Suppose you manage to escape from an attic in which you've been locked up and forced to read all of Harry P., bare footed you escape one night in no more than your pjs. You flag down a car, explain your predicament, and they lock you up in an attic and make you read Twilight a hundred times.

This makes it look like you were so much better before, so why did you do this thing when you should have stayed where you were. But this is looking at it all backwards. You were in a terrible situation and you escaped. What happened next is not relevant to the evaluation of that act. It's the same with Tsarist and Bolshevik Russia. You can't look backwards arguing that what they had before was so much better. What they had was fucking appalling. They had to escape. The rest is another story altogether.

Chekhov does a brilliant job of setting out what a hellhole of shit Tsarist Russia was. I urge anybody who is inclined down the fatuous path of reasoning that it was better than what came later to read what it was actually like. You won't get a better rendition.

-------------------------

Gee whiz. If this is Chekhov being an optimistic I'd hate to see him on a bad hair day.

The goodreads lament, straight from the man:

As if it were ordained by fate, he would always start gently, kindly, with every good intention, calling himself an old university student, an idealist, a Don Quixote. [tick] But then, without even realizing it, he would suddenly resort to abuse and slander. [tick] Most amazing of all, he would criticise the arts, science and morality, in all sincerity, although it was twenty years since he had last read a book or travelled further than the main town in the district, and he really didn't have any idea of what was going on out in the wide world. [tick] If he sat down to write something, even a letter of congratulation, that too would turn out abusive. All this was most peculiar, as he was in fact a sensitive man [as he thinks to himself], easily moved to tears....[tick. Shit this is sounding so familiar]

He had a nightmare in which he was standing in the middle of a room, naked and tall as a giraffe, poking his finger out and saying, 'Right in their fat mugs. Let them have it right in their fat ugly mugs!'....[Hey, that's my dream]

[The next day]

He lay on the couch in his study, then sat at his desk and began to write his daughters a letter. His hand shook and his eyes itched. He wrote that he was old now, unwanted and unloved, and he asked his daughters to forget him and, when he died, to bury him in a simple pine coffin, without any fuss, or to send his body to the dissecting theatre at Kharkov. He felt that every line breathed malice and play-acting, but he couldn't stop and kept writing, writing...

I'm going to stop right there.

Except that I just have to say some really interesting things about the US debt crisis and the translation of Norwegian into Guugu Yimithir, and may I pontificate on the short comings of the Two Fat Ladies' rendition of Scotch Eggs and -

Stop it.

STOP IT.

I can't. My fingers -

Thinks back to Jules and Jim review.

I wonder if writing is a substitute for onanism?

Well. Interesting that you ask. In my opinion -

Argghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I can't ssttttttttttoooooooooop-
( )

Suppose you manage to escape from an attic in which you've been locked up and forced to read all of Harry P., bare footed you escape one night in no more than your pjs. You flag down a car, explain your predicament, and they lock you up in an attic and make you read Twilight a hundred times.

This makes it look like you were so much better before, so why did you do this thing when you should have stayed where you were. But this is looking at it all backwards. You were in a terrible situation and you escaped. What happened next is not relevant to the evaluation of that act. It's the same with Tsarist and Bolshevik Russia. You can't look backwards arguing that what they had before was so much better. What they had was fucking appalling. They had to escape. The rest is another story altogether.

Chekhov does a brilliant job of setting out what a hellhole of shit Tsarist Russia was. I urge anybody who is inclined down the fatuous path of reasoning that it was better than what came later to read what it was actually like. You won't get a better rendition.

-------------------------

Gee whiz. If this is Chekhov being an optimistic I'd hate to see him on a bad hair day.

The goodreads lament, straight from the man:

As if it were ordained by fate, he would always start gently, kindly, with every good intention, calling himself an old university student, an idealist, a Don Quixote. [tick] But then, without even realizing it, he would suddenly resort to abuse and slander. [tick] Most amazing of all, he would criticise the arts, science and morality, in all sincerity, although it was twenty years since he had last read a book or travelled further than the main town in the district, and he really didn't have any idea of what was going on out in the wide world. [tick] If he sat down to write something, even a letter of congratulation, that too would turn out abusive. All this was most peculiar, as he was in fact a sensitive man [as he thinks to himself], easily moved to tears....[tick. Shit this is sounding so familiar]

He had a nightmare in which he was standing in the middle of a room, naked and tall as a giraffe, poking his finger out and saying, 'Right in their fat mugs. Let them have it right in their fat ugly mugs!'....[Hey, that's my dream]

[The next day]

He lay on the couch in his study, then sat at his desk and began to write his daughters a letter. His hand shook and his eyes itched. He wrote that he was old now, unwanted and unloved, and he asked his daughters to forget him and, when he died, to bury him in a simple pine coffin, without any fuss, or to send his body to the dissecting theatre at Kharkov. He felt that every line breathed malice and play-acting, but he couldn't stop and kept writing, writing...

I'm going to stop right there.

Except that I just have to say some really interesting things about the US debt crisis and the translation of Norwegian into Guugu Yimithir, and may I pontificate on the short comings of the Two Fat Ladies' rendition of Scotch Eggs and -

Stop it.

STOP IT.

I can't. My fingers -

Thinks back to Jules and Jim review.

I wonder if writing is a substitute for onanism?

Well. Interesting that you ask. In my opinion -

Argghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I can't ssttttttttttoooooooooop-
( )

very good stories ( )