Larry David: goodbye to all that | Television

Larry David’s humor is often dismissed as cynical or nihilistic. Even those who follow and enjoy it call it that, and I wouldn’t put my hand in the fire for David himself, who, flirtatious as he is, perhaps also acts as a cynic and a nihilist. He has said much worse things about himself. I, on the other hand, have always considered it to be very humanist, in the best literary and intellectual tradition of the West, the one that comes to us in Spain through Cervantes and Goya, the one that is written in prison, in exile or in the tavern and It is never placed in a pulpit.

This thuggish humor may seem insensitive in these moralistic times, but you have to be very blind not to see the tenderness it hides. Larry David has given me countless laughs with a bad conscience, but also a lot of light. He did it in Seinfeldso full of poetry about the monstrous, and it has been fulfilled for almost twenty years in Curb Your Enthusiasmwhere kindness and grace were embodied in Richard Lewis, who died this week.

I have been saddened by the death of Lewis, whose bodily decline the series has documented. In the last episodes of this last season (really last one) he doesn’t even appear standing. He improvises the text of him sitting next to him, and does not need to walk or gesticulate to fulfill the role of his judicious and faithful friend who forgives in advance all of the incorrigible David’s misdeeds. I think most of us fans of the series adored him and identified with him.

The friend dies and Larry David’s autobiographical series (or whatever it was) ends, and I feel that with them a way of laughing and being in the world dies. I’m probably exaggerating. The demon of premature nostalgia writes this column for me — but I will charge for it: in that I have learned from Larry David; Even if the work is done for you by others, the bill is always in your name—but sometimes you have to agree. Neither Trump nor Putin are amused by jokes about Jewish hooligans. This radical humanism, based on the pleasure of existing as humans, even if the body itches, hurts, gets sick and dies, will soon be swept aside by anti-humanists, those who believe in paradises. We still have a few episodes of Larry David left before the curtain falls. Let’s enjoy them.