The Kugelmass Episode & Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130

“Share our similarities, celebrate our differences.” - M. Scott Peck

If I've learned one thing this semester, it's that compare & contrast essays are not a strong suit of mine. I've even got 2 Fs, and a D to back that up. But what must be done, must be done.

I have decided to go for it by choosing the Woody Allen short story "The Kugelmass Episode", and the 130th Sonnet of William Shakespeare. Why? Because if you're gonna fail, fail big. On first glance, these stories have about as much in common as Susan B. Anthony does with Lindsay Lohan, but on further inspection, one notices a common theme, that being some men's less than stellar view of the women in their lives.

In Kugelmass, it’s the title character's unkind description of his wife (and later in the story an equally unkind one of his "displaced" mistress), while in the Sonnet Shakespeare gives a description of his lover that as I said in class when we discussed it was "damning with faint praise." I refer you to the following lines from the two stories;

Kugelmass: "Daphne had promise. Who suspected she’d let herself go and swell up like a beach ball? Plus she had a few bucks, which is not in itself a healthy reason to marry a person, but it doesn’t hurt.”

Shakespeare: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than than her lips red: ... I love to hear her speak, yet well I know; That music hath a far more pleasing sound:"

See the similarities there? I certainly do. Yes, one is a lament by a total schlemiel, while the other is romantic in a backhanded sort of way. But look beneath the surface and you see the common thread here, which I already stated earlier but feel the need to repeat to emphasize my point; some men's less than stellar view of the women in their lives.

Both are also humorous in their own ways; the Sonnet for being a backhanded compliment, "Kugelmass" for using lowbrow humor to spoof high art, as well as it's ironic ending.

Now the contrasts on the other hand, well, there are many aren't there? How much commonality can one find between the poems of a much respected British playwright, and a spoof of the male midlife crisis? But despite the many, many contrasts, what holds these two together are the unexpected comparisons. That's what I like about them, and why I chose them. It reminds me in a way of how I write my own fiction.

And that is how we come to the point of this essay; reveal how I will approach my life differently as a result of having read and comprehended the literature.

The answer to that is, not that much really. This isn’t to say there will be no change, but in the long run, my being less self-conscious about taking risks in my fiction writing is not exactly the kind of thing you’d ever see on “a very special episode of Blossom”. But the fact is observing these two stories taught me that anything, if handled correctly, can be handled in writing, so it’s perfectly acceptable for me to write a comedic tale that opens with the lead catching her husband in an act of statutory rape, or a story that at first seems like a Romeo & Juliet style tale until the male lead rather suddenly gets offed at the end of the first chapter.