Apropos of Nothing

by Woody Allen

they disagreed on every single issue except Hitler and my report cards.

His philosophy amounted to “If you don’t have your health you got nothing,” wisdom deeper than all the complexity of Western thought, succinct as a fortune cookie.

“Nothing bothers me,” he would brag.

“You’re too stupid for anything to bother you,” Mom would patie...

always took to anything that required solitude, like practicing sleight of hand or playing a horn or writing, as it kept me from having to deal with other humans who, for no explainable reason, I didn’t like nor trust.

It was recommended that I be sent off to Hunter College special school for sharp kids, but the long train ride every day from Brooklyn into Manhattan was too grueling for my mother or my aunt, who alternated taking me on the subway. So they plopped me back into P.S. 99,

school for backward teachers.

hated all schools and probably would’ve gotten little or nothing out o...

Oh, I also knew movie stars, thanks to my cousin Rita, who papered her walls with color portraits from Modern Screen. I’m saving writing about her as she was one of the true bright spots of my growing up and deserves some special space.

Folks, you are reading the autobiography of a misanthropic gangster-loving illiterate; an uncultivated loner who sat in front of a three-way mirror practicing with a deck of cards so he could palm off an ace of spades, render it invisible from any angle, and hustle some pots.

succor

Then lunch in the MOMA cafeteria, followed by a vintage movie downstairs in the screening room. Carole Lombard, William Powell, Spencer Tracy.

Doesn’t it sound like more fun than Miss Schwab’s obnoxious picklepuss

demanding the date of the Stamp Act or the cap...

Then the lies at home, the excuses next day at school, the hustling, the tap dancing, the forged notes, caught again, parental exaspe...

You can tell from my movies; while some are entertaining, no idea I ever had is going to start any new religion.

In school, they never knew how to introduce you to reading so you’d learn to enjoy it.

Anyhow, I didn’t read until I was at the tail end of high school and my hormones had really kicked in and I first noticed those young women with the long, straight hair, who wore no lipstick, little makeup, dressed in black turtlenecks and skirts with black tights, and carried big leather bags holding copies of

The Metamorphosis,

“Yes, very...

“See Kierke...

delectable bohemian little kumquats,

it was brutal for both of us. For her, because early on in the evening she would realize she was stuck with an illiterate imbecile who didn’t seem to know what position Stephen Daedalus played, and brutal for me because I became aware that I was indeed a submental and if I ever hoped to kiss those unlipsticked lips or see her a second time I was going to have to actually delve into literature deeper than Kiss Me Deadly.

I mean, who could believe a disagreement over gefilte fish could morph into a battle worthy of Homer?

Groucho,

Dick Cavett,

I wrote Groucho when H...

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 ...

Actually, I was born on the thirtieth of November very close to midnight, and my parents pushed the date so ...

mention it only because in a meaningless bit of irony, my sister was born eight years later on the exact same day.

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.

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.

had never agreed to be finite.

As I got older, not just extinction but the meaninglessness of existence became clearer to me.

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, o...

we are simply hardwired to resist death.

(Personally, I run.)

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.

In those days, the radio was on from the minute you woke up till you went to sleep.

The pop music of the day was Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey.

The sconce shades were red, the fixtures gold brass, the carpets red. At last the lights go down and the curtains part and the silver screen lights up with a logo that makes the heart salivate, if I may mix my metaphors, with Pavlovian anticipation.

I loved stories that took place in penthouses where the elevator opened into the apartment and corks popped, where suave men who spoke witty dialogue romanced beautiful women who lounged around the house in what someone now might wear to a wedding at Buckingham Palace.

Everybody drank all the time and nobody vomited.

And nobody had cancer and the penthouse didn’t leak and when the phone rang in the middle of the night, the people high above Park or Fifth Avenue didn’t have to, like my mother, drag ass out of bed and bang her knees in the dark groping for the one black instrument and hear maybe a relative just dropped dead.

No. Hepburn or Tracy or Cary Grant or Myrna Loy would just reach for a phone on their night table inches from where they slept, and the phone was usually white and the news did not revolve around the metastasizing of cells or a coronary thrombosis from years of deadly brisket, but more likely...

My father never tired of telling me that he once picked up Babe Ruth. “Gave me a lousy tip,”

When buying a newspaper from a newsstand, never take the top one. From Mom: The label always goes in the back.