Philip Roth and Woody Allen: Have I Got a Girl for You!

Okay, here's what I want to know: What's with Philip Roth and Woody Allen?

I only ask after trotting to my local movie palace some months back for Allen's latest astringent 92-minute laffer, Whatever Works, and paging diligently these recent days through Roth's newest probe of a novel, The Humbling (Houghton Mifflin, 140pp., $22).

Both opuses (opi?) concern a man of a certain age (or, you might say, a bladder of a certain age) energetically and relentlessly pursued by a much younger woman. In Whatever Works Boris Yellnikoff is 60-ish; in The Humbling Simon Axler is 70-ish. Furthermore, for Axler, the pursuer is an avowed lesbian called Pegeen Mike Stapleford. (Note that Pegeen Mike is also the name of the barmaid who falls for the comically mendacious title figure in John Millington Synge's Playboy of the Western World. Roth undoubtedly uses the "Pegeen Mike" to underline the lesbian angle with the "Mike" part but perhaps also to suggest that either Axler is a playboy or that Pegeen Mike is a playgirl.)

You might say that the Whatever Works/Humbling plot similarities here are coincidental, but both men have used these narrative thrusts before. Indeed, they've used them so often you could suggest that once again, they're falling back on them.

I'm bothered by this for several reasons. To begin, I'm questioning why Roth or Allen need resort to the stale subject matter when any literate person conversant with their work(s) will quickly concede they're both extremely creative artists and capable of better than they've imparted now. It's hardly cavalier to say they've each produced more than one masterpiece during extended and prolific (maybe too prolific?) careers.

Along with other devoted readers, I consider Roth's American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain a trilogy and as such the most important cumulative fictional report on America in the second half of the 20th century. Where Allen is concerned, I'd call his Annie Hall and Manhattan the most accomplished domestic films of the 1970's (okay, a tie with Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather entries). I'd label Allen'sCrimes and Misdemeanors the most trenchant stateside film of the 1990's.

Yet, septuagenarians Roth and Allen today are producing works it's difficult not to describe as clichés. What could be more commonplace than a pair of men individually obsessed with proving that male elders remain attractive to their female juniors?

With Allen--now married for some time to the significantly younger Soon-Yi Previn, practically his erstwhile step-daughter--it's an abiding preoccupation. Among other movies he's made where an older man takes up with a younger woman is, of course, the above-mentioned Manhattan. Roth--who has apparently dated former Allen inamorata Mia Farrow (she married Frank Sinatra when she was 21 and he was 50)--has previously covered the tired topic in The Human Stain and The Dying Animal.

Furthermore, Roth's narrative twist--a committed lesbian reneging on her previous choice to woo a man--immediately strikes a reader as one of the prime fantasies heterosexual men cherish; that their enviable Macho Quotient is all a gay woman requires to switch her sexuality. Incidentally, in Manhattan, the protagonist's wife leaves him for a woman and then writes a scathing tell-all about her decision. It's a turn of events that the flick's Isaac sees as degrading and impossible to reverse.

To their credit, both Roth and Allen come to their senses before the final print or celluloid fade-out. Axler's Pegeen Mike goes back to women. Boris's Melodie St. Ann Celestine changes her tune and hooks up permanently with an age-appropriate swain. As she does, an echo of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita--in which the precocious title figure leaves stalker Humbert Humbert for a younger man--can be heard speaking its society-approved name.

You might say that in sending out these matching oeuvre additions, Roth and Allen hew to a time-honored literary tradition: writing about what they know. But it's a sobering thought. Surely, they know about a few other issues as well. Why not write about those? Roth has said his topic is the reality of aging as opposed to what he sees as the "Golden Years" myth. (A video interview in which he makes the assertion runs with Jesse Kornbluth's review of The Humbling ) Still, must Roth embed his railing at later-years indignities in an older-man-younger-woman construct?

There's got to be another way that doesn't have us Roth and Allen fans speculating that this very minute our too-often-like-minded culture heroes are readying works about what happens when an even older man has a romance with an even younger woman. Some of us might even be wondering if Roth and Allen are collaborating on a project about older-men-younger-women double-dating.

Anyway, there you have it. And now for a possible follow-up column. How's 'bout: What's with Mia Farrow?

 

Comments

[SILVANUS]

Well, if you live long enough, time turns you into a cliche of yourself. Cannot be helped. Ask dear old Venice Italy.

[jagrmeister721]

My sentiments exactly. What a waste.

[c-tom]

I only ask after trotting to my local movie palace some months back for Allen's latest astringent 92-minute laffer, Whatever Works, and paging diligently these recent days through Roth's newest probe of a novel

Did you really trot? Is it really a palace? Astringent laffer? Probe of a novel? Please put down the Thesaurus and pick up Fowler's.

[DinkSinger]

"opuses (opi?)"

The preferred plural is opera, but the opuses is an accepted alternative.

[WilliePilgrim]

I'd like to add, that it seems that whenever we hear of older men and younger women we think in terms of the older man being the less desirable of the two, and how it must be all about his fantasies of youth, but from a evolutionary behavioral point of view, and I suggest it is the one that operates beneath all the other supposed motives, a young and fertile woman is not looking for a young vigorous muscular hunk. They are unproven, take too much risk and have no patience with young women and are subject to flight. Older men have proven themselves, have resources, offer prestige and will enhance the survivability of offspring. Older women, on the other hand are excellent mates for young males. They have the experience that young women lack and young men seek. They are often without bonded mates regardless of their marital status, and help to bond the young males to the group without generating conflict over mates. That, ontop of the intergenerational bonding that is important if society, and not just the nuclear family, is critical if we are to survive over the long haul.
Evolutionary psychology...it's been here all along.

[McMarcia]

ultimately we're all unique individuals, and romantic coupling for more than 1 night's hook up involves tolerating each other's weaknesses and bad habits, more so than having the 'perfect' person 100% of the time.

But I think most men of all ages lust after girls who look like Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Some get carried away with the concept, others (like George Sodini) end up hating women and murdering as many as they can because they can't get the "perfect 10".

I think if men's bank accounts and net worth were as easy to view as women's beauty and figure, it would further expose the shallow stereotypes of "old geezers" chasing "gold diggers" and "cougars" chasing "boytoys".

[WilliePilgrim]

Perhaps these two accomplished writers are swimming in these waters because there is an undercurrent of concern among the gossiping class regarding the way people "ought to be", which from what I can tell is that intergenerational relationships are considered inappropriate. After all, in the ideal relationship against which all high profile relationships are to be judged, aren't we supposed to see a boy and a girl meet in school or shortly thereafter and get married and remain faithfull to one another until death?
I think if we were to compare throughout all of human history every kind of relationship between men and women, those in which people of the same age get married a spouse and have children and remain faithfull to each other until the end would be just about the most unusual, and I suspect there are deep underlying reasons that reach into our hardwired instinctual behaviors that guide this, all of it having to do with the survival of the individual if not the species itself. Intergenerations relationships bind our society across generational bounds and make us more resiliant and enduring. If you don't see it that way maybe you're looking through the wrong end of the telescope..or is it a microscope? Interesting topic at any rate. cheers.

[leeclayton]

Here's another suggestion for a follow-up column. How about a blank page?