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May312005

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TK. (Or here.)

And if it's summertime, it must be the season for my favorite Newsday book feature, Recommended Reading! Here's a little story about Woody Allen books by me, from this past Sunday.


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Recommended reading: Woody's Menagerie

Woody Allen has said and done a lot by now, but I like to think of him as the muddled, sex-crazed romantic hoisting a giant celery stalk in "Sleeper." It's not that I don't like him serious, but there's something so delicious—juicy and crunchy, much like celery—about his early work that I turn to it whenever life seems particularly ridiculous. Case in point: two books of his comic writing, "Getting Even" (1972) and "Without Feathers" (1976). Like his admirer Steve Martin, Allen is at least as much a writer as he is anything else.

"Without Feathers" (Ballantine, $6.99) is, as Liza Minnelli said of her early adulthood, like the inside of a diamond; it's nearly perfect, especially the private-eye-meets-Brandeis-girl satire "The Whore of Mensa" and, of course, the famous "Death (A Play)." I think "Getting Even" (Vintage, $9) is particularly forgotten these days, so when I found a used copy I couldn't wait to guzzle it. One of its high points is "Spring Bulletin," a guide to imaginary college courses such as Economic Theory ("Inflation and Depression—how to dress for each") and Yeats and Hygiene, A Comparative Study. In Philosophy I, "Manyness and oneness are studied as they relate to otherness. (Students achieving oneness move ahead to twoness.)"

Throughout the 17 short pieces, from "The Schmeed Memoirs" to "Yes, but Can the Steam Engine Do This?" to "Count Dracula," Allen ribs philosophy, history, God, sex and reading with easy charm and minimal snarl. The style is easy-breezy, the voice nonchalantly smartypants; the jokes as honed as stand-up zingers. There are dated details, of course (this being 1972), but that makes it all the more rich in Woodyness, as though one were walking on the Atlantic City Boardwalk and eating saltwater taffy with Alvy Singer. In any case, can you imagine, say, David Sedaris opening his essays with any of the following: "Finnegans Wake," a Jungian veterinarian, Hemingway, Kew Gardens, Napoleon, Hitler, or "a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak"? Of course not. That's obviously Allen's menagerie, and that's why these books are necessary for all his true fans.

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