Clothing Optional: And Other Ways to Read These Stories

The balance in your 401(k) is shrinking. The value of your home is drifting downward like the falling autumn leaves. Need a good laugh? Who doesn't these days? Thanks to CLOTHING OPTIONAL, Alan Zweibel's collection of short stories, personal essays, sketches and occasional pieces (along with a Vonnegut-like drawing or two), your prayers may have been answered. Zweibel was one of the original writers on "Saturday Night Live" and perhaps is best known for BUNNY BUNNY, the touching memoir of his close friendship with Gilda Radner. Crediting his show business career to the 23 law schools that refused to admit him, Zweibel shares a Jewish comic sensibility with contemporaries from Long Island like his close friend, Billy Crystal. "Woody Allen's my idol," Zweibel writes, and there's also an Allenesque aura that hovers unmistakably over these pages. CLOTHING OPTIONAL is something of a grab bag of material, culled from Zweibel's writings for publications as diverse as the AARP Bulletin and Atlantic Monthly. Like a solid standup routine, if one piece doesn't suit your taste, just wait a minute, because the next one is likely to score. The targets of Zweibel's observational wit are wide-ranging, but he has a striking fondness for biblically-themed material. He confesses that as an 11-year-old his first love was Sarah, Abraham's wife. While he admires the fact that she was "wise and understanding," one principal attraction was a very practical one: "Plus, at this point in time, Sarah's husband had been dead for more than three thousand years --- so really, who would I be hurting?" He also offers the tale of God's dialogue with Joshua and a hapless caterer named Mendel that provides a take on the story of Jericho's fall unlike anything you learned in Sunday school. The book's title piece describes Zweibel's magazine assignment to write about a nudist club in Palm Springs. From his arrival at a "naked tea" wearing "gym shorts and a Yankees nightshirt that extended just below the knee," let's just say he undergoes a stunningly abrupt transformation in his attitude toward nudity. "I realized I liked these naked people," he writes. "They were without pretense in addition to being without clothing." By the time his departure day arrives, he's calculating exactly how long he can linger and still cover the 114 miles he needs to travel to reach his daughter's softball game on time, his estimates becoming ever more fanciful along the way. Alongside the numerous examples of Zweibel's wit, often of the most self-deprecating variety, appears a touching tribute to one of his mentors, Herb Sargent, another "SNL" writer. Zweibel was drawn to Sargent because "Herb was New York. But an older, more romantic New York that took place in black and white, like the kind of TV I grew up on and wanted to be a part of someday. Comedy with a conscience. And mindful of its power to influence." The conclusion of this remembrance is powerful enough to make you reach for the phone or