Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

I'm a lover, not a fighter.

Say it ain't so! I hope people have more thoughts about this story! It's only Tuesday!

Should I write something like "Gurov was right about women, they're only good for a few fucks" to drum up response? ;-)

I'm still mulling this story over (after reading it last night), and I think I could take or leave the lovey-dovey, soap opera, are-they-in-love-or-is-it-just-a-passing-fling aspect of the story. The hook for me is the part about public vs private lives ...

It seems to me that Gurov's real discovery in this story is of the divided, compartmentalized nature of his own life, and it's borne out in his interior monologue as he walks his daughter to school:

Most excellent insights. Absolutely. I mean, here he is, going about caring for his child, and he's thinking about this life of secrets he leads. I find it interesting that he applies this supposed truth of his life to other people, too - because if he is this way, then other people must be living the same way. Lives of lies, quiet desperation...

The divide between how he is supposed to live, the proper way to be, and who he really is - which is a schemer, someone always looking for the better fish in the sea.

I still think the question of love is relevant, because it's about the collision of this interior secret life and the one sanctioned by society -- what happens when one bleeds into the other in undesirable ways - Gurov begins having a difficult time compartmentalizing (in that passage above I quote about when he realizes he loves her). What else, other than love, has the power to do that? (OK, maybe that's the hopeless romantic in me.)

I think that Chekhov does pose The Only Question That Matters (the question of love) in a different way... it's not soap opera-y at all, to me. Reminds me of Vicky Christina Barcelona -- Penelope Cruz's character says at one point that the only true love is unfulfilled love.

No, I'm totally cool with it; I just don't want the preponderance of "new" posts to be more about running the group than actual FF content. I'm sure it's fine, though. And I do love the expand and collapse arrows! Beautiful and intuitive...

I totally deleted one of Michael's posts by accident and it wasn't because I was drunk with power. Yet. ;)

The floating text on this site is something to get used to... very different from the boxed buttons...

(And honestly there should be a more clear prompt before you do it to avoid this situation.)

Maureen wrote: "can we have a medium slow down? i am happy to have you organize everybody! certainly the plan when we moved over here was (and was corroborated by the poll) to have the responsibility for the group not devolve on one person (or two -- shel's been doing a lot, and should be acknowledged for all her hard work) but i just worry that the minute i'm not unemployed or shel's got a crisis on her hands that we'll be in the same boat we were in before. frankly, before patty and michael said they'd give a lot of effort, i was REALLY worried."

So are you like trying to say I'm one of those crisis-happy people? ;)

I've done this online community thing for a long time, I can handle the responsibility, no biggee for me, and I am happy to do it, because this community is vital for me in so many ways.

Opinion: I am thinking we need to take this onto email, if only to stop cluttering the discussion space about literature with moderators and rule and guidelines. I think it's confusing to new members, and old members who may just want to get on with the conversation...

Emailing multiple people isn't possible here, so... if it's ok, everyone who wants to be an active moderator, or semi-active, or semi-inactive, or people who just want to contribute to the organization of this new space -- wants to shoot me an email at shel_rogers@yahoo.com, I will compile the emails into a group list, of sorts, so that we can discuss.

So. Will they find a way to be together? Earlier in the story, this is what Chekhov has to say:

Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people--always slow to move and irresolute--every intimacy, which at first so agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an interesting woman this experience seemed to slip out of his memory, and he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusing.

(It would be simple to read him as a deplorable character who uses women, but I resist that interpretation. I think he's more of the can't live with em, can't live without em type.)

Anyway, so what he's saying is that even in the most superficial of brief flings, there is a point at which it's too much work, basically.

