Customer Reviews

GETTING EVEN

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Nothing can compare to this book and also Side Effects and Without Feathers, by Allen. Dave Barry is funny (although not as funny in recent years). Douglas Adams is hilarious, but he writes novels. These "nonfiction" pieces and short stories by Woody Allen are the funniest things ever written. And if you're concerned because you don't like Woody's whining style in his stand-up and movies, be assured you can't do that in prose. They are two distinct styles and you probably wouldn't even know it was Woody if not for his name on the cover. Read at least one of Woody's three books -- or at least one story from one of these books. Make that one page. If you don't love it, you can put it back on the shelf and at least know you didn't let something fantastic slip by unread.

Getting Even is one of three early collections of Woody Allen's short humorous articles. The others are Without Feathers and Side Effects. Many of the pieces in Getting Even appeared in magazines, mostly The New Yorker, but also Playboy, and Evergreen Review. While others first appeared in this anthology. In total, there are 17 articles in the collection. Considering that they were written over 35 years ago, there are some references that do not come across well today. Yet as a group they are still quite funny.

<u>The Metterling Lists</u> is a piece of satirical literary criticism of <u>The Collected Laundry Lists of Hans Metterling Vol. 1</u>, a supposedly scholarly work of 437 pages that analyzes the first six laundry lists. Fortunately Mr. Allen only takes seven pages to mock this fictional piece of scholarship.

<u>A Look At Organized Crime</u> provides a very brief history of organized crime in America including the murder of Kid Lipsky by Albert (The Logical Positivist) Corillo who locked Lipsky in a closet and "sucked all the air out through a straw." It also provides a description of a Mafia initiation ceremony and ends with some tips on fighting mobsters.

<u>The Schmeed Memoirs</u> are represented as the recollections of Hitler's barber. Yet they can't be taken too seriously because he claims he didn't know Hitler was a Nazi and thought he worked for the phone company. There is a funny where Hitler fears that Chruchill will grow sideburns before he can. It is humorous to view World War II from the perspective of Hitler's hair.

<u>My Philosophy</u> consists of the Critique of Pure Dread, the Eschatological Dialectics As a Means of Coping with Shingles, and The Cosmos on Five Dollars a Day. It ends with two Parables and a short list of Aphorisms.

<u>Yes, But Can The Steam Engine Do This?</u> provides a humorous take on the scientific research saga with a history of the Earl of Sandwich's research into developing the sandwich. Starting with his birth in 1718, the tale is filled with bread experiments, research into cold cuts and cheeses, and years of failures followed by his final success and lasting fame.

<u>Death Knocks</u> is a short play in which an inexperienced angel of death, who comes to claim Nat Ackerman's soul, is lured into a losing game of gin rummy and returns empty-handed.

<u>Spring Bulletin</u> is Woody Allen's satirical take on college course descriptions. It includes a course called Introduction to God which is described as "Confrontation with the Creator of the universe through informal lectures and field trips."

The next piece, a guide to the interpretation of Hassidic tales, includes tales like the following and Mr. Allen's interpretations of them.
A man journeyed to Chelm to seek the advice of Rabbi Ben Kaddish.
"Rabbi " the man asked, "where can I find peace?"
The Hassid surveyed him and said, "Quick, look behind you!"
The man turned around, and Rabbi Ben Kaddish smashed him in the back of the head with a candlestick. "Is that peaceful enough for you?" he chuckled.
There are six other tales and their interpretations in this piece.

<u>The Gossage-Varbedian Papers</u> tells the sad story of a chess game played at a distance via letters. The correspondence starts out with a missive from Gossage stating that one of his letters must have gotten lost in the mail since his chess board is set up differently than Verbedian's. The insults and the confusion worsen as the letters go back and forth. A must for any chess fan.

<u>Notes From The Overfed</u>, Mr. Allen claims, was inspired by reading Dostoyevski and a Weight Watchers magazine on an airplane trip. In it an Atheist is converted when he decides that, if God is everywhere, He must be in food. Then consuming everything in sight, he achieves sanctity and obesity through compulsive eating.

<u>A Twenties Memory</u> mocks the name-dropping memoirs of the post-war lost generation. Filled with references to Gertrude Stein, Picasso, Earnest Hemingway, Alice B. Toklas, and many others, a non-entity tries to gain fame by the shared light of his famous contemporaries.

In <u>Count Dracula</u> the famous vampire wakes up early due to confusion caused by a solar eclipse, and visits the baker and his wife for what he thinks is an evening snack with disastrous consequences.

In <u>A Little Louder, Please</u> a true afficionato of the arts confesses his one failing - an inability to understand the gestures of mimes.

<u>Conversations With Helmholtz</u> consists of notes taken by the student of a famous elderly psychoanalyst of their conversations together. Senility has certainly gotten the better of the older man, but his reputation and fame keep the younger man from realizing this with humorous results.

<u>Viva Vargas</u> is subtitled Excepts From The Diary of A Revolutionary, and reveals much of the same humor that the author later used in the movie Bananas.

