A Dash of Chekhov, Che, and Murakami

So...I'm a nerd. When I read books, I like to underline quotes and passages that affect me in some way. Then I usually scribble in the margins a word or two to describe my feelings, which are usually "wtf," "blatant sexism," or "this is greatest thing I've ever read."

I could write a thousand posts about the former two reactions, but I think today I'll go for the latter. I'm just going to leave the interpretation up to you, the reader. Here are some quotes that I found particularly effective, and hopefully so will you.

A ponderous Chekhov, pondering
life's ponderous points

This is from Anton Chekhov's short story Gooseberries. The character Ivan Ivanych (so original...) went off on a social commentary as Chekhov's character are wont to do from time to time:

"[...] Just take a look at this life of ours and you will see the arrogance and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak. Everywhere there's unspeakable poverty, overcrowding, degeneracy, drunkenness, hypocrisy and stupid lies . . . And yet peace and quiet reign in every house and street. Out of fifty thousand people you won't find one who is prepared to shout out loud and make a strong protest. We see people buying food in the market, eating during the day, sleeping at night-time, talking nonsense, marrying, growing old and then contentedly carting their dead off to the cemetery. But we don't hear or see those who suffer: the real tragedies of life are enacted somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is calm and peaceful and the only protest comes from statistics--and they can't talk. Figures show that so many went mad, so many bottles of vodka were emptied, so many children died from malnutrition. And clearly this kind of system is what people need. It's obvious that the happy man feels contented only because the unhappy ones bear their burden without saying a word: if it weren't for their silence, happiness would be quite impossible. It's a kind of mass hypnosis. Someone ought to stand with a hammer at the door of every happy contented man, continually banging on it to remind him that there are unhappy people around and that however happy he may be at the time, sooner or later life will show him its claws and disaster will overtake him in the form of illness, poverty, bereavement and there will be no one to hear or see him. But there isn't anyone holding a hammer, so our happy man goes his own sweet way and is only gently ruffled by life's trivial cares, as an aspen is ruffled by the breeze. All's well as far as he's concerned."

Che receiving a lei. (Omg that rhymed!)

This next quote is from an iconic yet rather debated figure, Che Guevara. (I highly recommend reading his
diaries of the Cuban Revolution.) He mentions something very close to my heart: learning the stories of El Pueblo. From August 20th, 1960:

"We must then begin to erase our old concepts and come ever closer and ever more critically to the people. Not in the way we got closer before, because all of you will say: 'No, I am a friend of the people. I enjoy talking with workers and peasants, and on Sundays I go to such and such a place to see such and such a thing.' Everybody has done that. But they have done it practicing charity, and what we have to practice today is solidarity. We should not draw closer to the people to say: 'Here we are. We come to give you the charity of our presence, to teach you with our science, to demonstrate your errors, your lack of refinement, your lack of elementary knowledge.' We should go with an investigative zeal and with a humble spirit, to learn from the great source of wisdom that is the people."

Murakami being Mura-kickass

These last quotes are from one of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami, in his novel Sputnik Sweetheart (I highly highly highly recommend this short yet life-altering book.) These passages relate back very closely to Chekhov's quote about silence and living without changing anything.

"So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands--even if we are left completely changed people with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives with way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to our allotted span of time, bidding farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness." (Page 225)

"Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost. Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can disappear, melding together in a single, overlapping figure. And as we live our lives we discover--drawing towards us the thin threads attached to us--what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their lives are fleeting." (Page 226)

Another Lewis Carroll Comic

"God Alice, why did I make
you such a dweeb?"

Most everyone knows Lewis Carroll was the 19th-century author who wrote the greatest children's novel ever written ever end of story thank you goodbye. (Alice in Wonderland, duh.)

But besides being a writer, he was also a mathematician and professor at Oxford, a notable photographer, and Anglican deacon. That's all well and good. So what makes him interesting?

Lewis Carroll, since an early age, suffered from a habitual stammer. This is not a stutter (where certain consonants are repeated) but a hesitation of speech. Via The Stuttering Foundation: One longtime friend, May Barber, described Carroll's speech, "Those stammering bouts were rather terrifying. It wasn't exactly a stammer because there was no noise, he just opened his mouth... When he was in the middle of telling a story....he suddenly stopped and you wondered if you had done anything wrong. Then you looked at him and you knew that you hadn't, it was all right. You got used to it after a bit. He fought it wonderfully."

Carroll developed a reputation as being a quiet and somewhat terribly boring mathematics professor at Oxford, and I'm sure the stammer didn't help.

This got me thinking. I wanted to make a comic about Carroll's stammer, because it's always better to turn tragedy into comedy, isn't it? So the following is my reasoning behind the stammer and what might've been REALLY going on there....