Duel" in where a man, Layevsky, has run off with another man's wife, a woman named Nadezhda. They have their fling for about two years, him thinking this is a great gig, with no reason to marry, until the woman's husband, (whom she did not love) passed away, and now Layevsky's wondering if there's going to me talk of matrimony between him and the newly widowed Nadezhda.
   He's a clumsy oaf who did something unscrupulous, and not got himself into an awkward position as he doesn't want to get married. Eventually, one of the men in the community who strongly disapproves of his actions, Dr. Von Koren, challenges Layevsky to a duel, and Layevsky of course is a complete coward and fool, who can't get it together.
    These not so magnificent heroes are what I'm talking about with those left out of the mainstream literary cannon, but still have stories worth telling in the hands of the right author. This is true genius, true ingenuity can make anything compelling. The most important character  in any story is the storyteller. That is the one person that CAN'T be boring.