Wither Woody

As I’ve written here in the past, I was a huge fan of Woody Allen until “he went southern and started sleeping with his children”, as Michael Graham, the author of Redneck Nation wrote. (Graham’s another reformed Allenphile, incidentally.)

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The death of Susan Sontag has James Taranto and a reader imagining how the New York Times’ obit of the Woodman will read:

Reader Donald Pugh calls our attention to this probably unwittingly funny passage from the New York Times’ obituary of Susan Sontag:

She was undoubtedly the only writer of her generation to win major literary prizes (among them a National Book Critics Circle Award, a National Book Award and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant) and to appear in films by Woody Allen and Andy Warhol; to be the subject of rapturous profiles in Rolling Stone and People magazines; and to be photographed by Annie Leibovitz for an Absolut Vodka ad.

Hmm, we can’t remember his name right now, but it seems to us there was at least one other writer of her generation who won major literary prizes, appeared in films by Woody Allen and Andy Warhol, and was photographed by Annie Leibovitz for an Absolut Vodka ad. Oh but wait. The profile of that guy in Rolling Stone was merely fervent, not rapturous.

Pugh imagines this sentence from the Times obit of Woody Allen: “He was undoubtedly the only filmmaker of his generation to have season tickets to the Knicks and cast his live-in lover in several of his films before marrying her adopted Korean teenage daughter.”

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“Undoubtedly!”, Taranto quips.

The Times’ obit will probably be somewhere in that ballpark, if worded slightly more obliquely about Woody’s adventures in the 1990s.

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