Woody Allen Tonight: "A Twenties Memory" (from "Getting Even")
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Hemingway in the '20s: His 1923 passport photo
"I kidded Hemingway about his forthcoming novel and we laughed a lot and had fun and then we put on some boxing gloves and he broke my nose."
-- from "A Twenties Memory"
by Ken
What's so inspiring about this "memory" isn't just the famous names littered through it but the deep insights into them. The author hobnobs with famous writers including not just Hemingway and Gertrude Stein (who turn out to have something surprising in common) but Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald ("most of our friends believed that [Scott] based the protagonist of his latest novel on me and that I had based my life on his previous novel and I finally wound up getting sued by a fictional character"). Thanks to Hemingway the author even meets "that great, great artist" the bullfigher Manolete ("had he not become a bullfighter, his grace was such that he could have been a world-famous accountant").
And he pals around with artists like Picasso (who, because of having coffee with the author and Gertrude Stein, was delayed by ten minutes in starting "what was later to be known as his 'blue period'" -- though "it lasted four years, so the ten minutes did not really mean much") [that's a Picasso "blue period" self-portrait at right], Dali (he recalls the one-man show of Dali's that "was a huge success, as one man showed up"), and Gris ("Gertrude Stein used to say that only a true Spaniard could behave as he did; that is, he would speak Spanish and sometimes return to his family in Spain").
All somehow crammed into a single decade!
FOR THIS RIVETING "TWENTIES MEMORY," CLICK HERE
SO FAR IN "WOODY ALLEN TONIGHT"
from Getting Even (1971)
"A Look at Organized Crime"
"Death Knocks," Part 1 and Part 2
coming Sunday and Monday: "Hassidic Tales, and a Guide to Their Interpretation by the Noted Scholar," Parts 1 and 2
THURBER TONIGHT (including WOODY ALLEN, ROBERT BENCHLEY, BOB AND RAY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, S. J. PERELMAN, JEAN SHEPHERD, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date
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Labels: Getting Even, Woody Allen
posted by KenInNY @ 9:00 PM
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3 Comments:
I discovered Woody Allen's writing when I was about 12, shortly after discovering his films. I found a paperback copy of Without Feathers in the bookstore at the mall and bought it because I had loved Take the Money and Run so much when I saw it on the CBS Late Movie.
I was hooked. I had never read anything like it. Here were stories written in language that was clearly above any experience I had ever had, but which I understood and found hilarious. After Without Feathers, I went back and bought Side Effects and Getting Even in short order. I still remember laughing out loud as I read some of the stories - The Whore of Mensa, The Kugelmass Episode, and yes, A Twenties Memory. I remember a girl at school asking me, "You mean they write books you can just sit there and laugh at?"
My wife and I saw Midnight in Paris last weekend at an old, independent movie house, and as we watched it, I thought constantly of A Twenties Memory, which I have not read since I was a teenager. The story was my first exposure to The Lost Generation - the first time I had heard of Gertrude Stein, for example. To this day, my image of Hemingway is formed in part by Allen's humorous characterization in the story. When I read A Moveable Feast as an adult, I felt like I had been there before. In fact, sometimes when I think of one story, I can't be sure I am not remembering details from the other.
I lost track of my Woody Allen volumes years ago. They're probably in the attic somewhere. I might have to go and hunt for them.
Thanks for sharing that great chain of memories, US! I've had a load of fun going back to GETTING EVEN myself, and we've got some more from it coming up. In time I expect we'll get to plundering WITHOUT FEATHERS and SIDE EFFECTS too!
Cheers,
Ken
By the way, I still think that TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN and BANANAS are two of the most wonderful (not just funniest, which more or less goes without saying) movies ever made.
Cheers,
Ken
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