Product Description

A collection of 52 pieces of writing displaying Woody Allen's own brand of humour.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12443 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

From the Publisher
Allen's three outrageously funny collections in one volume
Complete Prose brings together Allen's three outrageously funny collections, Without Feathers, Getting Even and Side Effects. "No 500-page book ever contained a laugh a line, but this one gets pretty close" Daily Telegraph

Customer Reviews

Beware. Don't read this on a bus !
This book is dangerous. It is impossible to read on a bus without frequent involuntary outbursts, strangled yelps of delight and choking fits and any attempt to suppress these will result in facial ticks, bed wetting or worse. Other passengers will stare or, concerned, try to perform the Heimlich manouevre on you (as described in the book). Allen's puckish humour is the perfect antedote to Life in General, the mock philosophic arguments and madcap situations might be right out of Sleeper or Love and Death. He lampoons many characters, institutions and traditions, deflating all that is pompous or pretentious with Groucho-like ease. The Memoir of Hitler's Barber is fantastic, the Detective Story with God as a Missing Person perfect and his story about UFO Sightings another gem but with over 50 short chapters there are too many to pick out. Even the liberally sprinkled Jewish references are funny to the uninitiated (goyim ??). There should be a copy on your bedside table (if you can do without the sleep!)

Budget price collection of comic genius.
This is a great budget collection of Allen's short pieces/stories, comprising 'Getting Even', 'Side Effects' and 'Without Feathers' (52 stories in all). For those who enjoy the 'early, funny' period- i.e. the stand up such as the 'moose' or the kidnapping, or films such as 'Take the Money & Run' there is much here.

Many of Allen's gripes and themes surface here- the student mentality he satirises in 'Annie Hall' & 'Husbands & Wives', the European novel, 'A Twenties Memory' takes the **** out of Hemingway's 'A Moveable Feast' and predicts the iconic imagery of 'Zelig' . One of the most familiar stories is 'Death Knocks'- which recurs in Allen's play 'Death' and pops up (as a reference to Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal', of course) in both 'Love and Death' and 'Deconstructing Harry'.

A lot of these pieces are succinct and laugh out loud funny, one to commute with or read last thing at night. This budget collection is vast proof that Allen is up there with the great comics and a work such as 'Retribution' predicts the world between comedy and tragedy that he has mined for several decades. A classic collection, even if it just ends up in the toilet!

Complete Comedy
Consisting mostly of short stories and general observations from Allen's unique perspective that originally appeared in the 'New Yorker' magazine, this comprehensive collection is pretty much all you need to have. Quite why you would want to buy the books separately (or even together with this book) is totally beyond me. 'Complete Prose' is his three books in one volume, complete, unabridged and totally hilarious.

Surreal, ridiculous, witty, and at times just plain silly, these short pieces will have you in pieces after a few paragraphs. My favourite bits include a story about Dracula, and how come he knows when it's dark if he stays in a coffin all day? When he senses it is dark one day, he pays a visit to some neighbours, intent on blood. When he turns up at their house, they ask if he has come to watch the solar eclipse with them, at which point he immediately runs into the house and hides in a cupboard until nighttime. Another example is a story about organised crime, and how one technique for bumping people off was to lock them in a wardrobe and then suck all the air out through a straw.

I think an alternative title for this book could have been 'Complete Nonsense' and still be accurate, but a more flattering title could be 'Complete Brilliance'.