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November 23, 2005

Kugelmass

"The Kugelmass Episode" is one of my favourite Woody Allen's short stories for two main reasons:

- he uses a fictional character crossover as a narrative device which is something rather common in film and tv but seldom used in literature;
- the idea of a magical machine that can transport me to the inside of a book sounds fascinating.

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"In Woody Allen’s New Yorker short story “The Kugelmass Episode,” collected in Side Effects (Allen 1982), Kugelmass is a professor of humanities at the City College of New York who, longing for some excitement in his middle-aged life and sick of the sensible advice offered him by his analyst, hooks up with a magician named The Great Persky. Persky has invented a machine that can insert living human beings into books: the client climbs into a coffin-like box and The Great Persky throws in a book of the client’s choice, whereupon the lid is closed and the client is magically transported into the chosen book.

Kugelmass chooses [Flaubert's] Madame Bovary, and appears in Emma’s bedroom at an auspicious period in between her affairs with Leon and Rodolphe(...). They have a steamy affair, and college students all over the country wonder who this bald Jew is, kissing Emma Bovary on page 100. " --- more here

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Emma couldn't hide her excitement at seeing him. The two spent hours together, laughing and talking about their different backgrounds. Before Kugelmass left, they made love. "My God, I'm doing it with Madame Bovary!" Kugelmass whispered to himself. "Me, who failed freshman English."

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So, if you're reading "Alice in Wonderland" and all of a sudden there's a thin brunette wearing glasses walking around, making small talk to the Mad Hatter and taking photos, that means I found the Great Persky :-)

Posted by claudia