Pratchett, Chekhov and Augustine

I've just finished reading Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant (I came to the Discworld series very late, and am now enjoying reading like a 16-year-old boy. Not that that constitutes the bulk of his readership, of course!). The book has a marvellous interlude in which the hero, Sam Vines, runs into three sisters who live in a cherry orchard, want to move to the big city, and loan him a pair of Uncle Vanya's trousers. Having torturously studied both "The Cherry Orchard" and "Three Sisters" in Russian at school, I deeply appreciated the comic turn of this chapter. Just like all readers (viewers) of "Three Sisters", I always wondered why they didn't just get off their arses and go to Moscow. In Pratchett's version, the youngest sibling is pressing for just that (hooray!). It reminded me of the fact that, when the play was first produced by the Moscow Arts Theatre (MXAT, in Russian) with Stanislavsky at the helm, a dispute arose between Chekhov and the director. Chekhov swore blind that he'd written a comedy; Stanislavsky patiently explained that it was, in fact, a deeply emotional and painfully static realist play and, moreover, this was precisely how the company were going to perform it. This always made me wonder what would have happened if they had produced it as a comedy. Jonathan Ross once spoke about a Swedish film he'd seen, which was far and away the most depressing film he'd ever experienced; he watched it again in the cinema whilst in Sweden and discovered to his great constenation that it was considered to be a roll-in-the-aisles comedy.

On the point of authors who make me laugh, I've just started to read Augustine's On Christian Doctrine as part of my research. He has a light touch and tone that is so wonderfully suited to today's readership. I am studying his understanding of reading in the Christian community, looking in particular at the notions of authoritative reading associated with Christian liturgy. To those members of the communion who suggest that they are able to read and interpret Scripture correctly without reference to Church or liturgy, he sarcastically points out that, "I would such persons could calm themselves so far as to remember that, however justly they may rejoice in God's great gift, yet it was from human teachers they themselves learnt to read." He continues to note that many of the readers who refuse to acknowledge the interpretation of the Church themselves "undertake to interpret for others". I think he may secretly have been an Englishman at heart!