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(SUB)TEXT Literature and Film Podcast

(SUB)TEXT Literature and Film Podcast

Analysis of a book, movie, play, or poem.

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August 27, 2018

At Work at Rest in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya”

Listen to this (sub)Text prequel and get other bonus content at by subscribing at Patreon.

In the end, Professor Serebrekoff kisses the man who tried to murder him on the cheek, and jokingly reveals to him and an audience of other relatives that the trauma of almost-being-murdered has inspired him to write what would amount essentially to a self-help book. He then effectively tells them—each one of them with a good reason to wish that he had been actually-successfully-murdered—the following: Your hopes and dreams are all well and good. But they’ll come to naught unless you get to work: “do something, my friend! Work! Do something!” The professor’s daughter and her Uncle Vanya have, of course, been hard at work supporting him and trying to live vicariously through his ambitions: which, insofar as they are scholarly, might be another form of vicariousness. What they are actually looking for is rest. When are we at work, in the strictest sense? Is the professor at work—is a scholar at work—if his work consists of mulling over the leavings of actual artists and thinkers, rather than producing something wholly original? But then: is the artist or thinker really at work, if their efforts—original as they may be—end not with deeds but words or images? Does the most authentic form of work turn out, in a way, to be a kind of rest? Wes discusses Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” with actress, podcaster, and educator Monica McCarthy.

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This podcast is a labor of love, but even love’s labors are lost when time is money and money is a necessity. So it’s always a good time to help keep us going. If you subscribe on Patreon, you will get bonus episodes and other content, including responses to listener email and our after-show (post)script. You can also just make a one-time donation. It takes a lot of work to prepare to have a high-level discussion, every one to two weeks, of a new text. So if you enjoy or benefit from the show, please chip in. But in any case, thank you for listening!

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(sub)Text is a podcast about the human condition, and what we can learn about it from the greatest inventions of the human imagination: fiction, film, drama, poetry, essays, and criticism. Each episode, philosopher Wes Alwan and poet Erin O’Luanaigh explore life’s big questions by conducting a close reading of a text or film and co-writing an audio essay about it in real time.

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