#anton chekhov: the complete short novels

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?

Anton Chekhov, The Complete Short Novels

#Anton Chekhov

[philosophors]

“Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?”

— Anton Chekhov, “The Complete Short Novels”

#anton checkov #checkov #philosophy #philosopher #philosophers #quote #literature #literature quote #literature quotes #literature lover #bookworm #excerpt #excerpts #lit

[beljar]

Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?

Anton Chekhov, The Complete Short Novels, 1896

#anton chekhov #russian literature #russian philosophy #consumption #fear #anguish #alienation #existentialism #russian #oppressed #conscious mind #existential thoughts #conscious awareness #tumblr #books and libraries #text #quotation #literature #writing #quotes #novel #literary text #world literature

[livinglifedeliberately]

I was becoming a dreamer and, like a dreamer, did not know what in fact I wanted.

Anton Chekhov, “The Story of an Unknown Man” from Anton Chekhov: The Complete Short Novels, trans. by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

#anton chekhov #anton chekhov: the complete short novels #the story of an unknown man #quotes #excerpts #russian lit #антон чехов #dreaming

[merulae]

I don’t know whether it’s the wine speaking in me, or it’s so in reality, but it seems to me that it’s long since I’ve lived through such bright, pure moments as now with you.

Anton Chekhov, The Duel

#quote #Anton Chekhov #The Duel #The Complete Short Novels #Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky #Richard Pevear #Larissa Volokhonsky #lit #quotes

[main-to-arywizm]

Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?

~Anton Chekhov, The Complete Short Novels

#quotes #literature #chekhov #hth quotes #cw suicide #?

[barcarole]

I am really interested in literature, but I didn’t have the chance to read as much when I was younger and now I really don’t know where to start. Do you have a list of absolutely essential books that everyone should read?

Hello! Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely, eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms, and little wildflowers (Roberto Bolaño, 2666). Feel free to start anywhere, without the unconscious obligation of keeping to a specific path. This is a list of books that were the foundation (of sorts) I haphazardly forged when I started (a more conclusive list of favorites would perhaps take more time to consider):

Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

The Odyssey, Homer

Medea, The Bacchae, Euripides

Metamorphoses, Ovid

The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri

Death in Venice and Other Stories, Thomas Mann

Selected Short Stories, Guy de Maupassant

Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin

The Complete Short Novels, Anton Chekhov

Lost Illusions, Honoré de Balzac

Selected Short Stories, Guy de Maupassant

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke

The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol, Nikolai Gogol

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

The Waves, Virginia Woolf

The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

Micromégas, Voltaire

The Collected Stories, Isaac Babel

Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo

The Street of Crocodiles, Bruno Schulz

Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories, Ghassan Kanafani

Bomarzo, Manuel Mujica Lainez

A Talisman of Darkness, Olga Orozco

The Sound of the Mountain, Yasunari Kawabata

The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories, Franz Kafka

The Zhuangzi

A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges

These are some recommended readings and personal favorites of several writers:

Susan Sontag

W. H. Auden

Italo Calvino (also, Why Read the Classics?)

Franz Kafka

Jorge Luis Borges

Oscar Wilde

Joan Didion

André Gide

Virginia Woolf (also, The Common Reader: First Series | Second Series)

Leo Tolstoy

Ernest Hemingway

Friedrich Nietzsche

Henry Miller

Gabriel García Márquez

Emmanuel Carrère, Jacques Roubaud, Patrick Modiano, and many others

I have also made some vaguely related posts (here and here). I hope I’ve helped! If you have any other questions, just ask. Enjoy!

#Ask #Literature

[spectaculardistractions]

We decided it was no longer possible for us to stay in this town, and that when I earned a little money, we would move somewhere else. In some houses people were already asleep, in others they were playing cards; we hated these houses, feared them, and spoke of the fanaticism, the coarseness of heart, the nonentity of these respectable families, these amateurs of dramatic art whom we frightened so much, and I asked how these stupid, cruel, lazy, dishonest people were better than the drunken and superstitious Kurilovka muzhiks, or how they were better than animals, which are also thrown into consternation when some incident disrupts the monotony of their instinct-bound lives. What would become of my sister now, if she went on living at home? What moral suffering would she experience, talking with father, meeting acquaintances every day? I pictured it to myself, and at once people came to my memory, all people of my acquaintance, who were slowly being pushed out of this world by their families and relations, I recalled tortured dogs driven insane, living sparrows plucked bare by little boys and thrown into the water--and the long, long series of obscure, protracted sufferings I had been observing in this town uninterruptedly since childhood; and it was incomprehensible to me what these sixty thousand inhabitants lived by, why they read the Gospel, why they prayed, why they read books and magazines. What benefit did they derive from all that had been written and said so far, if there was in them the same inner darkness and the same aversion to freedom as a hundred or three hundred years ago? A building contractor builds houses in town all his life, and yet till his dying day he says "galdary" instead of "gallery," and so, too, these sixty thousand inhabitants for generations have been reading and hearing about truth, mercy, and freedom, and yet till their dying day they lie from morning to evening, torment each other, and as for freedom, they fear it and hate it like an enemy.

