Most reviewers have pointed out that in Mere Anarchy Woody Allen seems to have had great fun coming up with daft names. Characters in other
tales from this collection go by such unlikely monikers as Pontius Perry, Reg
Millipede, and Murray Pepkin. In 'This Nib Is For Hire' we meet Flanders Mealworm who is an unknown writer who would love to be mentioned in the same breath as Joyce and Kafka and
Proust. Sadly Mr Mealwom has “churned out several unpublished novels on lofty
philosophical themes” and is financially embarrassed.
The story begins with Mealworm telling us that even great
literary geniuses of the past such as Dostoyevsky would sometimes struggle with
bills and that now he too might have to “mortgage his integrity” in order to
pay his rent. An arrogant film producer who claims his name is E. Coli Biggs
phones Mealworm telling him he got his number from the internet (“It’s there
alongside the X-rays of your colonoscopy”). Mealworm agrees to meet Biggs in a hotel to
discuss the possibility of writing a novelization of a hit movie “strictly for
lowbrows.”
Biggs claims to own the rights to a film where The Three
Stooges stay the night in a haunted house. Against his better judgement
Mealworm watches a special screening of the movie and later that night does his
best to turn what he watched into a novel. The next day at 3pm the two men meet
again and Mealworm is made to recite his efforts.
“The dilapidated Ford pulled up before a deserted farmhouse
and three men emerged. Calmly and for no apparent reason the dark-haired man
took the nose of the bald man in his right hand and slowly twisted it in a
long, counter clockwise circle. A horrible grinding sound broke the silence of
the Great Plains. ‘We suffer,’ the dark-haired man said. ‘O woe to the random
violence of human existence.’ Meanwhile Larry, the third man, had wandered into
the house and had somehow managed to get his head caught inside an earthenware
jar. Everything was suddenly terrifying and black as Larry groped blindly
around the room. He wondered if there was a god or any purpose at all to life
or any design behind the universe when suddenly the dark-haired man entered
and, finding a large polo mallet, began to break the jar off his companion’s
head. With pent-up fury that masked years of angst over the empty absurdity of
man’s fate, the one named Moe smashed the crockery. ‘We are at least free to
choose,’ wept Curly, the bald one. ‘Condemned to death but free to choose.’ And
with that Moe poled his two fingers into Curly’s eyes. “Oooh, oooh, oooh,’
Curly wailed, ‘the cosmos is so devoid of any justice.’ He stuck an unpeeled
banana into Moe’s mouth and shoved it all the way in.”
To find out how Biggs reacted and discover how this story
concludes you will have to buy your own copy of Mere Anarchy . "Here, in his first collection since his three hilarious classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects, Woody Allen has managed to write a book that not only answers the most profound questions of human existence but is the perfect size to place under any short table leg to prevent wobbling."
