Without Feathers, Getting Even and Side Effects by Woody Allen
(Apologies for the bad picture quality. I could not find a decently sized photo of the book online, and the scanner at my home is out of commission at the moment, so I had to make do with snapping a rather poor picture myself.)
I have been a Woody Allen fan for a few years, but it has been more recently that I have become truly fascinated with his stories. He has a weird way of telling unique, intelligent stories in a way that is straightforward and appealing, even if a lot of ideas fly over the head of the reader (which happens to me more often than I would like to admit). Part of this is probably because, like a lot of great comedians, Allen knows when to appeal to the head, to the heart and to the ... more unsavory parts of the body.
Mainly I am familiar with Allen through his many, many movies, but the prolific nature of Allen's writing is not confined to film. During the late 1960s and the 1970s, he contributed short stories, plays and essays to many literary magazines, most notably The New Yorker. These writings are actually an interesting bridge between the gag-fueled nature of Allen's early movies and the more thoughtful fare of his later movies. They are full of interesting, funny jokes and gags, but some of them are surprising in how they explore the themes Allen has always been interested in, such as love, death, psychiatric analysis, the battle between the heart and what's down below, and so on.
Allen has released four books of his prose throughout his career -- Without Feathers, Getting Even, Side Effects and Mere Anarchy. I was lucky enough to read a collection featuring the first three books, so I hope some of you will be interested in them as well.
Without Feathers
Without Feathers is the strongest of Allen's books from start to finish. It has a good mix of bizarre mini-scenes, hilarious short stories and a couple of plays, to boot. One of the best pieces in the beginning is a great short story entitled "The Whore of Mensa." This story follows the private eye Kaiser Lupowitz as he investigates a ring of prostitutes who are hired to discuss intellectual subjects with clients. It's an inspired use of the hard boiled detective story voice -- take for example this bit of dialogue:
"Well, I heard of this young girl. Eighteen years old. A Vassar student. For a price, she'll come over and discuss any subject -- Proust, Yeats, anthropology. Exchange of ideas. You see what I'm driving at?"
It's just such a Woody Allen way of looking at things. The idea is absurd, but it is pulled off so well that it doesn't matter at all. Another standout is "Match Wits with Inspector Ford," which is a strange parody of British detective stories. (What can I say? Woody Allen writes a good detective parody.) The story is just a series of ridiculously unsolvable crimes that Inspector Ford solves with insane non-sequitors, but the scenarios and solutions are so weird that they are good for some laughs.
Of the two plays featured in Without Feathers, my preference is with "God (A Play)" in which two ancient Greeks discover they are characters in a Woody Allen play and desperately interact with the audience (which itself has been written by an author) as they grope toward the play's ending. Metafiction was never my thing, but it's fun seeing these characters play with reality and become increasingly annoyed at each other and the situation.
By far the highlight of the book, though, is the brilliant "If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists." This story is written as a series of letters sent by Vincent van Gogh to his brother, Theo, and these letters describe Van Gogh's frustrations with the world of dentistry. As someone who is sort of an art geek (especially concerning impressionism), I laughed my ass off reading this story. The best part is Van Gogh's clashes with Paul Gauguin, with whom he must share an office. Van Gogh's romantic entanglements are also amusing, and yes, it ends just the way you are thinking (although that is only part of it).
Getting Even
Getting Even is probably the weakest of the set. The stories are solid, for the most part, but even the standouts do not shine as much as the best of Without Feathers. There are some damn good ones, though, such as "The Schmeed Memoirs," which follows the life of a barber, Friedrich Schmeed, who cut the hair of the Nazis during World War II. What makes this story work so well is that it's simply a documentation of the pettiest rivalries among the highest ranking Nazis. Hitler is a paranoid who becomes depressed because he hears that Churchill will grow sideburns, while Hitler remains "ordinary." Himmler is a grump sent on the most ridiculous intelligence gathering operations. Göring is accused of treason because he grows a mustache. And so on.
"The Goassage-Vardebedian Papers" is another amusing story. In this, two elderly men send letters back and forth, each proclaiming their superiority in a chess game they are playing. The letters become increasingly bizarre and the insults more convoluted as the story progresses. I've always liked jokes where people insult others in the most seemingly polite manner, so this story is amusing to me. One other story that takes a simple idea and brings it to its bizarrely logical conclusion is "Count Dracula," in which the count finds himself in a bit of trouble after he visits a family during a solar eclipse, mistakenly thinking it is the evening.
The book ends with another Kaiser Lupowitz tale. This story, entitled "Mr. Big," entails Lupowitz's journey to find God for a woman who majors in philosophy at Vassar and can get full credit on a paper if she can find out for certain whether God exists. Of course, she cannot be taken at face value, and Lupowitz gets tangled in a weird scheme involving everyone from a gangster atheist named Chicago Phil to the Pope. The idea in this is not executed quite as well as "The Whore of Mensa," but it is nonetheless pulled off admirably, with an amusing ending that has some echoes of The Maltese Falcon.
Side Effects
Overall, Side Effects is a step below Without Feathers in terms of sheer laughter, but it does include quite a few interesting stories that foreshadow some of the later movies that Woody Allen would make, such as Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors. One of these is "The Condemned," which is about a man, Cloquet, who tries to gather the courage to shoot another man, Brisseau, who is an infamous informer for the Fascists. This story has a good mix of serious and silly tones; it deals with the morality of taking the law into one's own hands, but it is also has a distinctly strange ending.
"My Apology" is a short play that would probably be right at home as a skit in one of Allen's random gag movies. In it, Allen writes of a dream he had where he takes the place of Socrates on the day Socrates is to be killed. When reading this story, I could imagine very clearly the Woody Allen character dispensing advice like Socrates and then retreating into his own cowardice when faced with his mortality. Also amusing is "The Kugelmass Episode," which is about an aging humanities professor, who, with the help of a magician, has an affair with Emma Bovary of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. I have not read Madame Bovary, but it is fun to imagine someone from her time reacting to the modern age.
Another standout in terms of weirdness is "The Lunatic's Tale," which is similar to a skit in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). The main character in this story has a dilemma, in which is in love intellectually and spiritually with one woman, while he is in love physically with another. Let's just say science provides an interesting solution to this problem. Strange science is also a theme of "A Giant Step for Mankind." In this story, a trio of scientists research the best methods for dislodging food from the throats of choking people.
There are two stories near the end that hint at the direction Woody Allen moved in his with movies during the late 1970s and the 1980s. The first is "The Shallowest Man," about a man, Lenny Mendel, who reluctantly visits a dying friend in the hospital due to guilt, and who keeps visiting his friend because he is attracted to a beautiful nurse who works there. What makes this especially interesting is that Lenny's motives are not entirely clear -- he is presented as a shallow man, and he is certainly shallow in some ways, but could there be some depth to him in others? Is in he love or lust with this nurse? Does it matter that Lenny's friend feels comforted with Lenny's frequent visits, even though Lenny visits for other reasons? "The Shallowest Man" is probably the most serious story in any of the books, and it works well in taking a somewhat ordinary scenario and examining the hidden layers.
The other story is "Retribution." In this, a dramatist named Harold Cohen is with a beautiful actress named Connie Chasen. He cannot believe how lucky he is to be with this type of woman. However, during a visit with her family, Harold develops an obsession with Connie's beautiful mother, Emily. "Retribution" is a complex web of hidden, and strange, romantic feelings that ends in a way that would make Freud's head spin.
Woody Allen's movies are still the best way to introduce oneself to his career, but after one becomes acquainted with him, these three books are worth reading to get a sense of his development and interests. Plus, they are all damn funny.
