Paul Rudnick spins New Yorker tales in 'I Shudder'
I SHUDDER: And Other Reactions to Life, Death and New Jersey, by Paul Rudnick. Harper, 318 pp. $23.99
Meet, please, Mr. Elyot Vionnet. But keep your distance. This is not the sort of singular New Yorker you'd want living down the hall or competing with you for a taxi or, especially, observing your cell-phone habits.
The ideal way to know this persnickety and, admit it, stupendously amusing fellow is through five lengthy excerpts from his "most deeply intimate and personal diary," which Paul Rudnick has included in this lovable and astute collection of humor pieces titled "I Shudder."
There are 10 other stories in this anthology by the playwright ("Jeffrey," "The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told") and screenwriter ("Addams Family Values," "In and Out"). Most are breezy and giddy with zingers, all handcrafted to make their good-natured defiance seem easy.
Rudnick is at his least original in his own Jewish-family stories and, unfortunately, he starts the book with an extended memory of his mother and her two sisters inspecting his first tiny fifth-floor walk-up in the West Village. "Is this the whole thing?" asks Lil, the all-powerful eldest sister. "Or is this the foyer?"
So skip ahead. Before long, we are transported to another studio apartment - the perfect one in a building that "almost overlooks" Gramercy Park. Elyot, 63, has lived there for his entire adult life (with an imaginary manservant named Shabar). He is semiretired from his "career" as a substitute teacher. He sleeps in crisply starched 100 percent cotton pajamas and, only on Christmas Eve, wears the scarlet silk ones.
Elyot, you see, has a highly developed sense of right and wrong. The rights include Martha Stewart ("because she actually stands for something, for doing it right, for taking the time, for doing your time"). And the wrongs (for which the cosmos provides uncanny punishment) include the above mentioned crimes against civilization, plus a brief replacement of Martha Stewart with a TV starlet with "pride in her own lack of skills."
But Elyot is not the only star of the collection. Rudnick, who moved from New Jersey to Manhattan to write plays, has good stories about show-biz parties at the Chelsea Hotel. He has juicier stories about Hollywood, including the devolution of "Sister Act" into a movie he disowned by pseudonym. His memories of outrageous late producer Allan Carr include "the largest rock of cocaine I have ever seen, hanging from his nose . . . even his substance abuse resembled a Christmas tree ornament."
Other highlights include "I Hit Hamlet," his New Yorker article about Nicol Williamson stabbing Evan Handler onstage during Rudnick's play, "I Hate Hamlet." And you've got to admire his ode to Pringles as "the snack equivalent of teakwood nesting tables." In his touching piece about Helen Merrill, the legendary German-born agent and world-class eccentric, she warns him that people are "so tewwible," then begs, "Pwomise me, wight now, tell me that you will twy, not to become tewwible."
With this deceptively sweet and droll collection, he fulfills that promise, and more.
