[from Woody Allen: A Biography
by Eric Lax
1991 Da Capo Press]
> > > > "I was at an early age attracted to a certain type of woman physically," Woody said some years ago. "It's very hard to crystallize exactly the look that turned me on so much, but generally it was almost what you'd call a Jules Feiffer type of girl, the kind that appear in his cartoons with long black hair, no makeup, kind of black-clothed, leather-purse-carrying, silver earrings -- almost a joke in terms of women today. But at the time I thought they were all beautiful.
And I found out so frequently when I used to chase after those girls that they were almost invariably wanting to leave Brooklyn and move to Greenwich Village and study art, study music, get into literature -- or blow up an office building. When I also found they weren't interested in me because I was a lowlife culturally and intellectually, I had to start trying to make some sort of effort to explore interests that they had; all I knew about was baseball.
I used to take them out and they'd say, 'Where I'd really like to go tonight is to hear Andrés Segovia.' And I'd say, 'Who?' Or they'd say, 'Did you read this Faulkner novel?' And I'd say, 'I read COMIC BOOKS. I've never read a book in my life.' And so in order to keep pace, I had to read. And I found I liked what I read. It wasn't a chore for me after a while.
I found I liked Faulkner and Hemingway, although not Fitzgerald so much. Then I started reading plays. The things those women read and liked led them inevitably to Nietzsche and Trotsky and Beethoven, and I had to struggle to stay alive in that kind of company."
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