Вуди Аллен: Apropos of Nothing

Letty is eight years younger than me. Naturally, when she was about to come into the world my parents prepared me in the consummately wrong way: “When your sister is born you will no longer be the center of attention. You won’t be getting the presents anymore, she will. We’ll all have to shift our attention to her and her needs, so don’t expect to be the main attraction ever again.” Another boy of eight might have been a bit shaken by the prospect of suddenly being cast aside in favor of the new arrival. But while I loved my parents dearly, I was aware they were a couple of rank amateurs who had no flair for child rearing and their dire predictions were dopey and empty, which they proved to be. I guess it’s a tribute to them that they loved me in such an unequivocal way that I knew while they came on like Cassandras, they would never abandon me and their devotion to my happiness and well-being, and they did not.

The second I set eyes on my sister in the crib I was totally taken with her, loved her, and helped raise her, shielding her from the friction between my parents, which could escalate exponentially over trivial concerns. I mean, who could believe a disagreement over gefilte fish could morph into a battle worthy of Homer? I played with Letty, took her with me many times when I went out with friends. They all found her cute and smart, and she and I always got along swimmingly. It reminded me of an exchange of letters I had with Groucho, whom I had gotten friendly with over the years thanks to Dick Cavett, whom I’ll tell you about later. I wrote Groucho when Harpo died, and he wrote me and said he and Harpo never had exchanged a serious argument or bad words, and that’s how it’s been with my sister, who today produces my movies.

But now, I’m ready to be born. Finally, I enter the world. A world I will never feel comfortable in, never understand, and never approve of or forgive. Allan Stewart Konigsberg, born on December 1, 1935. Actually, I was born on the thirtieth of November very close to midnight, and my parents pushed the date so I could start off on a day one. This has given me zero advantage in life, and I would have much preferred they left me an enormous trust fund. I mention it only because in a meaningless bit of irony, my sister was born eight years later on the exact same day. This remarkable coincidence and fifteen cents will get you on the subway. I was delivered in a Bronx hospital though the folks lived in Brooklyn. Don’t ask me why my mother schlepped all the way up to the Bronx to produce me. Maybe that hospital was giving away free dishes. Anyhow, my mother didn’t schlep back from the Bronx hospital. Instead, she nearly died up there. In fact, it was touch and go for a few weeks, but as she tells it, constant hydrating pulled her through. That’s all I would’ve needed, to be raised only by my father. I would probably have a rap sheet by now the length of the Torah. As it is, having two loving parents I grew up surprisingly neurotic. Why, I don’t know.

I was the cynosure of my mother’s five sisters, the only male child, the darling of these sweet yentas who fussed over me. I never missed a meal, nor wanted for clothing or shelter, never fell prey to any serious illness like polio, which was rampant. I didn’t have Down syndrome like one kid in my class, nor was I hunchback like little Jenny or afflicted with alopecia like the Schwartz kid. I was healthy, popular, very athletic, always chosen first for teams, a ball player, a runner, and yet somehow I managed to turn out nervous, fearful, an emotional wreck, hanging on by a thread to my composure, misanthropic, claustrophobic, isolated, embittered, impeccably pessimistic. Some people see the glass half empty, some see it half full. I always saw the coffin half full. Of the thousand natural shocks the flesh was heir to, I managed to avoid most except number six eighty-two—no denial mechanism. My mother said she couldn’t figure it out. She always claimed I was a nice, sweet, cheerful boy till around five, and then I changed into a sour, nasty, disgruntled, rotten kid.

And yet there was no trauma in my life, no awful thing that occurred and turned me from a smiling, freckle-faced lad with a fishing pole and pantaloons into a chronically dissatisfied lout. My own speculation centers around the fact that at five or so, I became aware of mortality and figured, uh-oh, this is not what I signed on for. I had never agreed to be finite. If you don’t mind, I’d like my money back. As I got older, not just extinction but the meaninglessness of existence became clearer to me. I ran into the same question that bugged the former prince of Denmark: Why suffer the slings and arrows when I can just wet my nose, insert it into the light socket, and never have to deal with anxiety, heartache, or my mother’s boiled chicken ever again? Hamlet chose not to because he feared what might happen in an afterlife, but I didn’t believe in an afterlife, so given my utterly dismal appraisal of the human condition and its painful absurdity, why go on with it? In the end, I couldn’t come up with a logical reason why and finally came to the conclusion that as humans, we are simply hardwired to resist death. The blood trumps the brain. No logical reason to cling to life, but who cares what the head says—the heart says: Have you seen Lola in a miniskirt? As much as we whine and moan and insist, often quite persuasively, that life is a pointless nightmare of suffering and tears, if a man suddenly entered the room with a knife to kill us, we instantly react. We grab him and fight with every ounce of our energy to disarm him and survive. (Personally, I run.) This, I submit, is a property strictly of our molecules. By now you’ve probably figured out not only I’m no intellectual but also no fun at parties.

Incidentally, it is amazing how often I am described as “an intellectual.” This is a notion as phony as the Loch Ness Monster as I don’t have an intellectual neuron in my head. Illiterate and uninterested in things scholarly, I grew up the prototype of the slug who sits in front of the TV, beer in hand, football game going full blast, Playboy centerfold Scotch-taped to the wall, a barbarian sporting the tweeds and elbow patches of the Oxford don. I have no insights, no lofty thoughts, no understanding of most poems that do not begin, “Roses are red, violets are blue.” What I do have, however, is a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and I propose that it is these specs, combined with a flair for appropriating snippets from erudite sources too deep for me to grasp but which can be utilized in my work to give the deceptive impression of knowing more than I do that keeps this fairy tale afloat.

Okay, so I’m raised in a bubble by many doting women, mom, my aunts, and four loving grandparents. Try and keep track: Dad’s dad, once rich, a man who sailed to London merely to go to the horse races, who owned a box at the opera, now impoverished, earning a pittance God knows how. His wife, also an immigrant he married so they could both enter the country. She was fleeing Russian pogroms and he compulsory military service. She was a raisin of an old woman, diabetic, living with her spouse and brood in a cheesy hovel with an upright piano that no one played. But she loved me, slipping me dough on the QT, sugar cubes from the yellow Domino box, asking for nothing in return except occasional visits, and forever generous despite their poverty.

My maternal grandparents also loved me. Mom’s mom, fat and deaf, just sitting by the window all day, every day (from her looks, she’d have been more at home on a lily pad). Grandpa, active, virile, always in shul, and here’s the way a louse like me repaid his kindness. Me and my friends came into possession of a counterfeit nickel. Pure lead. We were scared to try and pass it at the candy store lest we wind up on Riker’s, so I volunteered to slip it past my grandfather who was old and would never catch wise, and he didn’t, and I exchanged it with him for five pennies from his snap-open purse, and it wasn’t like in the movies where the old guy chuckles and knows what I’m up to but humors me with a sly twinkle in his eye. Nope. He was conned, and I took him to the cleaners for his five pennies and stuck him with the lead nickel and went off to buy Goobers.