Roger Zelazny & Woody Allen

===Woody Allen, "Love and Death", 1975:
I can't shoot him. He's a human being. He'll bleed on the carpet.
===Roger Zelazny, "The Hand Of Oberon", ch. 7, 1976:
"But I am a fool," he said, "a sentimental one, at that. Do you
recall the day of our last argument, here in Amber, so long ago?"
"Somewhat."
"I was sitting on the edge of my bed. You were standing by my
writing desk. As you turned away and headed toward the door, I resolved
to kill you. I reached beneath my bed, where I keep a cocked crossbow
with a bolt in it. I actually had my hand on it and was about to raise
it when I realized something which stopped me."
He paused.
"What was that?" I asked.
"Look over there by the door."
I looked, I saw nothing special. I began to shake my head, just as
he said, "On the floor."
Then I realized what it was-russet and olive and brown and green,
with a small geometric pattern. He nodded.
"You were standing on my favorite rug. I did not want to get blood
on it. Later, my anger passed. So I, too, am a victim of emotion and
circumstance."
===

Could it be an allusion or it is a widespread joke?

PS. Sorry for my bad English.

Timofei Koryakin wrote:
> ===Woody Allen, "Love and Death", 1975:
> I can't shoot him. He's a human being. He'll bleed on the carpet.
> ===Roger Zelazny, "The Hand Of Oberon", ch. 7, 1976:
[snip]
> "You were standing on my favorite rug. I did not want to get blood
> on it. Later, my anger passed. So I, too, am a victim of emotion and
> circumstance."
> ===
>
> Could it be an allusion or it is a widespread joke?
>
> PS. Sorry for my bad English.

Very unlikely that Zelazny copied Allen. "Love and Death" was released
June 10, 1975 according to the movie database on-line. "Hand of
Oberon" was serialized in May, July and September 1976 issues of Galaxy
and published as a hardcover in late 1976.

In those days, there was a *long* lead-time between the author
finishing a novel and seeing it published, and it is likely that
Zelazny had finished the novel in 1974 and especially by the time that
movie came out. Indeed "Nine Princes in Amber" was probably completed
in 1967 or thereabouts and didn't appear until 1970. There were two
excerpts of that novel published in fanzines in 1967, and Zelazny had
described the novel as completed and forthcoming, but it didn't appear
until 3 years later.

The concept is not new of a tough guy saying that he would have killed
you except that you were standing on his favourite rug, or holding a
good bottle of wine or a rare vase in your hands, or the baby had just
finally fallen asleep, etc etc. I think both Woody Allen and Roger
Zelazny were paying tribute to the kind of dialogue present in a
Chandler detective story or the like. In this case, the rug was not
casually tossed in, but comes up again when Corwin uses it as a reason
to speculate that Brand probably faked his attack.

But more to the point, a rug was specifically added not just in Hand of
Oberon but also in Eye of Cat, where a character instructs that the rug
(a Two Gray Hills) be rolled up and tossed aside first in order not to
mess it up or get blood on it. The reason (according to Jane Lindskold
in her book on Roger Zelazny, page 51) is that Zelazny owned 30
oriental rugs and liked to put things of his own into the stories. The
specific rug that Corwin was standing on was a Kazak, although that
part was not mentioned in the story (the rug is described well enough
that someone might recognize it). Merlin is later described as having
a Tabriz rug in his quarters. This is similar to the framed wood
carving that Corwin loved and had hanging in his home on the shadow
Earth; Zelazny was describing an item hanging in his own home that he
liked. And it's also similar to Zelazny admitting that when he would
stop writing to have a smoke, then his characters usually would light
up too. When he quit smoking, the characters did too, more or less.

Chris

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