Getting Even (Allen book)
{{short description|1971 collection of stories by Woody Allen}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Infobox book|
| name = Getting Even
| title_orig =
| translator =
| image = Getting Even (book by Woody Allen).jpg
| caption = Hardcover edition
| author = Woody Allen
| illustrator =
| cover_artist =
| country = United States
| language = English
| series =
| genre = Fiction
| publisher = Random House
| pub_date = 1971
| english_pub_date =
| media_type = Print
| pages = 151 pp.
| isbn = 978-0394473482
| dewey =
| congress =
| 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
- The Metterling Lists[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1969/05/10/1969_05_10_034_TNY_CARDS_000290756 The Metterling Lists] in The New Yorker, May 10, 1969
- 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
- "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,Vittorio Hösle (2007) Woody Allen: an essay on the nature of the comical p.70 Mickey Spillane's Mike HammerGuido Almansi and Guido Fink (1976) [https://books.google.com/books?id=jTMIAQAAIAAJ Quasi come], p.197[https://books.google.com/books?ei=5TdOTtWqLMij8QPC4_CqBw Philological papers, Volume 29] p.110 and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.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." 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.{{Cite web |url=http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring07/Massaro/author.html |title=The Author |access-date=2011-08-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120330063118/http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring07/Massaro/author.html |archive-date=2012-03-30 |url-status=dead }}
- The play "Death Knocks" is a direct parody of Ingmar Bergman's 1957 The Seventh Seal.Richard Alan Schwartz (2000) [https://books.google.com/books?id=cWhZAAAAMAAJ Woody, from Antz to Zelig: a reference guide to Woody Allen's creative work, 1964-1998] p.38
- "The Schmeed Memoirs" heavily parodies Felix Kersten.
Notes and references
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.woodyallen.art.pl/eng/biblography.php Woody Allen's bibliography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160403195628/http://www.woodyallen.art.pl/eng/biblography.php |date=2016-04-03 }}
{{Woody Allen}}