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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

  1. 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
  2. A Look at Organized Crime
  3. The Schmeed Memoirs
  4. My Philosophy
  5. Yes, But Can the Steam Engine Do This?
  6. Death Knocks
  7. Spring Bulletin
  8. Hassidic Tales
  9. The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers
  10. Notes from the Overfed
  11. A Twenties Memory
  12. Count Dracula
  13. A Little Louder, Please
  14. Conversations with Helmholtz
  15. Viva Vargas!
  16. The Discovery and Use of the Fake Ink Blot
  17. 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}}

Category:1971 books

Category:Comedy books

Category:Random House books

Category:Short story collections by Woody Allen