[.ca] Without Feathers (ISBN 0345336976)

From Amazon.com:
The title of Woody Allen's second collection of New Yorker-style sprint humor is a sly comment on Emily Dickinson's famous quote, "Hope is the thing with feathers." Without Feathers delivers Allen's hopeless schlub persona--you remember, what he used to be before he was either a lecher or an auteur, depending on your politics. In addition to being as funny as anything published since, to read Without Feathers is to return to a simpler time, when being a fan of his work was common, not controversial. Though each piece is funny, two of them are particularly notable examples of Allen's distinctive style (borrowed in large part from S.J. Perelman by way of the Borscht Belt, but distinctive, nevertheless)--"The Whore of Mensa" and "If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists." Here's an excerpt from the latter: Mrs. Sol Schwimmer is suing me because I made her bridge as I felt it and not to fit her ridiculous mouth! That's right! I can't work to order like a common tradesman! I decided her bridge should be enormous and billowing, with wild, explosive teeth flaring up in every direction like fire! Now she is upset because it won't fit in her mouth! She is so bourgeois and stupid, I want to smash her! I tried forcing the false plate in but it sticks out like a star burst chandelier. Without Feathers is fine, funny prose, from an American master. If you're a fan, seek it out immediately. It's a document from the days when Woody was not important, but merely hysterically funny. --Michael Gerber

Wonderfully absurd...:
I have never written a review before, but as this book is one of the funniest things I've ever stumbled upon... here goes. I was lucky enough to find Without Feathers about 10 years ago, in a hardcover edition along with Getting Even and Side Effects. I decided to take a quick look through it on the drive home from the book store (I was'nt the one driving!) and within minutes I was laughing uncontrolably! After the first paragraph I simply could'nt put it down. The other people in the car demanded to know what was so funny, but my attempts to read out loud were useless as I was crying with laughter and could no longer see the page!?! I handed the book over to one of my friends for him to read, and eventually we had to pull the car off the road due to the histerical giggling that ensued! "A Brief, Yet Helpful, Guide To Civil Disobedience" is possibly the funniest thing I've ever read!?! A decade has gone by since I first read these books and they are still as funny and unique. I read them whenever I'm dangerously close to forgeting how cathartic sheer silliness can be! Truly joyful prose!

Classic Allen:
I was recommended this book because of the play "Death." I found the two plays to be much funnier than some of the short stories and essays. The short stories are written in the older style of Allen's humor. They are funny because Allen is constantly using unexpected silly plot twists. I found these silly twists to be a bit much at times. However, if you like his older movies then you will probably like the way he writes the short stories. The plays were, I thought, much more clever. They were still silly (of course) but they had more continuity than the short stories. In addition the unexpected still occurred frequently but it seems more in context, in the plays. Regardless, this book is very funny and if you like Allen's movies, then you'll definitely find this book funny as well.

Very Funny:
"Without Feathers" was Woody Allen's second collection of humorous pieces, and probably his best. These originally appeared in the early 1970's, in magazines like "The New Yorker" and "The New Republic." Some are short stories, like "No Kaddish for Weinstein" and "The Whore of Mensa." There are two plays, "Death" (the inspiration for Allen's "Shadows and Fog"), and the much better "God", a masterpiece of absurdity. There are parodies of Encyclopedia Brown ("Match Wits with Inspector Ford") and Henrik Ibsen (the hysterical "Lovborg's Women Considered"), irreverent essays on English literature and civil disobedience, reviews of some very bizarre ballets, and more. "Without Feathers" is fantastic and, as a bonus, much less expensive than many inferior humor books.

Funny, I Think Not:
Every review that I have looked at for the book Without Feathers by Woody Allen pretty much starts out saying how hilarious this is. I'm not. The reason I picked up the book was, to laugh out loud. I didn't. The story was horribly boring, and while I should have been laughing out loud I was yawning. Twice, did I fall asleep reading the story and not during the middle of the night as one would suppose, but at about noon on a sunny weekend. Only in two parts of the book did anything appear remotely amusing to me. I love how Mr. Allen made fun of history, and normally serious topics, but he did it in such a way that I feel he was overdoing it. The skit-like format of the book didn't do much for me either. This procedure didn't allow anything to flow, so it was very abrupt and brief in places. I don't know about what other people care for but I do not like stories that don't seem to flow well. I would ly confused in my chair by many of things that occurred, longing to read more about it, but the format doesn't allow for such things. It's nice to see that someone can make a joke out of life, and death, but Mr. Allen seems to be going a liitle to far. In this Mr. Allen created two different plays, always ending with someone dying. Maybe I'm just odd but something tells me that death isn't something to laugh at. Along with that seeing the ghost of your dead brother isn't funny, but Mr. Allen goes a little overboard trying to make it so by making the two characters of that 'skit' start singing a boyhood song and having the living one try to walk through a wall. Spirits of the dead should be respected and sometimes feared, but not made a mockery of. I'm going to say it again, maybe I'm just a little strange but at no point did I get to laugh out loud

Frequently, there must be a beverage:
This is one of the most hilarious, actually, the most hilarious book I have ever read. I don't know how he does it, but the combination of entirely random situation with common cliches makes even the most worn out ideas and themes hilarious. Mr. Allen takes some of the biggest questions in human existence, "What happens to us when we die?" and "Is there a God?" and makes them into plays that are so incredibly disjointed and out of the common literary form that I almost couldn't follow them. Its such a relief after Shakespeare, where everything goes in the exact same pattern (gimme a break, I'm in high school)! Instead of having to read between the lines to pick up sarcasm, you have to look to pick up the plot of the play! It might be annoying to some people, but once you do figure out what "the Writer" is trying to say, it's a great feeling. Almost as good as knowing that there IS someone on this earth who is stranger than you. But then, we're not all as funny as Mr. Allen is either. And it truly is his ramblings, not his spoof of big, deep, messages, that will make you fall out of your chair laughing. The friends I have shown this book ( I had to! They all seem to give me incredibly strange looks when I'm sitting at a pep rally and laughing hysterically after someone gets hurt) have tried to steal it after reading the first paragraph. And what is almost the best thing is, is that he gives you a break. (in exception to the plays, which can get tedious at times) he skips around from idea to idea so quickly that it takes you by surprise, especially when he goes from trying to convince you that Shakespeare was someone else, who was someone else, who was someone else, to analyzing great impressionist art in the form of dentistry. Oops, I hope I haven't given away too much. It fits perfectly into the spare minutes you have everyday and you an skip around, and read it however you like, and no matter what you do, it will still be funny. Now I have to go run and give it to the first person who tried to steal it from me.