Anton Chekhov, My Life

#anton chekhov #the complete short novels

[givemearmstopraywith]

American Dreams – Sapphire

Break, Blow, Burn – Camille Paglia

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden – Denis Johnson

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

A Good Man is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor

I and Thou – Martin Buber

Straight Life – Art Pepper

The Bible – King James Edition

Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

High Windows – Philip Larkin

The Conference of Birds – Attar of Nishapur

My Promised Land – Ari Shavit

The Christ at Chartres – Denis Saurat

King Leopold’s Ghost – Adam Hochschild

America a Prophecy – Jerome Rothenberg

Ariel – Sylvia Plath

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page – Gerald Basil Edwards

The English and Scottish Popular Ballads

The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

Shaking the Pumpkin  – Jerome Rothenberg

The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson

The Collected Works of Saint Teresa of Avila

Moby Dick – Herman Melville

The Mayor of Casterbridge  – Thomas Hardy

Mid-American Chants – Sherwood Anderson

Collected Works of Billy the Kid – Michael Ondaatje

American Murder Ballads and Their Stories – Olive Woolley Burt

Poems of W. B. Yeats – Selected by Seamus Heaney

The Good Lord Bird – James McBride

Consolations – David Whyte

Roget’s Thesaurus – Peter Mark Roget

Here I Am – Jonathan Safran Foer

Lives of the Saints – Alban Butler

Inferno/From an Occult Diary – August Strindberg

Poems 1959-2009 – Frederick Seidel

S.C.U.M Manifesto – Valerie Solanas

Complete Poems of E. E. Cummings

The Anatomy of Melancholy – Robert Burton

Dave Robicheaux Novels – James Lee Burke

Victory – Joseph Conrad

A Flower Book for the Pocket – Macgregor Skene

The Informers – Bret Easton Ellis

The Frog Prince – Stevie Smith

Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov

Sanctuary – William Faulkner

Short Stories of Anton Chekhov

The Factory Series – Derek Raymond

The Dream Songs – John Berryman

Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl

Walkabout – James Vance Marshall

fifty books that nick cave loves (from the red hand files)

#nick cave #nick cave and the bad seeds #red hand files #p #i knew there would be like. overlap between books i love and books he loves but im actually really surprised by dickinson and plath #although i shouldn't be really

[chadnevett]

Books Read in 2019

As usual, this is really “prose books completed in 2019.” It doesn’t count parts of books read or comics. So, if I decided to randomly read half of the essays in a Chuck Klosterman book or haven’t made it through that history of Canadian international trade just yet... well... Dates are when I finished them. Anyway, I’ve added little blurbs where I felt like it.

1. TV (The Book) by Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz (January 6). Babylon 5 was overlooked.

2. Waiting to Derail: Ryan Adams and Whiskeytown, Alt-Country’s Brilliant Wreck by Thomas O’Keefe with Joe Oestreich (January 9). I haven’t said anything about Ryan Adams in public since the spring. I haven’t listened to any of his music since then either. Not sure if/when I will again. It has meant a lot to me over the years. I understand the difficulty in reconciling the love of his art and what came out about him. I’ve struggled with that. I can understand people who say that they’ll listen to the music anyway, because it means something to them and, in their mind, has nothing to do with the person who made it. I have that disconnect for some things. This one is still too fresh for me; too personal. But, man, the people that I don’t understand are the ones who refuse to think any of it is true. As I said to my wife, I didn’t think this was who he was, but I wasn’t particularly surprised either. Quite frankly, nothing he does would surprise me. Anyway, good book. Entertaining book. Well-timed read, I guess, unfortunately.

3. Dead Pig Collector by Warren Ellis (February 13).

4. CoDex 1962 by Sjon (March 17). I can’t imagine reading this as three separate novels and feeling satisfied with any. Still not convinced it even works as a whole.

