Mere Anarchy [Hardcover]

Woody Allen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2007

"I am greatly relieved that the universe is finally explainable. I was beginning to think it was me." Thus begins "Strung Out", Woody Allen's hilarious application of the laws of the universe to daily life. Mere Anarchy, Woody Allen's first new collection in 25 years, features 18 witty, wild and intelligent comic pieces - nine of which have never before been in print. Surreal, absurd, rich in verbal play, bitingly satirical and just plan daft, this collection includes tales of a body double - mistaken for the film's star - kidnapped by outlaws; a pretentious writer forced to work on the novelisation of a "Three Stooges" film; a nanny secretly writing an expose of her Manhattan employers; crooks selling bespoke prayers on ebay; and how to react when you're asked to finance a Broadway play about the invention and manufacture of the adjustable showerhead. Laced with his unique brand of humour and reminiscent of some of his finest films, "Mere Anarchy" is an essential collection of tales by the inimitable Woody Allen.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This collection of 18 sketches, 10 of which appeared in the New Yorker, is Allen’s first in 25 years. The animating comedy is part S.J. Perelman and part borscht belt: Allen piles the ludicrous on top of the ridiculous and tops it with an acidic lemon squeeze, and then just keeps the jokes coming. So when the babysitter in "Nanny Dearest" describes her boss—"Bidnick gorges himself on Viagra, but the dosage makes him hallucinate and causes him to imagine he is Pliny the Elder"—we laugh; when, in a piece making fun of the New York Times science page, "Strung Out," Allen notes that "to a man standing on the shore, time passes quicker than to a man on a boat—especially if the man on the boat is with his wife"—we groan. Sometimes the simplest pieces work best: man goes to New Age retreat and learns to levitate, but not to get back down. While this collection doesn’t quite measure up to Allen’s Without Feathers (1975), there are pieces here—for instance, the report on Mickey Mouse’s testimony at the Michael Eisner/Michael Ovitz trial—that will put a rictus on your kisser.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

It's been 25 years since Woody Allen's last humor collection, and for lovers of the New Yorker "casual" (a blend of goofy personal essay and literary parody), that's far too long. Most of these pieces appeared originally in the New Yorker , but there are a handful of originals as well, all of which will please those determined souls who like their humor distinctly old school ("On a Bad Day You Can See Forever," a rant about the horrors of rehabbing a condo, begins with the narrator reading Dante and wondering why there is no circle in hell for contractors). The topsy-turvy literary allusions pour from Allen's pen like bullets from a Gatling gun (an appropriately obscure simile), exposing the intellectual pretensions of a ragtag assortment of Allenesque everymen--endearingly unkempt nebbishes who, despite knowing their Dostoevsky, can't quite deal with the absurdities of daily life. Take Flanders Mealworm, the unfairly unheralded author of The Hockfleisch Chronicles, who, desperate for cash, agrees to write a novelization of a Three Stooges movie: "Calmly and for no apparent reason, the dark-haired man took the nose of the bald man in his right hand and slowly twisted it in a long, counterclockwise circle." If Larry, Moe, and Curly Joe weren't exactly what Yeats had in mind when he used the phrase "mere anarchy" in "The Second Coming," they should have been. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Ebury Press; 1st Edition/ 2nd Printing edition (July 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0091920213
• ISBN-13: 978-0091920210
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,336,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars WOODY'S BACK, June 17, 2007

By 

HumorReader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mere Anarchy (Hardcover)

This is good, not great, Woody Allen. Certainly not vintage Woody. But His deft economy of word useage, the analogies, the superb timing, even in print, are all there. I enjoyed the book, yet it left me with a rather empty feeling. I don't feel it's as memorable, as, say, David Sedaris. But this is still quite good.

If you're an Allen fan, especially a new fan, don't stop with this book. Also check out "The Complete Prose of Woody Allen."Complete Prose of Woody Allen

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As thoroughly funny as ever, July 10, 2007

By 

Brad Shorr "Brad Shorr" - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mere Anarchy (Hardcover)

The two funniest books I ever read were "Without Feathers" and "Getting Even", so my expectations were impossibly high for "Mere Anarchy." But almost to my surprise, Woody Allen's new book at least equals and maybe surpasses them both.

Allen's writing skills are off the charts, whatever the genre. At times, his sentence structure is so intricate and precise, his vocabulary so eccentrically obscure, that his setups become funnier than his punchlines:

"I was supremely confident my flair for atmosphere and characterization would sparkle alongside the numbing mulch ground out by studio hacks. Certainly the space atop my mantel might be better festooned by a gold statuette than by the plastic dipping bird that now bobbed there ad infinitum..."

This particular vignette, "This Nib for Hire", is particularly hilarious: the story of Flanders Mealworm, a pretentious, out of work novelist writing a novelization of a Three Stooges short.

In the later chapters, Allen drops the highly stylized prose and reverts to earlier form, where he simply piles absurdities on his paragraphs like pastrami on rye. This too is sidesplitting:

"How could I not have known that there are little things the size of 'Planck length' in the universe, which are a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter? Imagine if you dropped one in a dark theater how hard it would be to find. And how does gravity work? And if it were to cease suddenly, would certain restaurants still require a jacket? ..."

Allen is funny on every level:

Funny premises--"Frederich Nietzsche's Diet Book", Savile Row suits impregnated with fragrances, a lighting double kidnapped by Indian terrorists while on location.

Funny, perfectly drawn metaphors and similes--"I have also reviewed by own financial obligations, which have puffed up recently like a hammered thumb." Or, "With that, he scribbled in an additional ninety thousand dollars on the estimate, which had waxed to the girth of the Talmud while rivaling it in possible interpretations."

Funny character names--Hal Roachpaste, Reg Millipede, Agememnon Wurst and E. Coli Biggs, to name a very, very few.

Funny words--Myrmidon, crepescular, succubus, screed, vigorish, on and on.

And of course, funny jokes, everywhere--"She quarreled with the nanny and accused her of brushing Misha's teeth sideways rather than up and down." "As we know, for centuries Rome regarded the Open Hot Turkey Sandwich as the height of licentiousness ..."

Allen is the absolute master of fusing the sublime with the absurd. The result is a book that makes you think as well as laugh. That's a combination you don't often see these days!

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The worst Woody Allen ever, January 24, 2008

By 

Dale Albright "Theatre Dale" (Bay Area, California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mere Anarchy (Hardcover)

Wow. This book was virtually unreadable. What a major disappointment after years of genius writing. Some vintage good ideas...but by far his worst writing ever.