Getting Even (Allen book)
.jpg) Hardcover edition | |
| Author | Woody Allen |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | 1971 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 151 pp. |
| ISBN | 978-0394473482 |
| OCLC | 244836 |
Getting Even (1971) is Woody Allen's first collection of humorous stories, essays, and one short play. Most pieces were first published in The New Yorker between 1966 and 1971.
Contents[edit]
- The Metterling Lists[1]
- A Look at Organized Crime
- The Schmeed Memoirs
- My Philosophy
- Yes, But Can the Steam Engine Do This?
- Death Knocks
- Spring Bulletin
- Hassidic Tales
- The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers
- Notes from the Overfed
- A Twenties Memory
- Count Dracula
- A Little Louder, Please
- Conversations with Helmholtz
- Viva Vargas!
- The Discovery and Use of the Fake Ink Blot
- Mr. Big
Some of the tales in detail[edit]
- "Mr. Big" is a parody of the style and structure of hardboiled detective stories. The protagonist, Kaiser Lupowitz, is a parody of the characters which were typically played by Humphrey Bogart on film: Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon,[2] Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer[3][4] and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.[5] Kaiser smokes Lucky Strike like Sam Spade, and is also used by Allen in another hard boiled parody, The Whore of Mensa (1974), collected in Without Feathers (1975).
- The philosophical arguments of "My Philosophy" will be later used in the films Bananas and Love and Death.[6]
- The play "Death Knocks" is a direct parody of Ingmar Bergman's 1957 The Seventh Seal.[7]
- "The Schmeed Memoirs" heavily parodies Felix Kersten.
Notes and references[edit]
- ^ The Metterling Lists in The New Yorker, May 10, 1969
- ^ Vittorio Hösle (2007) Woody Allen: an essay on the nature of the comical p.70
- ^ Guido Almansi and Guido Fink (1976) Quasi come, p.197
- ^ Philological papers, Volume 29 p.110
- ^ Franco Contorbia (2009) Giornalismo italiano, Volume 4, p.222, quotation: "In Mr Big Allen scrive una perfetta novella poliziesca, genere hard boiled, tra Dashiell Hammett, Spillane e Chandler."
- ^ "The Author". Archived from the original on 2012-03-30. Retrieved 2011-08-19.
- ^ Richard Alan Schwartz (2000) Woody, from Antz to Zelig: a reference guide to Woody Allen's creative work, 1964-1998 p.38