Here's the part where he realizes he's "in love" with her:

In another month, he fancied, the image of Anna Sergeyevna would be shrouded in a mist in his memory, and only from time to time would visit him in his dreams with a touching smile as others did. But more than a month passed, real winter had come, and everything was still clear in his memory as though he had parted with Anna Sergeyevna only the day before. And his memories glowed more and more vividly. When in the evening stillness he heard from his study the voices of his children, preparing their lessons, or when he listened to a song or the organ at the restaurant, or the storm howled in the chimney, suddenly everything would rise up in his memory: what had happened on the groyne, and the early morning with the mist on the mountains, and the steamer coming from Theodosia, and the kisses. He would pace a long time about his room, remembering it all and smiling; then his memories passed into dreams, and in his fancy the past was mingled with what was to come. Anna Sergeyevna did not visit him in dreams, but followed him about everywhere like a shadow and haunted him. When he shut his eyes he saw her as though she were living before him, and she seemed to him lovelier, younger, tenderer than she was; and he imagined himself finer than he had been in Yalta. In the evenings she peeped out at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner--he heard her breathing, the caressing rustle of her dress. In the street he watched the women, looking for some one like her.

Oh, right after that his wife says he doesn't do a good job playing the fop ... I thought DAMN, she has his number. I think this part can be read two ways... as can the latter part of the story, where he sits there pondering how he has found love so late in his life and how could it be that they're both married...

So one more generous interpretation is to say that yes, love is sometimes inconvenient. It comes late, it comes to you after you commit to another path, it surprises and confounds. Right? And in a way, I believe that this happens every day. Maybe I just know a lot of people in second marriages. That's the romantic soul in me. It's one of Chekhov's "holiest of holies"... love.

But ... then there is a less generous, and maybe too judgmental way to read it: Gurov has cabin fever in the winter. He wants to escape his life. Anna is more of a fantasy than someone he really loves.

And here is the very end of the story:

Then they spent a long while taking counsel together, talked of how to avoid the necessity for secrecy, for deception, for living in different towns and not seeing each other for long at a time. How could they be free from this intolerable bondage?

"How? How?" he asked, clutching his head. "How?"

And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.

I am inclined to go with my more generous reading today.

The surroundings and weather - Chekhov really uses these to great effect - to further the story, to describe the internal life of his characters...

As we move through this affair, the pair becomes increasingly physically isolated. They meet in a public place, they kiss in a public place... there is a scene in which they walk together on the boardwalk, surrounded by people and life, in which they kiss and then wonder if they've been seen. Later, after they consummate the affair, here is how Chekhov describes their surroundings (and why they sit outside a church... well, I think there is significance there, too):

At Oreanda they sat on a seat not far from the church, looked down at the sea, and were silent. Yalta was hardly visible through the morning mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops. The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings--the sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky--Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.

A man walked up to them--probably a keeper--looked at them and walked away. And this detail seemed mysterious and beautiful, too.

I read it as the pair moving away from civilization, and that they have to do this for the affair to gain ... legitimacy? And this, to me, is the moment they "fall in love" if that's what you want to call it. Even though Gurov doesn't figure it out until later.


Finally, the "confession" of love happens in the dark recesses of a theater... a place where fantasies are played out on the stage, a place where people can escape reality (all very Aristotelian, I know) but Anna and Gurov are even deeper inside that place of fantasies, in the bowels of this small-town, less-sophisticated theater.

I'm going to read it again just because Martyn said not to.

Oopsy daisy, that intro is here: files.me.com/joshandshelby/idz55u and in PDF format. Thanks again, Brian. Valuable insights.

Chekhov has been called an "impressionist," which I totally get, because he depicted people as he saw them, because he told stories of people from huge variety of backgrounds (not just the wealthy ones), and because he left Moscow to tell the stories of the whole of Russia, not just of the great cities.

Chekhov repudiated the traditional role of the writer in Russian society -- the intro says, "the writer was seen first as a pointer of the way, a leader in the struggle for social justice; his works were expected to be "true to life" and to carry a clear moral value... Chekhov's impressionism was seen as a form of art for art's sake, a denial of the writer's social role, and a threat to the doctrine of realism, and he was attacked for deviating from the canons of useful art."

