Amy Hempel / Curb

"Tell me things I won't mind forgetting," she said. "Make it useless stuff or skip it.”

I began. I told her insects fly through rain, missing every drop, never getting wet. I told her no one in America owned a tape recorder before Bing Crosby did. I told her the shape of the moon is like a banana—you see it looking full, you're seeing it end-on.

The camera made me self-conscious and I stopped. It was trained on us from a ceiling mount—the kind of camera banks use to photograph robbers. It played us to the nurses down the hall in Intensive Care.

"Go on, girl," she said. "You get used to it.”

I had my audience. I went on. Did she know that Tammy Wynette had changed her tune? Really. That now she sings "Stand by Your Friends"? That Paul Anka did it too, I said. Does "You're Having Our Baby." That he got sick of all that feminist bitching.

"What else?" she said. "Have you got something else?”

Oh, yes.


For her I would always have something else.

"Did you know that when they taught the first chimp to talk, it lied? That when they asked her who did it on the desk, she signed back the name of the janitor. And that when they pressed her, she said she was sorry, that it was really the project director. But she was a mother, so I guess she had her reasons.”


"Oh, that's good," she said. "A parable."


This story, “In the Cemetery where Al Jolson Is Buried,” is among my all-time favorites, and here’s why.

1. The beginning is classic in medias res. Why would this interlocutor want to know useless stuff? Maybe she’s angry? There’s a wish to rebel? She won’t be around on the planet much longer, so why deal with weighty manners? You’re hooked--and no cars had to explode. No aliens had to land in a cornfield.

2. Character is laid out through detail. We know the speaker is fun and sort of batshit crazy. How can anyone know--or prove--that America’s first tape recorder belonged to Bing Crosby? How fun to imagine the moon as a giant banana! (There’s also a defamiliarizing tactic here. Hempel wants to say, Remember how crazy it is to exist in the world! With moons and Bing Crosby and insects flying through rain!)

3. Themes are brought up early, subtly. The narrator feels like a “robber,” on camera. There’s a preoccupation with guilt, with the question, how are our actions viewed by others? (This idea will recur when the narrator leaves her dying friend and gulps down margaritas on the beach.) When the first chimp learned to sign, she lied. She witnessed something naughty “on the desk”--and blamed the janitor. That’s because she was a mother; she wanted to protect her young; she didn’t want to imperil herself, and by extension, her baby, by pointing fingers at the powerful project director. (This is a story about love--about creatures shielding one another from harsh realities. It’s about harsh realities asserting themselves, despite our best attempts at denial.)

4. Questions about gender are raised *with wit* ... In a story about two women helping each other, Tammy Wynette no longer suggests standing by “your man.” A pregnant woman is no longer required to have *the man*’s baby in that grating Paul Anka song. So many writers would underscore these women’s experiences in clunky ways, but Hempel “does gender” so lightly and intelligently. So much is bubbling under the surface, and we’re still on the first page! The story is a home run. More later.

***

Just some thoughts on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Do you know the idea of the schlemiel, in Yiddish folklore? This is a comic character who has a downfall; in the course of his downfall, he inadvertently prods us to challenge some of our unwritten rules and norms. I didn’t point this out; I’m borrowing from some critic on Wikipedia. The schlemiel in folklore dealt with anti-Semitism and economic survival; the schlemiel in Larry David’s world deals with questions of assimilation, dinner party etiquette, secularism. (We see David eating at a Palestinian chicken shack, speculating aloud, “This would be a perfect place for a Jewish guy to cheat on his wife.” David becomes irritated when his friend has a late-in-life burst of religious fervor and begins wearing a yarmulke. David wonders aloud if a friend’s adopted Asian baby would--by genetic predisposition--“have a really easy time with chopsticks.”)

The David character reminds me a bit of the hero of Isaac Singer’s “Enemies, A Love Story,” who somehow finds himself with three wives, or pseudo-wives, in New York City right after World War II. In fact, the plot of “Denise Handicap” seems to be an update of this story. David befriends a woman (Denise) without realizing she is wheelchair-bound. He finds himself offering to take her to a private music recital. Later, when his Blackberry is dumped in the ocean, he realizes he doesn’t have her contact info. So, appallingly, he asks another wheelchair-bound woman in the neighborhood if she happens to know Denise. (“Yeah, we hang out all the time. Denise, Stephen Hawking, and I. We’re just really close.”)

When the new woman--“Wendy Wheelchair”--expresses an interest in classical music, she finds herself at the aforementioned private recital, in Denise Handicap’s slot. But Denise Handicap--unbeknownst to Larry--has clung to her own ticket and has arrived solo. So the setup is classic: A man is caught with two girlfriends. As in a bedroom farce, the girlfriends stumble upon each other. But the twists--the wheelchairs, the Blackberries--ensure that we’re seeing something we’ve never really seen before.

Rolling Stone called “Curb” the 19th-greatest TV series of all time. I’m beginning to come around.