Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Vintage (1978), Edition: Vintage, Mass Market Paperback
Description
The classic, with 316,000 copies sold to date.
User reviews
LibraryThing member JohnCouke
Fun stuff - and a quick read. I especially enjoyed the card game with the grim reaper as well as the long distance chess match. Some parts fall a bit flat but on the whole this is highly humorous and entertaining.
LibraryThing member nivramkoorb
I decided to read this because I am a big Woody Allen fan and it came up in an article I read. If you are a fan then it is a good read but it also feels somewhat dated. The book consists of short pieces that he wrote for the New Yorker in the 60's. It was published shortly after his first 2 movies
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and it is heavy on the absurdist humor that dominated his work at that time. It was a quick read and a way to see Woody Allen for those that only know him through his movies. Show Less
LibraryThing member kwohlrob
My favorite book by Woody Allen and still one the great all time collections of humor.
LibraryThing member iayork
Getting Even: If your a fan of Allen's work than you'll enjoy this book. Otherwise you may not like it. If you're not familiar with his work than I highly recommend his prose for their witty, bizzare, and humorus content.
In, "The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers," you'll find humor in the trials and
In, "Mr. Big," I question if the beautiful existentialist really killed God. Yeah, she probably did. (GOD that's too bad.)
awkward, funny, weird, smart, read...
In, "The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers," you'll find humor in the trials and
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tribulations of chess, via letter writing. In, "Mr. Big," I question if the beautiful existentialist really killed God. Yeah, she probably did. (GOD that's too bad.)
awkward, funny, weird, smart, read...
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LibraryThing member petterw
Having thoroughly enjoyed his two other collections, Getting Even disappointed me. Some of the pieces have funny, even hilarious, bits in them, but this is written at a time when Woody Allen derived his humor mostly from intellectual life, and a lot of the humor just isn't funny anymore - if it
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ever was. Too bad. Show Less
LibraryThing member ocgreg34
A few years ago, I found a copy of Woody Allen's "Getting Even" at a used bookstore, and thought it would be something funny to read. After all, the movies "The Purple Rose of Cairo", "Zelig", "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask)", and many others are considered
You'd think that, wouldn't you?
I know that I'm not very good at telling a joke, but the ideas and the telling of these tales quite often fell flat. A study of someone's laundry lists? The memoirs of Hitler's barber? A class schedule for adult education classes? Most came across as a rambling series of sentences that threw ideas onto the page hoping to make something worthwhile and funny. For example, taken from the story "A Little Louder, Please":
"Also, laddies, as one whose spate of insights first placed Godot in proper perspective for the many confused playgoers who milled sluggishly in the lobby during intermission, miffed at ponying up scalper's money for argle-bargle bereft of one up-tune or a single spangled bimbo, I would have to say my rapport with the seven livelies is pretty solid. Add to this the fact that eight radios conducted simultaneously at Town Hall killed me, and that I still occasionally sit in with my own Philco, after hours, in a Harlem basement where we blow some late weather and news, and where once a laconic field hand named Jess, who had never studied in his life, played the closing Dow-Jones averages with great feeling."
I re-read that (and the entire paragraph containing it) two or three more times, without understanding what it had to do with the story. And not really getting story, either. Most felt like that to me, that no matter how many times I may read them, they left me scratching my head. And I wasn't sure if Allen were trying too hard to be funny or not trying at all.
There were a few tales in the book, however, that made this one to skim through: "Death Knocks", a one-act concerning a game of gin between Death and his next victim; "Count Dracula", a clever tale about Dracula during an eclipse; and possibly the best of the collection, "The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers", a series of scathing chess-by-mail letters between two players.
If you're a Woody Allen fan, you may enjoy this selection of tales. As for me, not so much.
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classic movie comedies. His forays into short stories would be just as much fun.You'd think that, wouldn't you?
I know that I'm not very good at telling a joke, but the ideas and the telling of these tales quite often fell flat. A study of someone's laundry lists? The memoirs of Hitler's barber? A class schedule for adult education classes? Most came across as a rambling series of sentences that threw ideas onto the page hoping to make something worthwhile and funny. For example, taken from the story "A Little Louder, Please":
"Also, laddies, as one whose spate of insights first placed Godot in proper perspective for the many confused playgoers who milled sluggishly in the lobby during intermission, miffed at ponying up scalper's money for argle-bargle bereft of one up-tune or a single spangled bimbo, I would have to say my rapport with the seven livelies is pretty solid. Add to this the fact that eight radios conducted simultaneously at Town Hall killed me, and that I still occasionally sit in with my own Philco, after hours, in a Harlem basement where we blow some late weather and news, and where once a laconic field hand named Jess, who had never studied in his life, played the closing Dow-Jones averages with great feeling."
I re-read that (and the entire paragraph containing it) two or three more times, without understanding what it had to do with the story. And not really getting story, either. Most felt like that to me, that no matter how many times I may read them, they left me scratching my head. And I wasn't sure if Allen were trying too hard to be funny or not trying at all.
There were a few tales in the book, however, that made this one to skim through: "Death Knocks", a one-act concerning a game of gin between Death and his next victim; "Count Dracula", a clever tale about Dracula during an eclipse; and possibly the best of the collection, "The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers", a series of scathing chess-by-mail letters between two players.
If you're a Woody Allen fan, you may enjoy this selection of tales. As for me, not so much.
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LibraryThing member unclebob53703
Hilarious short pieces
LibraryThing member datrappert
Allen's short pieces are intellectual and laugh out loud funny. Some of them might have been written by Borges had been a Jewish American comedian.
LibraryThing member norbert.book
Dracula is just great
LibraryThing member larryking1
Woody Allen has written a number of books (and, of course, published screenplays); as a rule, they are short stories, mostly from The New Yorker. The 17 stories herein were published between 1966 and 1971 and within them the reader can find the genesis of a few of his films. In fact, one story,
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Viva Vargas, is quite similar to Bananas, released as these stories were being written. ("It is hard to imagine that these two great leaders [Latin revolutionists the Vargas Brothers] were only last week men's room attendants at the local Hilton.") Or that Metterling "once pushed Rilke into some honey because the poet said he preferred brown-eyed women." And so on. Let me put it this way: anyone who can write, "I am at two with nature" is aces in my book! Show Less
Language
Original publication date
1971
Physical description
128 p.; 6.86 inches
ISBN
0394726405 / 9780394726403