5. The Border by Don Winslow (April 22). It ain’t Power of the Dog. It isn’t even The Cartel. And the imprisoned child illegal immigrant plot felt completely unnecessary. But, it was alright.

6. White by Bret Easton Ellis (April 28). Not nearly as extreme or out there as portrayed. I disagreed with some of this, was bored by other parts, and enjoyed others... s’okay.

7. Thanos: Death Sentence by Stuart Moore (May 11). I read this; you don’t have to.

8. Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson’s Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism by Timothy Denevi (May 15). This was good, but it just sort of... ends.

9. I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street by Matt Taibbi (June 3). If you want an unbelievable work of nonfiction that will leave you shaking with rage...

10. Basketball (And Other Things) by Shea Serrano (July 9). Really entertaining and funny.

11. The Farnsworth Invention by Aaron Sorkin (July 13). I’d like to see it performed.

12. Raised in Captivity by Chuck Klosterman (July 27). Like any short story collection, it’s a bit hit or miss. But, when it hit, it really hit. The story about the father with his son at the park really hit me for obvious personal reasons. I identified with it strongly. And I learned that Klosterman searches for his name on Twitter as he liked my tweet about that story despite it not tagging him and being a reply to my Goodreads update. No judgment, but good to know.

13. This Storm by James Ellroy (August 16). Once you get past the first two hundred pages and the idea of everyone in the past being so casually racist that the lingering racism of the present doesn’t seem so overblown, it’s a pretty good book. I was worried that he wouldn’t finish this new LA Quartet, but he’s already talking about another trilogy after this...

14. Three Years by Anton Chekhov (August 25). A novella about how love fades and learning to live with another person can be difficult. A favourite of mine.

15. Movies (And Other Things) by Shea Serrano (October 14). Didn’t like this as much as the basketball one. Our tastes don’t overlap quite enough for this to work for me.

16. Hate, Inc. by Matt Taibbi (November 21). Oh, it’s not just politics and the police that’s completely fucked? Thanks, man.

17. V. By Thomas Pynchon (December 1). Kind of all over the place.

18. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (December 6). More focused.

#books #thomas pynchon #Shea Serrano #Matt Taibbi #anton chekhov #James Ellroy #chuck klosterman #Aaron Sorkin #stuart moore #timothy denevi #Bret Easton Ellis #don winslow #sjon #warren ellis #Alan Sepinwall #matt zoller seitz #thomas o'keefe #joe oestreich #best of 2019

[brokehorrorfan]

5 Horror Directors Who Entered The Twilight Zone

Leading up to today's premiere of Jordan Peele's reboot of The Twilight Zone on CBS All Access, I revisited the original series. Widely considered one of the greatest television shows of all time, Rod Serling's science fiction/horror anthology series ran for 156 episodes over the course of five seasons between 1959 and 1964 on CBS.

The original series attracted an impressive array of actors who would go on to find great success, including William Shatner, Robert Redford, Lee Marvin, Martin Landau, Burt Reynolds, Mickey Rooney, Dennis Hopper, Carol Burnett, Dick York, Ron Howard, Roddy McDowall, Robert Duvall, and many more.

Less discussed but equally important, the show also boasted a number of talented directors. Some were established filmmakers attracted to the Kafkaesque material, while others were eager up-and-comers cutting their teeth in television. Here are five famed horror directors who entered The Twilight Zone.

1. Richard Donner

Richard Donner’s claim to fame among the horror genre is The Omen, but he’s also responsible for bringing The Goonies, Superman, Lethal Weapon, and Scrooged to the screen. Long before crafting such beloved films, he directed six episodes of The Twilight Zone, including one of the show’s most well-known installments. “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” - which was later remade by George Miller for Twilight Zone: The Movie and again for the new reboot - stars William Shatner as a salesman who sees a monster on the wing of his airplane during a flight. Donner also helmed “The Brain Center at Whipple’s,” “The Jeopardy Room,” “Sounds and Silences,” “From Agnes – with Love,” and “Come Wander with Me,” which was the last episode of the series to be filmed. Perhaps influenced by his experiences on The Twilight Zone, Donner later served as executive producer of Tales from the Crypt.

