In this dark time for our democracy, I have decided that in addition to meditating, writing letters to my elected representatives, and writing postcards to support candidates in upcoming political races, I can moderate my terror and foreboding by reading humor, not a genre that I have delved into much in the past.

With that in mind, I cast my eyes upon my library shelves in Cambridge, and there was this 50 year old volume from that dirty old man Woody Allen. And like I had hoped, he had me laughing on the very first page when he wrote: “It has been four weeks and it is still hard for me to believe that Sandor Needleman is dead.  I was present at the cremation and at his son’s request, brought the marshmallows.”  And in a similar vein, Allen proceeds through 15 chapters of silly non-sequiturs,  ridiculous situations, and satirical takes on restaurant reviews (Fabian Plotnick reviews Fabrizio’s Villa Nova Restaurant on Second Avenue) and scientific articles (Wolfsheim, Shulamith Arnolfini, and the unnamed writer describe how they were the first to discover the maneuver erroneously attributed to Heimlich when they successfully removed a badly wedged crabcake from the esophagus of a Mrs. Faith Blitzstein).  Along the way we are treated to a time machine that transports Kugelmass, a professor of humanities at City College to the French countryside of Emma Bovary where they conduct a heated affair.

All of this is quite ridiculous and had the desired effect of making me laugh out loud, smile, snicker, chuckle, etc.  At 89, Allen appears to still be going strong.  It was fun revisiting his work from when he was a young man.  At that time he said that his one regret in life was the he was not someone else.  I wonder what he would say now while looking back.