Friday´s Guardian had a fantastic short piece by Woody Allen, reflecting on the recent death of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman.
I like Woody´s writing the same way I like the writing in his films: he´s pithy. His piece on Bergman is not just the usual vacuous laudatry crap that people write when someone dies - no, not for Woody to shy away from the darker side of things.
When people write about those who they look up to and idolise, they often fall into unconsciously writing about themselves. Although in Woody Allen´s case, he is such an analytical person that he probably knows perfectly well that he is writing about himself:
“I´ve said it before to people who have a romanticised view of the artist and hold creation sacred: in the end, your art doesn´t save you … I have joked about art being the intellectual´s Catholicism, that is, a wishful belief in an afterlife. Better than to live on in the hearts and minds of the public is to live on in one´s aparment, is how I put it.”
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