Haven't we had this very discussion about art in the old FF? Does the artist have a responsibility to those who experience his art? If so, what?

I think that if The Lady with the Dog had included some sort of moral lesson it would be such a different story... it would be far less interesting.

This dovetails nicely into Chekhov's 6 rules of writing a good story:

1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. Total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; 6. compassion.

I, for one, feel fortunate to get to read someone who has goals like this... with the possible exception of #2 I reach for these in my own work. And I didn't even know there was this handy list for me to tack to the wall!

(I'm posting all of this info because I think it helps to inform us of what Chekhov was trying to do with his work. Not because I want to somehow evaluate its success, but because I think it's important to know about a writer's stated goals, if he was kind enough to leave us with any.)

Brian was kind enough to share the introduction to a book of Chekhov's stories, downloadable from the link at the end of the post.

Some of the points made about Chekhov's goals as a writer are worth considering in the light of this story, and in the context of his place in the Russian canon (next post). So I'm going to post a couple of quotes from the intro... I thought these were good ones. Both are quotes from letters.

The artist must pass judgment only on what he understands; his range is as limited as that of any other specialist -- that's what I keep repeating and insisting upon. Anyone who says that the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imagery. the artist observes, selects, guesses and synthesizes... You are right to demand that an author take conscious stock of what he is doing, but you are confusing two concepts: answering the questions and formulating them correctly. Only the latter is required of an author."

The people I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendentiousness between the lines and are determined to see me as either liberal or conservative. I am neither liberal nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor monk, nor indifferentist. I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me strength to be one. I hate lies and violence in all their forms, and consistory secretaries are just as odious to me as Notovich and Gradovsky [two unscrupulous left-wing journalists:]. ... I look upon tags and labels as prejudices. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist."

Seriously, I now officially have a crush on a dead white Russian male. Doesn't all of that sound Joycian?!

Of the "spiritual condition" during Chekhov's time, Lev Shestov wrote:

To calculate beforehand is impossible. Impossible even to hope. Man has entered that stage of his existence wherein the cheerful and foreseeing mind refuses its service. It is impossible for him to present himself a clear and distinct notion of what is going on. Everything takes on a tinge of fantastical absurdity. One believes and disbelieves -- everything.

Shestov goes on to say of Chekhov's heros:

Thus the real, the only hero of Chekhov, is the hopeless man. He has absolutely no action left for him in life, save to beat his head against the stones... He has nothing, he must create everything for himself. And this "creation out of the void," or more truly the possibility of this creation, is the only problem which can occupy and inspire Chekhov. When he has stripped his hero of the last shred, when nothing is left for him but to beat his head against the wall, Chekhov begins to feel something like satisfaction, a strange fire lights in his burnt-out eyes, a fire which Mikhailovsky did not call "evil" in vain.

Ticket bought. Hotel room booked (extra days of city adventure).

Now, rental cars. Hm. Those things are damn expensive...! I may get a regularly sized one and just pack it to the gills for the Costco run.

Now I feel badly for posting a long-ass thing about rules and stuff.

Seriously, it's not that big a time commitment.

If we grow to 10,000 members we'll just hire someone and pay them in brilliant manuscripts. Aren't those worth something?

PITA - Pain In The Ass.

Yak piss... remember Jonathan's initial Friday night post about drinking shitty zinfandel?

I know it all looks like a lot of words and responsibility and rules and shit, and I hesitated to post because of the length... but we kinda needed to talk these things through, no? And really I'm just talking about spam, self promotion and organizing threads.

(I'm wordy & constantly second guess what I write, so I end up with lots of qualifying phrases and parentheses. I'm sure I would footnote emails if I could. It's a character flaw that I like to call a feature, not a bug. :-) )

I love the hooptedoodle, too. In fact, I write mostly hooptedoodle.

What about something by Shirley Jackson??? I thought The Lottery was pretty cool."

