Word: chekhovisms
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...want to write. At ten he collaborated on a novel with the boy next door until they got into a fistfight over the description of a sunset. Now his favorite writers include Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck ("Someone else no one will admit was any good") plus Turgenev, Chekhov and Knut Hamsun. The depth of McGuane's reading can be seen in the sophistication of his prose. "I have been sloppy in my approach to being an artist," he says, "but one thing I will say for myself: I read like a son-of-a-bitch...
...Show. Williamson looks like a kind of carbonated El Greco. He has a taut elongated body and funereal brows-yet an effervescent mirth, irony, mischief and intelligence emanate from every tone and gesture of this remarkable actor. In a limited engagement, after each evening's Broadway performance in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, he unwinds in poetry and song off-Broadway...
UNCLE VANYA by ANTON CHEKHOV...
...Chekhov's drama moves almost in reverse. Instead of a conflict of wills, there is a frustration of desires. None of his characters do much of anything or expect to get anywhere, but all of them are aware of a nagging, infuriating immobility. Climaxes are anticlimaxes. Precisely because life has passed Chekhov's people by, aged them, defeated them, they bear eloquent witness to how avidly men and women hunger for life. The laughter and tears in Chekhov arise from the recognized or unrecognized disparity between the life one wants and the life one gets...
This classic plot does not sound funny and much of it is not, but a good deal of it is. Chekhov's compassion for his characters' bruised hearts never blurred the amused clinical eye he focuses on their petty, self-deluding foibles. Chekhov frowned on directors who made his plays too glum and autumnal, and Nichols, with his agile comic flair, has certainly avoided doing that. He gets marvelous assistance from Nicol Williamson, whose Vanya is compacted with a mischievous, sardonic, self-mocking wit that not only defines his own character, but also makes a comment...