2. Donald Siegel

Donald Siegel is known for directing the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He also did five films with Clint Eastwood, including Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz, as well as John Wayne’s final effort, The Shootist. For The Twilight Zone, he worked on two episodes from the show’s fifth and final season. “Uncle Simon,” is one of three episodes to feature Robby the Robot of Forbidden Planet fame, and “The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross,” in which Don Gordon stars in the titular role as an insensitive man with the power to trade both physical and personality traits with any other person.

3. Joseph M. Newman

Joseph M. Newman is known for the sci-fi classic This Island Earth, which - despite being a good film - was famously the subject of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. Nearly a decade after its release, he directed four episodes for The Twilight Zone’s fifth season. His contributions include “In Praise of Pip,” the season opener and first American TV show to mention the Vietnam War; “The Last Night of a Jockey,” a memorable episode in which Mickey Rooney is the sole actor; “Black Leather Jackets,” about an alien invasion; and “The Bewitchin’ Pool,” the show’s final episode. Newman also tackled ten episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour around the same time he was working on The Twilight Zone.

4. Boris Sagal

Boris Sagal is behind the Charlton Heston-starring cult movie The Omega Man, the second adaptation of regular Twilight Zone writer Richard Matheson’s influential 1954 novel, I Am Legend. He also directed Elvis Presley in Girl Happy. A few years prior, he helmed two episodes of The Twilight Zone. “The Silence” is an intriguing offering, inspired by Anton Chekhov’s short story "The Bet," in which a talkative man is offered $500,000 to remain silent for a year. “The Arrival,” meanwhile, boasts a double twist.

5. Stuart Rosenberg

Stuart Rosenberg directed the original The Amityville Horror, along with the Oscar-winning Cool Hand Luke. He’s also responsible for three Twilight Zone episodes: “I Shot an Arrow into the Air,” which would go on to impact Rod Serling’s Planet of the Apes script, “He’s Alive,” an interesting piece starring Dennis Hopper that involves Adolph Hitler; and “Mute,” adapted by Richard Matheson from his own short story. He’s another director who supplemented his Twilight Zone work with Alfred Hitchcock Presents, handling five episodes.

The Twilight Zone's first revival, which kicked off a three-season run in 1985, attracted a number of notable horror filmmakers, including Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street), William Friedkin (The Exorcist), Joe Dante (Gremlins), Tommy Lee Wallace (It), Paul Lynch (Prom Night), and Jeannot Szwarc (Jaws II). While it didn’t quite live up to the original, it’s fun to see the masters of the genre become part of the legacy. The Twilight Zone was revived again for a single season in 2002.

The Twilight Zone’s original run holds up remarkably well. While certain trivial aspects may be dated, the core themes remain relevant 60 years later. I highly recommend revisiting it while you enjoy the new incarnation. The complete series is streaming on Netflix and is available on Blu-ray and DVD. You can also watch the entire first episode of the new Twilight Zone series for free below.

#the twilight zone #twilight zone #jordan peele #rod serling #richard donner #don siegel #the omen #invasion of the body snatchers #this island earth #the omega man #the amityville horror #amityville horror #article #list #richard matheson

[weirdmirrors]

“What a Time to Be Alone” by Chidera Eggerue (Instead of Book Review)

I can confidently say that conceptually I familiarized myself with everything there is in humanities; of course, I do not know everything, but I know where to place everything (well, who doesn't). Anyway, I'm reading What a Time to Be Alone by Chidera Eggerue, and as much as I am skeptical about self-help books, it's an interesting one, mainly because of the intonation and because of the efficient use of page design. I decided to look at it after praises and praises from girls online.

In my evaluation, this book is something synonymous with the Rupi Kaur phenomenon (in the way it uses graphics and text and their intersection; the multimodality of it is part of what makes it compelling for the contemporary reader).

There are other books that make use of this kind of multimodality; early works by poet Lang Leav and prose by  Mark Danielewski--yes, I do quite seriously think that in all the mentioned cases multimodality (simple pictograms and text, graphic design and text, drawings and text) is the main product that is being offered, often at the expense of text (Danielewski is particularly not a good writer, in my opinion), but that’s okay: text does not have to play the main role.

On a completely unrelated note, if I ever see hologram and flamingo superimposed ever published, it should be only done with exquisite page design, otherwise, it loses every meaning. There are these unhappy books that can't exist as texts only.

