The Ideal Audience: A Chinese Short Story by Woody Allen

To Michael and Fong

The coda to the collection of modern Chinese short stories, 100 Nodes of Information, that Michael and Fong have sent to me for my birthday, features a photograph of Woody Allen accompanied by a short essay— if a casual, loosely constructed 100-word statement can be called that.

The rest of the book features hypershort stories of 100 words or less created over the last 100 years by 100 Chinese authors. Fong and Michael, inveterate solvers of sudoku and other puzzles, are hoping I’ll enjoy translating these picaresques and vignettes into English while learning written Mandarin to boot. I appreciate the intention. I’m someone who would enjoy such an activity, if I weren't so lazy when I’m not at work.

Relative to the story collection, the coda by Woody Allen feels out of place. It brings down the overall tone and quality of the book. It is not a story. It is not in Chinese. Woody Allen is not Chinese.

The editor provides no prefatory information to justify the presence of this piece. As far as I can tell, he has included it on the basis that Woody Allen wrote it on the occasion of a talk he gave to a group of students and admirers at the University of Fujian.* That, and the fact that it, too, is 100 words in length—though it in no way qualifies as a story.

Woody Allen is describing the size of the ideal audience. For a storyteller, it’s a hundred people, he says—at least in the United States.

Okay, I concede, the author has found another pretext to include this piece: it alludes to the theme of “100” that defines the collection.

In other countries and other cultures, Mr. Allen continues, the ideal number might be somewhat larger or smaller but it probably amounts to several dozen regardless. In the United States, this number is defined by the institution of the 99-seat theater. The ideal audience, he argues, is a full house in a theater this size—plus the storyteller himself, who can’t help but double as an audience member, too, as he listens to the narrative that issues from his mouth and resonates in his jawbones.

An audience this size provides the ideal balance of intimacy and scale, Mr. Allen explains. It’s close enough to provide real-time feedback, which enables the storyteller to shape his story accordingly.

At the same time, it conveys to the storyteller that he has a following, enough of a draw to fill a house. And this is a tremendous affirmation.

If it weren’t for audiences like this at the very beginning of his career, Mr. Allen acknowledges, he might not have gotten to where he is today. If it weren’t for audiences like this, he wouldn’t be talking to you in this small
lecture hall on the campus of the University of Fujian. And it’s precisely to honor audiences like this, he concludes, that he chose this lecture hall, with its seating capacity of 99.

While this piece feels out of place, I’m glad I read it. Mr. Allen’s observations are fresh and his delivery is a perfect balance of off-the-cuff informality and finely honed concision, the spoken and the written.

Really, it’s a terrific piece.

Now that I think about it, I might even call it a work of art.

Now that I think about it, it belongs exactly where it is.

*The piece is accompanied by the only photograph in the book: a black-and-white portrait of Mr. Allen sitting on a stool on an otherwise empty stage, lit by the stage lights to such a degree that his features are lost where the light shines on him most brightly.