The early, funny stuff

Or, Woody without Woody

Asking “what’s on your nightstand?” is a socially permissible way to talk about books without reading them. Naturally, thick Russian novels take up all the space next to the alarm clock, but that doesn’t mean I’ve spent so much as a second in the life of Ivan Denisovich.

The By the Book column in The New York Times Book Review takes this smartass-answers-to-canned-questions format to new heights each week. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and a man who has surely read Solzhenitsyn in the original Russian, offered this answer to those wondering what book they’d be surprised to find on his shelves:

The New Testament. And yet I prefer the early, funny stuff.

That, of course, is a reference to Woody Allen. In his 1980 film Stardust Memories, the director plays a director accosted by a fan who says “I especially like your early, funny ones.”

So: Woody Allen. Must we?

First, the best piece I’ve read on what to think about the bespectacled man in the Gilligan hat was by the sportswriter Will Leitch. He starts by describing Allen as “one of the singular organizing principles of my life” and ends up deciding that he’ll never watch another one of his movies and that “His work is a part of my life, but it’s mine, not his.”

At this late date in human history, I generally close the tab when I come across another “Can we separate the art from the artist?” essay. The answer invariably seems to be an intellectual yes, an emotional no, and a thousand agonized words until we arrive at “it depends.” Adam Kirsch wrote a model of the form, pointing out that this debate is at least an admission that art has power.

But maybe that’s where we are with Woody Allen: A surgical separation of art from artist. Reference his one liners and leave him out of it. And perhaps that’s the way it should be. Let’s say we rewind the last 30-odd years of lazy movies and go back to the early, funny stuff. Writing about that period in a 1993 New Yorker profile, Adam Gopnik notes that: 

Woody was famous among his contemporaries for possessing a pure and almost abstract gift for one-liners — a Mozartean genius for funny sentences that could be applied to any situation, or passed on to any comic, almost impersonally.

He had a gift and that gift can be passed along, “almost impersonally.” He clearly had some universal quips, so give them back to the universe. 

Remember Garfield Minus Garfield? It’s like that. Yes, this is an odd, eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too solution. Take the best of the art, leave the artist and his uglier works. Not disappearing him, not celebrating him, just leaving him out of it. As someone once said:

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

Someone once asked me if my dream was to live on in the hearts of people, and I said I would prefer to live on in my apartment. 

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.

Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

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Link link, nudge nudge 

“I’ve always loved this exercise, the imaginary dinner party! What fun! I see Oscar Wilde there, of course, Voltaire, Carol Saroyan Saroyan Matthau (wife of William Saroyan, William Saroyan, and Walter Matthau, and a writer in her own right), Hitler (not witty but quite a ‘get’), Edie Sitwell, Molière, Oscar Wilde (so witty I thought why not double him and place him on each end of the table so everyone could enjoy his witticisms?), Aristophanes, and Sir Kenneth Dover (to translate Aristophanes’ jokes for the other guests). That’s more than three, but one must assume there will be cancellations. Oh, and Jesus.”

—  Charlie Kaufman’s answer to the ole literary dinner party guest list question is a minor masterpiece.

“My position on cake is clear: I’m pro-having it and pro-eating it.”

—  Boris Johnson explaining his cakeist philosophy, which I deploy above and previously analyzed in this Globe piece.

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That was Get Wit Quick No. 67, the one that had to come out eventually. Wit is amoral but we shouldn’t be. My book is Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting and the ♥️ below wants what it wants.