(Obviously, I do not compare my work to the works of these acclaimed authors, for a variety of reasons; everything above is merely a note to myself, as usual). A couple of wonderful quotes from Eggerue: "[A]mbiguity should be met with silence." "[W]here there is peace, allow it to reign." Some pages are cringy and superficial to the degree of being funny. (For example, the passage on chickens that can’t pee... Maybe that appeals to the readers with its supposed straightforwardness, but to me, it reminded of the short story by Anton Chekhov “The Letter to a Learned Neighbor,” where a neighbor asks “the learned neighbor,” why animals are not born from eggs? And something else to the ridiculous effect amid trying to prove that the earth is flat or something--I haven’t reread this story in a while and might confuse details). Likewise, a lot in What a Time to Be Alone also seems like you had read it somewhere already in unescapable motivational quotes on Instagram. (Possibly this is exactly the key for success for a good self-help book; it is a metatext of sorts on everything that is written out there by suffering souls in the attempt to alleviate the torment).

But. It is not a silly book, and what is more to it, what makes it important is that it is written by the author who sincerely loves people; all of them. The target and the actual audience is, no doubt, young women, which I believe means that men definitely should read it too.

And finally, the deepest passages in this book are connected to the Nigerian heritage of the author. They are admirable. They are also what makes this book an event of cultural significance and an act of cross-cultural translation because the author is fluent in her main cultural languages and has something special to say in a form both novel and familiar.

#book #book review #I don't know when was the last time I was compelled to write a review #What a Time to Be Alone #Chidera Eggerue

[techmastersbd]

“Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work,” Jennifer Egan once said. This intersection of reading and writing is both a necessary bi-directional life skill for us mere mortals and a secret of iconic writers’ success, as bespoken by their personal libraries. The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books asks 125 of modernity’s greatest British and American writers — including Norman Mailer, Ann Patchett, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Messud, and Joyce Carol Oates — “to provide a list, ranked, in order, of what [they] consider the ten greatest works of fiction of all time– novels, story collections, plays, or poems.” Of the 544 separate titles selected, each is assigned a reverse-order point value based on the number position at which it appears on any list — so, a book that tops a list at number one receives 10 points, and a book that graces the bottom, at number ten, receives 1 point. In introducing the lists, David Orr offers a litmus test for greatness: If you’re putting together a list of ‘the greatest books,’ you’ll want to do two things: (1) out of kindness, avoid anyone working on a novel; and (2) decide what the word ‘great’ means. The first part is easy, but how about the second? A short list of possible definitions of ‘greatness’ might look like this: 1. ‘Great’ means ‘books that have been greatest for me.’ 2. ‘Great’ means ‘books that would be considered great by the most people over time.’ 3. ‘Great’ has nothing to do with you or me — or people at all. It involves transcendental concepts like God or the Sublime. 4. ‘Great’? I like Tom Clancy. From David Foster Wallace (#1: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis) to Stephen King(#1: The Golden Argosy, a 1955 anthology of the best short stories in the English language), the collection offers a rare glimpse of the building blocks of great creators’ combinatorial creativity — because, as Austin Kleon put it, “you are a mashup of what you let into your life.” The book concludes with an appendix of “literary number games” summing up some patterns and constructing several overall rankings based on the totality of the different authors’ picks. Among them (*with links to free public domain works where available): TOP TEN WORKS OF THE 20TH CENTURY Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust Ulysses* by James Joyce Dubliners* by James Joyce One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf The complete stories of Flannery O’Connor Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov TOP TEN WORKS OF THE 19TH CENTURY Anna Karenina* by Leo Tolstoy Madame Bovary* by Gustave Flaubert War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain The stories of Anton Chekhov Middlemarch* by George Eliot Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Great Expectations* by Charles Dickens Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky Emma* by Jane Austen TOP TEN AUTHORS BY NUMBER OF BOOKS SELECTED William Shakespeare — 11 William Faulkner — 6 Henry James — 6 Jane Austen — 5 Charles Dickens — 5 Fyodor Dostoevsky — 5 Ernest Hemingway — 5 Franz Kafka — 5 (tie) James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf — 4 TOP TEN AUTHORS BY POINTS EARNED Leo Tolstoy — 327 William Shakespeare — 293 James Joyce — 194 Vladimir Nabokov — 190 Fyodor Dostoevsky — 177 William Faulkner — 173 Charles Dickens — 168 Anton Chekhov — 165 Gustave Flaubert — 163 Jane Austen — 161 As a nonfiction loyalist, I’d love a similar anthology of nonfiction favorites — then again, famous writers might wave a knowing finger and point me to the complex relationship between truth and fiction.

http://computersolutiontools.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-greatest-books-of-all-time.html

#SEO #Local SEO training

[god-ihope-iget-it]

Play Reccomendations

Below are a list of plays that I have read/seen that I thoroughly enjoyed and reccommend if you get the chance to experience them yourselves.

1. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

I saw The Glass Menagerie a couple years ago and absolutely adored it. The set had been painted so that the dream-like aspect came through and I found it completely mesmerizing. It’s such a great dark representation of the memories of a man about his subjective memory. While many often consider this a realism play, I would argue it fits more into a more theatrical category thanks to its clearly subjective point of view and, depending on the interpretation, the non-literal world of the set. 

2. Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl

Eurydice is a quirky little play that has a lot of heart and sadness to it. It’s very short -- reading it will probably take you under an hour -- but very thought-provoking. It has a lot of potential to be realized with utmost creative freedom. The absurdity of the world and the characters make this interpretation of the classic Orpheus and Eurydice myth a unique interpretation.

3. Angels in America by Tony Kushner

Although I sadly never got to see the much-talked-about revival that was staged just a year or two ago, I read the plays in a college course and absolutely fell in love. The characters are drawn beautifully and the language is incredible. Harper will probably be a dream role for me (once I get to be the correct age), and it’s just wonderful. It’s incredible to read and I’m sure even more incredible to watch. The interruptions that pull you out of the play simultaneously intrigue you enough to captivate your attention and forces you to really think about the art you are witnessing. 

4. A Devil Inside by David Lindsay-Abaire

I saw this play in high school. Even in a high school production, this play had some serious appeal to me. It is a dark comedy, and the characters are all quite interesting to watch and observe. Their individuality gives them depth while the hidden web that connects all the characters makes for compelling theatre. The tragedy of the unresolved ending is really quite startling but it is somehow refreshing to not have  a play be tied up with a neat little bow at the end.

5. Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis

I saw a professional production of this play quite recently actually, and it was very interesting. The characters are some of the most real you could hope for. It is a real description of the imperfection of humanity despite our best efforts to be “good.” We do things that are wrong and yet, can still retain a true sense of ourselves. It’s a little bit of a complicated plot but you can follow along pretty well.

6. A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

I love the ending of this play. It’s just so good. It may be Ibsen and more “classic” but it has some strong feminist themes as you examine Nina and her relationship to her husband. I bought this play at a used book shop and couldn’t be happier that I did. 

7. The Seagull by Anton Chekhov

I’ve used Nina’s monologue from this play twice in auditions (once succesfully, and once not as much) and the story always continues to move me. I have read this play and I love the themes presented through the novel of desire and doing what we feel we must do, even if it is not the best option. It is about the faults of humanity and our pitfalls in our reasoning. It’s some potent stuff and I for one, am a big fan. 

8. You Can’t Take It With You by Kaufman and Hart

I love this play. I read it in High School when we were supposed to put it on and it was so funny I couldn’t get through the first read-through. Even though we never actually produced it, I have a deep love for it and hope to do it again someday soon. The characters are not necessarily charicatures when you really look at them, but the chaos of everything that could go wrong will when all Alice wants is for it to go right. “One Normal Night” as some might say (cough, cough, The Addams Family musical is just the plot of this play but with the Addams family characters and set to music)

9. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

OOf, I read this as a supplement to Hamlet in my AP Lit class and the first time I read it I was like “oh, cool, that’s funny I guess” but then we had all our class discussions about it and I slowly came to understand how painfully depressing this play is. It is absurd and existential and everything you would want in a play about characters who cannot exist outside of what has been written for them by a larger hand (Shakespeare’s).

#plays #reccomendations #good stuff #we love theatre #theatre #rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead #tom stoppard #you cant take it with you #kaufman and hart #the seagull #anton chekhov #a doll's house #henrik ibsen #between riverside and crazy #stephen adly guirgis #a devil inside #david lindsay abaire #angels in america #tony kushner #eurydice #sarah ruhl #the glass menagerie #tennessee williams

[livinglifedeliberately]

My dear heart, if only you knew how passionately, with what anguish, I thirst for my renewal.

Anton Chekhov, “The Duel” from Anton Chekhov: The Complete Short Novels, trans. by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

#anton chekhov #the duel #short novel #novella #anton chekhov: the complete short novels #quotes #excerpts #fragments #russian lit #антон чехов #laevsky #longing #destruction

[heresay]

“Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt... Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?

Anton Chekhov, The Complete Short Novels

#Anton Chekhov #lit #quote #quotes #life #exhaustion #failure #society #loss