2014-01-13
Explanation
The Joke
God appears to a man and presents him with a test of character: "You will receive a threesome in one hour, but only if in that time you complete in this room the works of Tolstoy." The man hesitantly agrees. In the next panel, labeled "Later," a star-decorated official at a podium announces: "In some countries, that does not matter. In this conference..." -- implying the man somehow completed the works of Tolstoy and is now being honored at a literary conference, but the real motivation behind the achievement was entirely carnal.
The Humor
The comic plays on the idea that human motivation is driven far more by base desires than by noble intellectual pursuits. God sets up what seems like an impossible challenge -- reading or writing the complete works of Tolstoy (which span thousands of pages) in one hour -- but by attaching the reward of a threesome, suddenly the man finds the motivation to accomplish the impossible. The follow-up panel at the literary conference suggests that the man is now being celebrated as a great scholar or literary figure, when in reality his achievement was entirely motivated by lust. The joke satirizes both the pretensions of academic achievement and the power of sexual motivation to drive extraordinary accomplishments.
References
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian author best known for monumental novels such as "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." His complete collected works span approximately 90 volumes, making the challenge presented by God essentially impossible under normal circumstances.