The Kugelmass Episode by Woody Allen

[aldana]

HELLO PEOPLE...

Has anybody read The Kugelmass Episode by Woody Allen? It's a humorous short story...and I wanted to talk about it to see your views on the message of the story.

This is the story of a mediocre middle-aged man looking for romance in order to avoid his boring life

By the way, don't you just love Woody Allen's witty stories?...

[aldana]

NOBODY HAS ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT THIS???

Please?? ;)

[aldana]

HEYYYY!!!!

I SEE THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE READING THE THREAD...what? Nobody has read Allen's short story?

I really find that hard to believe...

Maybe my post wasn't appealing enough.

I'll give you a summary of the story...maybe in that way you'll have something to say (taken from WOODY ALLEN JOURNEYS FROM PAGE TO SCREEN By VINCENT CANBY)


In Woody Allen's ''Kugelmass Episode,'' a short story contained in his collection, ''Side Effects,'' Kugelmass, an unhappily married, lovesick City College humanities professor, dumps his analyst in favor of ''the Great Persky,'' a shabby Brooklyn magician who owns a time machine made out of raw plywood. With the help of Persky and his wonderful box, Kugelmass, for a small fee, spends a couple of euphoric hours every day in the company of an amorous Madame Bovary, making sure that he enters the Flaubert novel before page 120.
''I always have to meet her before she hooks up with this Rodolphe character,'' Kulgelmass explains to Persky. ''He's landed gentry. . .To me he's one of those faces you see in the pages of Women's Wear Daily. With the Helmut Berger hairdo. But to her he's hot stuff.'' Kugelmass knows his ''Madame Bovary.'' ''I'm here a few pages after Leon and just before Rodolphe. By showing up in the correct chapters, I've got the situation licked.''
The daily assignations of Kugelmass and Emma Bovary continue in uneventful bliss for several months until the restless Emma decides she'd like to leave Yonville to visit Kugelmass in New York. Their first weekend at the Plaza is paradisaical - drinking champagne, eating caviar, going to movies, dining in Chinatown and ''ogling the celebrities at Elaine's.''
At this point, things start to go wrong. Persky's machine breaks down. When he can't transport Emma back to Yonville, she enrolls in the Neighborhood Playhouse and runs up ''a hotel tab that reads like the defense budget.'' At the same time, scholars and students around the country have begun to notice fishy things happening inside ''Madame Bovary,'' first Kugelmass's unscheduled appearances in it and then Emma's unexplained disappearance.
One of Kugelmass's colleagues, a jealous Comp Lit professor named Fivish Kopkind, recognizes Kugelmass as the ''sporadically appearing character in the Flaubert book'' and threatens blackmail. When last seen, Kugelmass has somehow got himself projected inside ''Remedial Spanish,'' an old textbook, and is being chased by ''a large and hairy irregular verb'' - tener (to have) - across ''a barren and rocky terrain.''

Well people, hope to have given enough material to post a comment :D

See you

[aldana]

Well, I see many people are looking at this thread...but nobody is offering any comments...

Is it me? :(:(:(:(:(:( Or nobody has read the story? I wouldn't believe THAT!!!

Somebody, Pleaseeeeeeeee ;)

[aldana]

:bawling: :bawling: :bawling:

[Turk]

Woody Allen movies always bores me, he trying to be different, intellectual and high class witty but i don't think he has such a good humor.

[Bartholomew]

I see Allen's latest stunt it pretending to be a girl from Argentina.

[aldana]

I see Allen's latest stunt it pretending to be a girl from Argentina.

:lol: lol :lol: THAT'S VERY FUNNY...I honestly thought I would find more support on this topic...now i see i was wrong :blush:

I know he's not the best of writers...and most of his movies also bore me to death (except for Match Point...which i really loved)

But I read the short story when I was in College...and i found it really funny and witty...i thought it was a well-known story and maybe more people had read it...

Well, I think I'll have to start a different thread if I want some reaction....

Thanks anyways to the only two who respondend :D :D

[aldana]

I see Allen's latest stunt it pretending to be a girl from Argentina.

:lol: lol :lol: THAT'S VERY FUNNY...I honestly thought I would find more support on this topic...now i see i was wrong :blush:

I know he's not the best of writers...and most of his movies also bore me to death (except for Match Point...which i really loved)

But I read the short story when I was in College...and i found it really funny and witty...i thought it was a well-known story and maybe more people had read it...

Well, I think I'll have to start a different thread if I want some reaction....

Thanks anyways to the only two who responded :D :D

[Bartholomew]

I'd like to read it. I enjoyed a couple of Allen films, although most of them struck me as uninspired. I'll keep it in mind.

[aldana]

Well, if you really want to read it follow this link and you'll find it there...

http://www.woodyallen.art.pl/eng/kugelmass_episode.php

I would really like to hear waht you think about it once you've read it

thanks so much ;)

[kandaurov]

Woody Allen is the man! My bed-side, couple-of-pages-before-Sandman-comes book is his complete prose. I find him hilarious, it's not easy to write absurdities and make people laugh with them. It's very much more likely to fall flat on your feeble attempt at making what you thought was easy humour. It does happen sometimes that I quote an excerpt that I find unbearably funny and the listener just fakes a smile and changes topic. I must get better friends :p

[aldana]

LoL...that's for sure :p

[androcles]

I read a Woody Allen short story some years ago, i can't remember the title but the plot was something like this....
A shallow and selfish man finds out that his friend is dying of cncer. Of course he goes to visit him in the hospital with the intention of staying only briefly and never returning. Instead he falls in love with his friends nurse and keeps going back.....
It was hilarious. I've often thought that Woody is a self-indulgent and elitist social observer with his best work behind him. However my recollection of this story makes me think what Woody could have achieved.