It’s the birthday of Anton Chekhov (b. 1860), renowned short story author, playwright, and most popular answer ever to the question, “Who has influenced your writing?” (One of my favorite Sidney Harris cartoons makes this point best; see it here.) Chekhov broke with tradition to downplay plot for the sake of artlessly simple portrayals in which every detail is freighted with meaning, becoming the original practitioner of “Show, don’t tell.”

Born in Taganrog, Russia, Chekhov was one of six children. His father was a grocer who struggled to make ends meet and was also a bit of a tyrant; Chekhov’s childhood, though lacking in British boarding schools, was a painful one. By the time he started medical school in 1879, he began taking over as head of the family, supporting family members by churning out tons of humorous pieces as a freelance writer and becoming quite popular in a lowbrow sort of way. (Don’t worry; he improves.) In the mid-1880s he became a doctor, began coughing up blood, and started writing more serious pieces for more serious publications. (Fun fact: plenty of writers have supported their writing with careers in medicine; Chekhov made more money from his writing but continued to practice medicine.)  In 1888, the publication of his long story “Steppe” marked his transition to Officially Serious Author.

In 1890, Chekhov took a little mental break by traveling all the way to a Russian penal settlement (like you do, when you need a break) on the remote island of Sakhalin, out past Siberia. (It’s also just north of the large Japanese island of Hokkaido, which, I don’t know, sounds a little friendlier.) While there he took a census of the convicts and other islanders and studied their appalling conditions, returning to publish a series of articles called Sakhalin Island (1893 – 94), a work that someone in The New Yorker recently called “the best work of journalism written in the nineteenth century” (“Chekhov’s Beautiful Nonfiction,” Akhil Sharma, Feb. 2, 2015).

In the following years, Chekhov would write many of the works for which he is now renowned, including the stories “An Anonymous Story,” “Ward Number Six,” and “The Lady with the Dog,” and the plays “Uncle Vanya” (cut down from the much longer and worse “Wood Demon”), “The Seagull,” “Three Sisters,” and “The Cherry Orchard.” He is also known today as a brilliant and witty correspondent as well, and if you are a writer you have already heard the advice he gave in one letter, advice now called Chekhov’s Gun: “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one, it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”

In 1901, Chekhov married the actress Olga Knipper, and in 1904 he succumbed to tuberculosis. His last words were, “It’s a long time since I drank champagne,”after which he drained a glass, lay down again, and died.

The careful observer who googles images of Chekhov may notice a superficial resemblance to Robert Downey Jr., which is too irrelevant to be mentioned here.

Have a bearable Monday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.