Setting:
Rue de Buci, Paris; May 22, 2024
Characters:
Alan Ziegler, Erin Langston, and surprise guest star Robert Weide (multiple Emmy-winning director of thirty Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes, writer-director of documentaries on Kurt Vonnegut, Woody Allen, and Lenny Bruce (Oscar nominee), and somehow involved in everything that has made you laugh or giggle ever.
The story:
Our last night in Paris. Erin and I perambulate for an hour or so, sidewalk-shopping for our final dinner. Almosts but not-quites. We pass Atlas on Rue de Bac three times (where we first ate 29 years ago). As we’re about to sit down at Cafe de Paris, Erin says, “I’m still thinking Atlas,” where we were intrigued (and slightly terrified) by the raw bar parked on the sidewalk.
We order Les Plateaux L’Atlas, and a granfalloon of sea creatures is deposited on our table; they will not be sleeping with the fishes tonight.
Erin receives shelling and other tips from the server. About these little darling he says, “Just pop them in your mouth. It is OK.”
I think of the line in Midnight in Paris “In bed with a bad oyster,” and wonder if one of us should abstain, like couples who won’t fly on the same plane. Erin goes to work cracking, and I retreat to Twitter to take my mind off the carnage. This photo jumps out:
The post is by Robert Weide: “Sitting at an outdoor cafe on the Left Bank. A local just walked by, wearing a Curb Your Enthusiasm T-shirt. I seriously considered going up to him and introducing myself, figuring it would blow his mind. By the time I decided to do it, I’d have had to chase him, so passed….”
Robert Weide has been on my radar for many years—“Curb” of course—but mainly his Vonnegut film. I had studied with Kurt in graduate school and meant to see if Robert might need a teaching anecdote—Kurt rarely taught so there aren’t that many of us (John Irving being one). I never reached out, but started following Robert on Twitter. By the way, “X” looks very much like a study for Vonnegut’s signature drawing of an asshole, introduced in Breakfast of Champions:
And by the byway, the above scan is from the copy Kurt signed to me exactly 50 years ago, when he was 50-years-old.
It doesn’t take a forensics expert to realize Robert Weide is across the street.
(Later, I will ask myself the cop-show question: “Can you zoom in there?” Not enough to be admissible in court, but there we are, kettle of fish and all.)
Rue de Buci used to be easy to cross–no cars–but now one has to look both ways multiple times for bicycles (a wonderful comedy school classroom for learning double-takes under pressure). I make it across and search the outdoor tables futilely for beef bourguignon. What does he look like? There’s a man leaving who looks like what I remember him looking like in the Vonnegut film. “Are you Robert?”
I’ll let Robert pick up the narrative from his subsequent tweets:
“I get up to leave. An American guy walks up to me and says, ‘Are you Robert Weide?’ I answer affirmatively, and say, ‘How could you possibly know that?’ since the name is famous, but the face is not. He says, ‘I’m a big fan and I follow you on Twitter, and I just popped in to look at Tweets and I saw your photo about the guy in the Curb T-shirt, and saw the plate that said ‘Cafe de Paris’ and realized my wife and I were right across the street from you.’ They were at the Cafe Atlas, which you can see in the picture. His name is @AlanZiegler and his wife is Erin. Alan not only was he a fan of Curb and my Woody Allen doc, but was a graduate student of Kurt Vonnegut’s when Kurt taught at City College in NY in the late 70s. We were calculating the odds of his seeing that photo at that place at that moment, when we looked at the photo again and zoomed in, and realized that Alan and Erin were visible in the shot. So now we come full circle with a photo of Alan and me at the Atlas. We should have angled it so you could see the Café de Paris in the background. Anyway, that’s the magic of my first day in Paris. Who knows what synchronicity lies ahead in the next couple of days? And yes, it was Beef Bourguignon.”
(Thank you, Erin, for thinking to grab your phone and asking us to pose.)
Now here’s where it gets really strange. Later, Robert texts me to check out the thread he’s made of his recent tweets, featuring Erin’s photo: “829k views and counting.” Before I can digest this number, Robert texts, “So far 994k views. We’ll pass 1m within the hour.”
When Erin and I land in New York the tally is 2.9 million.
We top out at: 7:19 PM · May 22, 2024 3.3M Views
The most bewildering number is that Robert Weide has fewer than 60k followers. What’s the appeal? Maybe this comment says it best:
“Wow, how cool is that. I’m sorry but I don’t know Curb, your face or name but may I say it’s still a cool story?”
Here’s a sampling of other comments (most from people who do know Curb):
“A bit anti-Curb, don’t you think? Would have been more in the character of Curb if he picked a fight with you, maybe about the ending & you trying to explain it wasn’t you who directed that one.”
“Wow, I had to zoom in before I realized that Alan was the head of the undergrad writing department at Columbia when I was a student there. Very nice guy. I spent two years developing a comedy series with Tim Gibbons of Curb. It’s a tiny world.”
“Alan may be a member of your karass.”
“OK we need to plot that story in the format of a graph of Vonnegut’s Shape of Stories”
“It’s my first day in Paris too! I’m going to look for you (and Alan and Erin).”
