| The Many Views of a New Yorker |
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| Written by Mark Rifkin | |
  Woody Allen MERE ANARCHYWritten by Woody Allen (Random House, June 2007, $21.95) randomhouse.com The Woodman is back with his fourth collection of short stories, "Mere Anarchy", consisting of ten pieces that have appeared in The New Yorker and eight that have never before been published. Most of the tales take place in New York City, featuring wealthy Manhattanites, struggling writers, and suspect salesmen with such subtle names as E. Coli Biggs, Monroe B. Varnishke, Harvey Afflatus, Flanders Mealworm, Moe Bottomfeeder, Noah Untermensch, and Binky Peplum. The very short stories (none longer than twelve pages) include such bizarre strangeness as a poor Austrian who loses all the vowels in his name in a boating accident, a shyster writing a musical comedy about fin de siecle Vienna, a company called Bandersnatch and Bushelman that makes aromatic menswear, a philosophical Nietzsche diet book, and investors fighting over a multimillion-dollar truffle. Along the way, Allen throws in such familiar themes and references as Wagner, Kafka, Alfred Hitchcock, the Hamptons, Dostoevsky, religion, the Three Stooges, Zabar’s, the Met, and the expanding of the universe. Although not quite as laugh-out-loud hysterical as his previous books, these are still clever, inventive, extremely funny stories from a master of the genre. In addition, Random House has collected the short stories from those previous books, the classics "Getting Even", "Without Feathers", and "Side Effects", into the trade paperback "The Insanity Defense" (June 2007, $15.95), which features such hilarious tales as "The Metterling Lists," Mr. Big," "The Whore of Mensa," "No Kaddish for Weinstein," and "The Kugelmass Episode." (Sadly, Woody’s plays are not included.) |
