THE word "holocaust," used to comic effect, appears in the very first selection of Woody Allen's latest festival of shtick and genius, "Mere Anarchy." Here's Max Endocrine, alterna-healer charlatan and professional levitator, whining eloquently about his rogue offspring: "My one son from a previous connubial holocaust gives up his lucrative law practice to become a ventriloquist.... "
"Connubial holocaust." Perfect! "Connubial
Auschwitz" might have scraped nerves. "Connubial disaster" is weak soup. What earns the sentence the beloved, if not inimitable (more like universally imitated), Allen brand is that holocaust-ventriloquist combo, the one-two punch of the Marx Brothers and Hannah Arendt.
As fictioneer, Allen has the ear of a comedian and the erudition of a Carnegie Deli waiter with a PhD in European literature. An accusation, incidentally, no one ever laid at the feet of Henry James. Read every story in "Mere Anarchy." Then plow through "The Insanity Defense," which collects, in one volume, the holy trinity of "Getting Even" (1971), "Without Feathers" (1975) and "Side Effects" (1980). If you're genetically susceptible, such total immersion can trigger the primal Hebraic fun-pain synapse: the mortifying, zombie-like urge to try to write like Woody Allen. The result is not just the awareness that he's Woody Allen and you never will be, but also a compulsive urge to use the word "herring" in every document -- not to mention a dawning awareness of how many times Allen himself uses the same words over and over.
As devotees re-savor classics such as "The Whore of Mensa," "The Kugelmass Episode" or "The Rejection," they may be shocked by the legions of identical locutions and conceptions. Consider, for example, hen-fondling in "Above the Law, Below the Boxsprings": "They fit the description of two people we want for questioning about fondling a hen." And this, from "Match Wits With Inspector Ford": "I have every reason to believe that your brother is dating a Cornish hen.... "
ONE of the myriad pleasures of Allen's stories is the recurring buffet of whitefish, kipper snacks and wurst with which he plies the narrative. Chicken -- as food or love object -- appears no less than 37 times in the Allen oeuvre. Someday, no doubt, an enterprising doctoral candidate will rip the lid off the subject of Jewish American Poultry Angst -- a tradition, PhDs take note, carried on this very day, as evidenced in Michael Chabon's fantastic new novel, "The Yiddish Policemen's Union." Chabon imbues the humble fowl with philosophic freight that Allen might appreciate: "Strange times to be a Jew have almost always been, as well, strange times to be a chicken."
