A Funny Thing Happened at the Library

I am making every effort to prevent my writing from getting even more elaborate, florid, and generally baroque than it already is, and all because of one trip to the library.

For better or worse, it seems to me that my writing style (is it pretentious even to claim to have a style?) was inexorably shaped – or perhaps bent out of shape – in my teens. My reading habit at that point had worsened to the point where, had it been drugs I was consuming, I would’ve been a corpse within a week. In a desperate search for something/anything to keep my jones at bay, I stumbled in quick succession upon Twain, Thurber, and Woody Allen. A bit later there was P.J. O’Rourke, while at the same time I was marinating myself in Monty Python and David Letterman via TV.

That might seem like a disparate assortment, but to me the unifying thread is not just “funny” but a certain twisted sense of language – a sort of mining of the depths of the thesaurus that produces a little jolt to the synapses – as well as an unwillingness to say in four words what can be said in 12 words with a lot more syllables. In that sense, I can’t quite understand why I never became a true fanatic about S.J. Perelman, who fits comfortably on the same shelf.

In the late 70s, Woody Allen published three collections of short pieces which I eagerly snapped up, read and reread. And even though it’s been awhile since the last repetition, phrases still surface in my consciousness from time to time, and still make me laugh (inwardly, that is – I’m trying to stay out of the Rubber Room).

What I didn’t realize, as Woody seems to have shrunk somewhat from public view, and his movies are rarely anticipated Events (or all that funny), is that he is still writing pieces for the New Yorker. Unfortunately, the New Yorker always reminds me of a guy I knew in college. He was from Jersey, and when he found out that I was from Upstate New York, he remarked that he knew someone from upstate. When I asked where, he replied, “White Plains”.

The map of the world as drawn by the New Yorker would have Manhattan at the center, the other four boroughs arranged like petals of the flower, maybe Long Island along the edge, and then blank space (or as the medieval maps read, “Here be dragons.”). I’ve always felt like they’d rather go out of business than be patronized by the likes of me. I don’t read it much, is what I’m saying.

It was indeed a pleasant shock, then, to visit my local library and find not only a new book by the aforementioned O’Rourke, but also a new collection of pieces (some from the New Yorker) by Woody Allen. I dove into the Allen volume posthaste and was heartened to learn (and made to laugh aloud repeatedly) that his writing hasn’t changed a bit. Is that good, to sound the same 30 years later? Not sure, but mark me down in favor.

Some friends you don’t see for a while, and when you reunite, you're not sure why you liked them to begin with. With others, you forget how much you liked them until you see them. As it turned out, it was like a cool drink of water quenching a thirst I didn’t quite even know I had to open the book and be greeted:

Gasping for air, my life passing before my eyes in a series of wistful vignettes, I found myself suffocating some months ago under the tsunami of junk mail that cascades through the slot in my door each morning after kippers. It was only our Wagnerian cleaning woman, Grendel, hearing a muffled falsetto from beneath myriad art-show invitations, charity squeezes, and pyrite contest jackpots I’d hit that extricated me with the help of our Bugsucker.

As I was carefully filing the new postal arrivals alphabetically in the paper shredder, I noticed, amongst the profusion of catalogues that hawked everything from bird feeders to monthly deliveries of sundry drupe and hesperidium, there was an unsolicited little journal, banner-lined Magical Blend. Clearly aimed at the New Age market, its articles ranged in topic from crystal power to holistic healing and psychic vibrations, with tips on achieving spiritual energy, love versus stress, and exactly where to go and what forms to fill out to be reincarnated. The ads, which seemed scrupulously articulated to insulate against the unreasonableness of Bunco Squad malcontents, presented Therapeutic Ironisers, Vortex Water Energizers, and a product called Herbal Grobust designed to implement volumewise madam’s Cavaillons. There was no shortage of psychic advice either, from sources such as the "spiritual intuitive" who double-checks her insights with "a consortium of angels named Consortium Seven," or a babe ecdysiastically christened Saleena, who offers to "balance your energy, awaken your DNA and attract abundance." Naturally, at the end of all these field trips to the center of the soul, a small emolument to cover stamps and any other expenses the guru may have incurred in another life is in order.

It’s quite possible that the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of any Allen 10-page story would be two or three paragraphs long, but that’s what I love about him.

If nothing else, he makes my writing look like a txt msg....