From Russia, with love: "In the Letter from America which the late Alistair Cooke devoted to commemorating Charles Schulz in February 2000, he recalled the time when the creator of the legendary Peanuts cartoon strip was asked why his hapless hero Charlie Brown never won. 'Well of course, winning is great,' Schulz replied, 'but it's not funny. And there are no happy endings in my stories because happiness, too, isn't funny.'
For Cooke, this remark went a long way towards explaining what lies at the root of all great humorists. It is certainly true of Anton Chekhov, who... went on to establish an extraordinarily successful career writing poignant stories and plays about the grown-up Charlie Browns of late imperial Russia. Remember the bespectacled and painfully shy officer Ryabovich in The Kiss? After mistakenly receiving an embrace intended for someone else at a dance, he succumbs to fantasies of a happy, ordinary life (marriage, a family) until he is met with the equivalent of Lucy's eternal put-down of 'Good grief, Charlie Brown!' when his fellow officers snigger at his breathless story. You know that Ryabovich will never get his girl, just as you know that Charlie Brown will never win the heart of his red-haired sweetheart. Always the losers. And yet how affectionately drawn."