“How is it that all romance would be lost in this story if you were in NYC eating at the New York Cafe.”
“Alan looks ai generated no offence Alan.”
“Sounds like the kind of circuitous serendipity that was Curb’s bread and butter. Are we certain LD didn’t outline this?”
“omg, I love Alan Ziegler, he was one of my most memorable professors at Columbia! I read this thread with interest because things like this are so much fun and then ended up having my own fun small world moment lol”
“I love small world stories. Looks like you made a new friend. And I got a lovely Friday morning read on my back patio with a cup of coffee. Sometimes this world is a miraculous place.”
“A perfect story for this format. Strong start (with a hint of mystery), interesting middle, and a a satisfying ending. Plus, a gorgeous location to boot. (And it had Vonnegut!) “
“My mind is blown!!! That is a complete holiday in a day. Glorious connecting for both and oh the connections and threads of life.”
“That’s wild and so beautiful! Maybe your urge to take a pic of the guy wearing the Curb shirt wasn’t just random. Per your first post, something was telling you to make a connection. And then this gentleman appeared! Perhaps Linda had a hand in it!”
“Wait a second. No Larry David stare-down either by Alan to make sure it WAS you or by you to make sure he WAS a Vonnegut student? Surely, there was an accordion player nearby who could have supplied the stare-down theme as one of you finally concluded, “D’accord, d’accord…”
“Stories like this is why I can’t leave this site.”
What a great story. Nice Twitter detective work on the part of Alan! Are you saying you studied with Kurt Vonnegut, or only Alan did? What an amazing experience that must have been.”
Yes, amazing. Here’s a little memoir of Vonnegut.
I have been admitted to the City College graduate writing program as a poet, but I convince the director to let me also take Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction workshop.
The class meets in Kurt’s midtown Manhattan townhouse. A few sessions into the term, Kurt tells us that his writing isn’t going well and he needs to take a week off. He looks pale and dispirited as he explains that he is trying to write about heaven and can’t figure out how to do it. Two weeks later, when I ask how the writing is going, he smiles, waves his thumb like a flag, and says, “A-number one.” He looks terrific. (His depiction of heaven doesn’t appear until a few years later, in the prologue to Jailbird.)
I write a short story about rock musicians. Kurt thinks it should be a novel, that writing short stories is like “playing poker and winning $7. Are you going to settle fr easy victories, be happy with an ‘A’ in Creative Writing?”
I would be thrilled with an “A” in Creative Writing from Kurt Vonnegut, but I say I’ll give it a go. Kurt replies that I shouldn’t agree so fast: “Telling you to write a novel is like telling you to get married.”
Every couple of weeks we have a one-on-one meeting. Kurt usually says something before we even sit down: “You’re on to something,” and, later in the term, “You’re racking right along. It looks like a book.” The supreme compliment comes when he declares that in addition to being a poet I am “becoming a man of letters.”
After reading a new chapter, Kurt says, “These guys are trouble, get rid of them,” about two of the protagonist’s band members. I assume he is speaking to me as the author, and I am ready to expunge the characters, but he clarifies that he is talking through me to the protagonist, who should fire them in the story.
I leave feeling great. I am creating characters.
My momentum is strong, and Kurt invites me to meet with him after the term ends. A couple of weeks go by, and I muster the courage to call for an appointment. His wife answers and tells me, “The term is over, he’s not seeing any students.”
Before I can plead my case, Kurt comes on an extension and says, “It’s all right.”
At our meeting, Kurt asks, “Do you know famous rock musicians?”
“Not famous ones.”
“Well, this is the way rock musicians will act in ten years.”
“Huh?”
Kurt explains that some kid in the Midwest will read my book and become a famous rock musician, emulating my characters because that’s all he knows about how a rock musician acts. Then kids will emulate him.
I am not only creating characters, I am creating people.
I ask how his book is going, and he replies, “It doesn’t much matter. It’s not going very well.” I can take this two ways:
1) If Kurt Vonnegut has such doubts, who am I to even try to get into the game? Or, 2) The fact that I, too, have such doubts doesn’t mean I am not worthy of being in the game.
I opt for the latter.
At the end of the session, Kurt inscribes my copy of Breakfast of Champions: “For Alan Ziegler, who has begun a book of his own.”
I never finish that novel, but fifteen years later my manuscript of short stories wins a minor award, and I am happy with this collection of “small victories.” I send Kurt the manuscript, and ask for a blurb, figuring I am probably the tenth writer that week to ask him for one—all with connections less tenuous than mine—and that he has probably long ago forgotten me. I include a return postcard, asking him to check one of five boxes: “I will try to take a look at the manuscript and maybe write a blurb.” “No, but try again with the galleys.” “No.” “Yes, but be patient.” “It’s done. Here’s the blurb.”
A week later, the postcard comes back. Kurt has checked the “be patient” box and added, “Just got back from England, so have to catch up on a lot of stuff.” But in the same batch of mail is an envelope with his blurb, which is prefaced by: “I’m honored to know you.”
Likewise, I am most sure.
*
And so it goes. Pretty Pretty Pretty Good.
Go to Source
Author: Alan Ziegler
