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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 13, 1978)
Allen’s comedy shines despite drawings I Woody Allen, comic experi menter in comic forms, has a new book out, Non-Being and Some thingness. It is a selection of strips from his one and a half year old newspaper comic strip "Inside Woody Allen.” Though solid, the strip falls short of being all it could be. The ideas, the jokes, are un adulterated Allen, and so are as jumpy and excellent as the rest of his work in other media. But the drawing of the strips, done by Stuart Hample, is at best meant to be ignored. The figures are so lifeless and their expressions change so little that they sap energy from the punch lines they fail to support. One has to squint at small details of line to make sure the first draw ing of a strip is not just duplicated for each subsequent frame. Perhaps it is supposed to be the ultimate in deadpan delivery, leav ing the face blank to put the words forward emphatically and on their own. If so, Allen should have stuck with prose pieces as the form for his written words. In the flesh he does not have a straight, deadpan delivery. It is more a satire of deadpan, portunity to stop and savor any thing that struck a chord. Allen’s films are so stuffed with comedy, By LANCE LODER Non-Being and Somethingness bursts of nervous tension con tinually breaking through. So a drawing of him telling a joke should include a little of that nerv ousness, too. It wouldn’t be dif ficult, and it would add so much. Meaningful nervousness is, after all, the major substratum of his comedy. But all this would not be more than pointless quibbling if the idea were not so good. Woody Allen is a natural subject for a comic strip. The comic strip is a natural forum for his ideas. The single most enjoyable ad vantage of this book was the op three viewings are often required just to hear all the jokes. His Inside Woody Allen ©1978 by IWA Enterprises Inc. Hackenbush Productions Inc. lemme Y duke,CO <you TAKE yoaR \ TMlNKTi-IEPE'S PICTURE, j SUCM ATi-tlNG humorous essays are topical, often stylistic, satires. But the comic strip, with its enforced brev ity, often brings out the soul of his wit: the cosmic one-liner. Vaguely Diane Keaton-looking character to Woody: “There’s no way you can prove there isn't a God.” Woody: “Right. You just have to take it on faith.” Improbably, and with a meas ure of his own cosmic comedy, Buckminster Fuller has written the introduction for the book. Written and drawn; this is Fuller’s comic strip debut, too. In the course of it Fuller has his characters weigh the world and find it heavy, call on the stars and galaxies to give Woody a big hand, and name him “the master of ceremonies in what may be the last act of humans on Planet Earth or the first act of Humans in Uni verse.” Now, how can such an introduc tion be anything but a big step for ward in the Woody Allen Cam paign to Take Comedy More Seri ously and Take Seriousness More Comically? Nixon cast as part-time narrator, mu-time 1001 The Public Burning by Robert Coover 1977, Viking Press $12.95, hardback (534 pages) Before the Watergate follies and after, Richard Nixon has al tiresome tradition of harassing poor old Dick. With simpering candor, Nixon plays part-time nar rator and full-time fool in this sprawling allegory of the Ameri can Dream turned nightmare. Based upon the June 14,1953 By BRUCE CAMPBELL The Public Burning Z-l_CL ways been favorite fodder for ridicule and caricature. Comedians, writers, political cartoonists have all derived vi cious pleasure and steady incomes from kicking around Nixon. His cri tics, lusting for the blood of a moral cripple, have hounded him for al most 30 years. Naturally, Nixon has always worked hard to earn such hatred. Robert Coover’s latest novel, The Public Burning, continues the J execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (who allegedly sold American A-bomb secrets to the Russians), The Public Burning mythologizes the disheartening horrors of the Korean War, the Berlin Wall, McCarthyism and hysterical anti-Communism which invested the 1950s with such sinister energy. Mixing nostalgia with sarcasm, Coover conceives this history in comic book terms: thick-witted patriots, stuffed with What do the Rockefellers do on their nights off? Consider the possibilities. Monopoly, Go for Broke, Petropolis, Billionaire, Finance, Masterpiece, The Stock Market Game, Easy Money, Acquire, Big Apple, Profit & Loss, The Beat Inflation Strategy Game, Shopping, Rat Race, Anti-Monopoly, Venture, The Peter Principle Game, San Francisco Scene, The Collector, Jet World, Ulcers, Jurisprudence, Careers, The Economy Game, Payday, Game of Nations, New York Scene, Pit, Cartel.Lie Cheat & Steal? 1040 'Villamectev^*'(503) 484-9846 Deluxe Games and Puzzles on the Mall shrill sentiments and self-serving altruism, add a cruel, cartoon qual ity to the Rosenberg executions. With real-life characters populating the plot, the novel reads like a history book. Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, Bob Taft, Billy Graham, John Fos ter Dulles, Alger Hiss, Dean Acheson, William O. Douglas and many others represent the Sons of Light (the Free World) who do battle with The Phantom (Com munism). But Nixon is the most constant and interesting character. Other than masturbating at executions, he also is sodomized by Unde Sam (“Sam Slick, star-spangled Superhero and knuckle-rapping Yankee Peddler”), a sadistic braggart who symbolizes America. Perhaps the most scurrilous scene occurs when Nixon’s prudishness redeems itself with a strong prurient interest. Before the execution, Nixon sneaks a visit to Ethel Rosenberg and attempts to make her confess. What ensues is a pseudo-pornographic love scene between Nixon and Ethel. As the Vice-President describes it: We broke at last, gasping, groaning, sucking our battered lips, clutching each other des perately. She buried her head on my shoulder, nibbling frantically at my neck. "Oh, Richard!" she moaned. "You're so strong, so powerful!" She tangled her fin gers in the matted hair on my chest... As they continue to fondle, Nixon adds: "That she had called me Richard and not Dick moved me deeply." The Rosenburgs are electro cuted in Times Square while mill ions watch. Prior to this spectacle, comedians such as the Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, Milton Berle and Edgar Bergen warm up the throngs with sick jokes about the Rosenbergs’ impending death. To compound this absurd slapstick, Coover even has the Supreme Court Justices sliding around in elephant dung. < > TOMORROW EMU Food Service ■ • • BEER GARDEN 4-7 p.m. 12 oz. glass 350 pitcher $1.50/hotdogs 250 free popcorn Free Entertainment By ALIVE! This American Inquisition, with its burning of heretics, feeds upon a communal paranoia. The net re sult is that Coover exposes a parallel universe to our own which reflects the grotesque ironies and deceits inherent in our social order. Coover’s sense of allegory is excellent. But his writing, too often pretentious and highly-repetitive, butchers a good idea. The same story, with tighter organization, with less superfluous satire, with more rigorous editing, may have had more sting and vitality. Like so much of Coover’s writ ing (best exemplified by the short fiction in Pricksongs and De scants he chokes the reader with a glut of overly-rich prose. His im agery is so intense, his style so swift and supple, that one has no time to digest the author’s ideas. But the most disturbing quality to The Public Burning is the crea tive license of a fiction writer that Coover wantonly misuses to scourge public figures. Actual his tory can be fitted to the fictional mold, but such freedom doesn’t imply a need to take murderous shots at the facts. Nixon has committed enough imbecilities that new ones needn’t be invented (Continued on Page 7B) COPIES 30 >y OVER NIGHT NO, MINIMUM 8 am - 8 pm NOW OPEN SUNDAY 12-5 ~ KINKO’S 344-7894 1128-B ALDER STREET , 2nd floor Atrium 485-1063 i
