Friday, August 12, 2011

Chekhov's Poseur

As I think I must have said before, irrepressible anger is by far my most reliable motivator in my writing endeavors. Things that make me laugh often fail in making me work, but fury always gets it done. Well, I am just livid at the moment about the way people will pretend to know things. Are you familiar with the concept of Chekhov's Gun? I've heard of it, and I can explain it. I will readily admit that I haven't read or seen performed a single one of Anton Chekhov's plays. I don't think I could even name one.

Do others admit the same? They do not. They don't claim to be authorities on Chekhov, the theatre or drama, but neither do they dispel the illusion that they are by just chancing the bring up some specific thing like that. I find that very distasteful. These people are the same that suddenly started peppering their conversations with the word 'Schadenfreude' as if they were students of the German language and not people who heard it on talk radio or one of the news networks.

That's how I heard it, and I would feel like a fraud if I just threw it in there as if that weren't the case. For that reason I don't volunteer to explain the concept. If I want to convey the general thrust of it, I find a way of doing that that feels more honest to me. That can have the unfortunate effect of requiring me to speak at greater length, the consequences of which I appreciate very well. Short, simple stuff is the way to be popular, and I just can't always manage that.

Avoiding the use of knowledge which I cannot buttress with related knowledge does make it a little tougher to engage in discourse. I read a lot more than I write, and I try to listen more than I talk. When I wanted to use a line from Teddy Roosevelt which I had heard in Nixon's resignation address, I did more than most people who also liked it. I read the entire speech to the Sorbonne from which the line was drawn. It was awfully long, but contained some other rather interesting stuff.

Likewise, to feel comfortable with this Chekhov's Gun thing, I would probably have to read some of his plays and any non-fiction work in which he outlines the idea. To use 'Schadenfreude', I'd really have to learn German. That's my attitude. There's just not short-cutting your way to being a substantial person. That's what I hope to be, or hope to become. Maybe it will come at the cost of being successful or popular, the nature of things today being what they are, but it will feel better.

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