<u>The Discovery And Use of The Fake Ink Blot</u> provides a humorous social history of a device used in practical jokes.

The last story in the volume, <u>Mr. Big</u>, is my favorite. It is narrated by a Philip Marlowesque detective who is hired by a lovely woman claiming to be a Vassar student. She wants him to find a missing person, God. The mixture of Raymond Chandler's format with the existential search for the meaning of life is extremely funny even after the passage of many years.

All in all, if you like the early Woody Allen movies, you will love this book - even though some of the material is no longer as fresh.

Reading this is like participating in Allen's creative process since many of the short sketches here are reminiscent of scenes from Allen's earlier films. Very funny stuff that had me laughing out loud. However it's best to read this and imagine Woody Allen's voice is telling the stories, it makes them even funnier. Not all of the sketches work as well as others but when he's on the sketches are hysterical. A very short collection of Woody Allen shorts.

For someone with no exposure to Woody's prose, this was a revelation. What a smart writer he is! He manages to find a unique voice, and with this voice he beats his own obsessions to a pulp, until they stand up and say 'Uncle'.

Woody gets even with literary biographies, crime, philosophy (and philosophy and more philosophy), death, religion, intellectualism, political revolutions, psychology, and of course, mimes.

My favourite piece is the last one: 'Mr. Big'. It's a brilliant Raymond Chandler parody, where the blonde bombshell who comes into the private eye's life is not looking for a missing husband, but proof of the existence of God! Ingenious! There's one passage where the detective deduces that since Socrates killed himself, Jesus was murdered, and Neitzche went crazy, then there is someone out there and He doesn't want to be found.

Woody tends to fall back on absurdity for his humour a tad too often (at one point, someone's forehead falls off), and if the collection was any longer it would have gotten tedious. But it's just long enough. Bite sized and tasty.

Even for people who do not like Woody Allen's movies, his satiric books must give a great laugh!

This man is so intelligent that he allows himself to un-taboo'ize just about everything. He makes fun of religion without being blasphemic, about stereotypes without being prejudicial, and so on.

This is the most sophisticated fun any American has ever come up with!

"Getting Even" is a compilation of exceptional short stories that chronicle Woody Allen's transition from variety show writer to stand-up comedian. He ended 50s as one of the horses in an amazing stable of writers on "Your Show of Shows" that included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, and Carl Reiner. Showcasing his patented wry humor, the stories in "Getting Even" have the post-vaudevillian variety show feel to them. He lampoons intellectual, philosophical and psychological traditions and especially enjoys exploiting the old Jewish stereotypes. Each story is fast paced and peppered with one-liners and guarantees at least one good chuckle. An entertaining book that is rife with painfully accurate insights into the absurdities of our everyday life.

I've owned copies of this book several times and loaned it to people whom I think will like it, but I never get it back. It's one of the funniest books I've ever read. It always hits the spot when I'm looking for a good laugh.

This was fairly short but very entertaining read. It is the usually quick-witted and quercky early Woody Allen most people know and appreciate. It is a collection of short stories, unrelated in topic. He loves absurd references and off the wall comparisions and they make for a few laugh out loud moments. I recommend this book to anyone who likes off-the-wall writing and comedy with some intellectualism thrown in to the mix. This is early Allen, written before many of his biggest movies came out also.

This is a first collection of Woody Allen's early articles that appeared in various New York publications in the 1960's. They are hit and miss, but mostly hits. A Woody Allen movie fan will recognize his parodies of intellectual pretension and his continuing obsessions with death, metaphysics, and religion.

Allen is a master of parody. The pseudo-intellectual silliness in the review of "The Metterling Lists" and the life of the Earl of Sandwich in "Yes, But Can the Steam Engine Do This?" are laugh-out-loud hysterical. "Conversations with Hemholz" is a lesser light about one of the alleged founders of psychoanalysis and the petty rivalries that tickle the funny bone. "Schmeed's Memoirs" about the top Nazi barber is a miss.

The "Hassidic Tales" are also top-rate Allen on display. The interpretations of rabbinical misfits by his "noted scholar" are wonderfully absurd justifications for equally absurd behavior. His "Death Knocks" is a weak first encounter with one of his most famous and laughable fears.

The other pieces in the collection from chess-by-mail to encounters with Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas all have their moments. One can foresee the germination of "Bananas" in "Viva Vargas" and "Play it Again, Sam" in "Mr. Big." Curiously, in this volume sex takes a holiday since there are no pieces on his second greatest obsession next to death.

If you are an Allen fan this small volume is well worth buying at the price for which it is now selling. Since it is a collection of separate pieces you also have the luxury of reading each in any order at any time. I enjoyed reading early Woody, not only for the laughs but also for a view of the potential that would make him a legend later.

From Rabbis unaware that it's against Jewish law to eat pork, to petty insults stemming from a heated chess game by mail, this book has very many funny moments. It's a rare collection of some of the best written comedy you can find.

Some of the essays are more enjoyable than others, so if you find yourself not enjoying one particular essay, press on. You're sure to find another that will make you laugh out loud.