The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter… if it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever. If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse. Woody Allen, in Love and Death (1975)
I’ve been thinking about Woody Allen lately. More specifically, his prose. One of the texts we had to read in high school was, if I’m remembering correctly, The Kugelmass Episode. But I’m not sure. It’s weird how time plays with the mind — you know you’ve read something, but you’re no longer sure what. Or you know you’ve read an author, but you’re no longer sure what work the words that drift into your mind were actually coming from. It’s been gnawing at the edge of my synapses lately, and I think I’m going to finally plunk down and buy the complete prose collection this week. (It also doesn’t help that I know for a fact we didn’t read Madame Bovary in my high school courses — I’m familiar with it more from reading snippets after seeing it referenced in one of my favorite comics.)
That said, original source or not, I still find the New Yorker as stultifyingly impenetrable now as I did then. Last I picked up a copy at the doctor’s office, I inevitably started skipping through the comics, re-captioning them all “Christ, what an asshole”. Which, for anyone reading the New Yorker, is about right.