Already in the group reading list in the short story thread... join us! Starts Monday. :-)

Lauren wrote: "Oh and Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" though the point of that was clearly drugs, and not literature =]"

Yeah, but Alice in Wonderland was pretty clearly about hallucinogens too...

There's a Tom Petty song I can't think of... damn.

With the number of moderators we have, I think it's time we kinda... agreed on some rules of play in terms of what moderators do.

So, here's what I can come up with based on past experience, and knowing that we want to keep this group as open and friendly as possible. And no, I couldn't find a way to keep this thread viewable by moderators. So maybe we move the discussion to emails. I don't know. It's not like I'm reinventing the wheel here, or anything.

1. Flames, Spam, Personal Attacks
This one is obvious, to me anyway, and hopefully we won't have to use it that often. We all should delete these, with followup - let the user know it was deleted and why (we should have a handy scripted email stuck in the moderator's folder somewhere for this so it's simple and fair). Also, let the moderators know that the post was deleted, why you deleted it if explanation is required, so that we can all be on the lookout for that user.

2. Warnings to frequent flamers/spammers/grey area
I think that in the email about the deleted post we should let the user know that they get three deleted posts before we remove them from the group for a week, or permanently, whatever you guys think. I'm thinking about people who promote their books. In groups I've run before, the 1-week slap on the hand works pretty well the first three times you do it, but eventually, you have to throw out a recidivist.

Then there is the grey area. Once upon a time I helped run a big listserv -- there was this woman who routinely posted things that "seemed" to be legitimate (can you guys help me test out this feature? oh, whoops! it's not in beta any more!) but were actually traffic drivers to her site. There are some fine lines here in terms of what's promoting and what's "asking for help." I think that anyone who says things like "check out the writing section in my profile" as the main body of every post they write should get a warning.

3. Mediation
Sometimes two users really go at it, I think we've all seen it. JE was really good at talking people down, I suspect he did it in personal email. We should be prepared to do that on occasion but it shouldn't be the kind of thing where 15 moderators contact a member separately. I don't see this happening often, but it might...

4. Reorganizing/Prioritizing threads
So, pinning topics, ordering folders, moving threads around. Seems to me this is going to be almost a daily task, eventually.

Does anyone think this is a clear line of responsibility that should fall to someone who knows what a taxonomy is? That we all agree to put our threads in the most sensible folders, create folders that make sense, etc., but that if they need to be moved, we let each other know... or other users who might have posted a new thread to General, but it belongs in the Writers folder? Just common courtesy stuff? I don't know what the answer is, here.

In terms of rules for users, I think there are "rules" and then there are "guidelines." I don't want to weigh us down with a ton of these because we've never needed them before and I think they can hamper the culture here.

Rule - no spamming, flaming, self-promotion, etc.

Guideline - stuff like... posts generating more heat than light.

Last but not least, if we can't all email each other in one email from GoodReads, then we should get a list of personal email addresses together and do that. Because if we need to communicate with only moderators, and it turns out to be a PITA here, then we should find another way.

I read this story last night, without doing all the reading I intend to do about Chekhov, because I wanted the story and the writer to be fresh for me.

There are a few things that struck me, things that made me think: Gee, I should tell people to pay attention to this as they read.

In no particular order.

-- Watch the surroundings, the scenery, the weather as the plot & characters move/change.

-- Infatuation, lust, predation, fantasy, obsession, love, commitment, secrecy... the cycle of relationships

-- Consider Gurov's opinion of women as the story begins and how (or whether) it changes through the course of the story.

-- Anna - the changes in her are more obvious, but watch them in terms of the pace of Gurov's character. Her self awareness, her shame and anxiety.

I like the events tool because it's (oh god I can't believe I'm about to use this word) a tickler for people to remember what they wanted to participate in.

Like, "Oh yeah! That discussion on The Lady with the Little Dog starts Monday. No problem. I can totally do that."

I don't expect everyone to "respond" to event invitations, but I do think people will see them and participation will increase because it's not a buried thread somewhere, etc.