Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy: For the first time ever, hear Woody Allen's Mere Anarchy in the author's own distinctive and hilarious voice. Here, in his first short-story collection since his three classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects, Allen has managed to write a book that answers the most profound questions of human existence. In 18 flights of inspirational sanity, we are introduced to a cast of characters only Allen could imagine: Jasper Nutmeat, Flanders Mealworm, and the independent film mogul E. Coli Biggs, just to name a few. Whether he is writing about art, sex, food, or crime, Allen is explosively funny. In "This Nib for Hire", a Hollywood bigwig comes across an author's book in a little country store and describes it in a way that aptly captures this magnificent volume: "Actually," the producer says, "I'd never seen a book remaindered in the kindling section before." Woody Allen's short story collections Mere Anarchy, Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects are available separately or together as part of The Woody Allen Collection.

"Throughout my life, literally thousands of people have made me feel inadequate, but none more so than Woody Allen."(Larry David, Producer, Writer, Actor)"Woody Allen brought modern comedy to the cinema screen." (Ricky Gervais)"Nostalgically enjoyable....The stories in Mere Anarchy deliver the same joys and foibles that have been with its author from the start." (The New York Times)"Brilliant neurotica...unfailingly entertaining...[an] obsessive and seriously funny book." (Los Angeles Times Book Review)

• Mere Anarchy (Unabridged) - iTunes Audiobook

  Price

  $11.95 Download on iTunes
  (as of 2010-09-06 10:25 PDT)

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  Audible, Inc.

  Shop

  Apple iTunes Store

  Format

  iTunes Audiobook

  Publish Date

  Jul 20, 2010

  Sales Rank

  186

  Length

  3 hours 22 minutes

  Narrator

  Narrator:Woody Allen Preview

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  Product Description / Editorial Review

  For the first time ever, hear Woody Allen's Mere Anarchy in the author's own distinctive and hilarious voice. Here, in his first short-story collection since his three classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects, Allen has managed to write a book that answers the most profound questions of human existence. In 18 flights of inspirational sanity, we are introduced to a cast of characters only Allen could imagine: Jasper Nutmeat, Flanders Mealworm, and the independent film mogul E. Coli Biggs, just to name a few. Whether he is writing about art, sex, food, or crime, Allen is explosively funny. In "This Nib for Hire", a Hollywood bigwig comes across an author's book in a little country store and describes it in a way that aptly captures this magnificent volume: "Actually," the producer says, "I'd never seen a book remaindered in the kindling section before." Woody Allen's short story collections Mere Anarchy, Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects are available separately or together as part of The Woody Allen Collection.
  
  "Throughout my life, literally thousands of people have made me feel inadequate, but none more so than Woody Allen."(Larry David, Producer, Writer, Actor)"Woody Allen brought modern comedy to the cinema screen." (Ricky Gervais)"Nostalgically enjoyable....The stories in Mere Anarchy deliver the same joys and foibles that have been with its author from the start." (The New York Times)"Brilliant neurotica...unfailingly entertaining...[an] obsessive and seriously funny book." (Los Angeles Times Book Review) — Source: Apple iTunes Store

  

• Mere Anarchy (Unabridged) - Digital Download

  Price

  $18.50 $12.95 (30% Off) Buy from Audible.com
  (as of 2010-07-28 0:00 PDT)

  Publisher

  Audible, Inc.

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  Audible

  Format

  Digital Download

  Publish Date

  Jul 8, 2010

  Length

  3 hours 22 minutes

  Narrator

  Woody Allen

  Preview

  mwprealmp3

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  Sign up AudibleListener® Gold and Download Mere Anarchy (Unabridged) for Special Offer Price: $7.49

  Product Description / Editorial Review

  For the first time ever, hear Woody Allen's Mere Anarchy in the author's own distinctive and hilarious voice. Here, in his first short-story collection since his three classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects, Allen has managed to write a book that answers the most profound questions of human existence.In 18 flights of inspirational sanity, we are introduced to a cast of characters only Allen could imagine: Jasper Nutmeat, Flanders Mealworm, and the independent film mogul E. Coli Biggs, just to name a few.Whether he is writing about art, sex, food, or crime, Allen is explosively funny. In "This Nib for Hire", a Hollywood bigwig comes across an author's book in a little country store and describes it in a way that aptly captures this magnificent volume: "Actually," the producer says, "I'd never seen a book remaindered in the kindling section before."Woody Allen's short story collections Mere Anarchy, Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects are available separately or together as part of The Woody Allen Collection. — Source: Audible

  

• Mere Anarchy - Paperback

  Price

  $14.00 $2.00 (86% Off) Buy from Amazon.com
  (as of 2010-09-07 0:57 PDT)

  Rating

  3.5 (27 reviews)

  Publisher

  Random House Trade Paperbacks

  Shop

  Amazon

  Format

  Paperback

  Publish Date

  Oct 14, 2008

  Sales Rank

  174413

  ISBN

  0812979508

  ISBN-13

  9780812979503

  Edition

  Reprint

  Pages

  176

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  • Mere Anarchy (Paperback)
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  • Mere Anarchy (Thorndike Large Print Laugh Lines) (Hardcover)
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  • Mere Anarchy (Hardcover)

  Product Description / Editorial Review

  Here, in his first collection since his three hilarious classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects, Woody Allen has managed to write a book that not only answers the most profound questions of human existence but is also the perfect size to place under any short table leg to prevent wobbling.
  
  In hysterical flights of inspirational sanity we are introduced to a cast of characters only Allen could imagine: Jasper Nutmeat, Flanders Mealworm, and the independent film mogul E. Coli Biggs, just to name a few. Whether he is writing about art, sex, food, or crime, he is explosively funny. In “This Nib for Hire,” a Hollywood bigwig comes across an author’s book in a little country store and describes it in a way that aptly captures this magnificent volume: “Actually,” the producer says, “I’d never seen a book remaindered in the kindling section before.”
  
  Praise for Mere Anarchy:
  
  INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
  
  “The stories in Mere Anarchy deliver the same joys and foibles that have been with its author from the start.”
  –Janet Maslin, The New York Times
  
  “Uproarious . . . In each story the ornate and the vulgate slam together and make it rain polysyllabic absurdity.”
  –The Wall Street Journal
  
  “Nostalgically enjoyable . . . The stories in Mere Anarchy deliver the same joys and foibles that have been with its author from the start.”
  –The New York Times
  
  “Brilliant neurotica . . . unfailingly entertaining . . . [an] obsessive and seriously funny book.”
  –Los Angeles Times Book Review
  
  “Like the Carnegie’s one-pound sandwiches, Allen’s literary slapstick is . . . comedy on wry.”
  –USA Today — Source: Amazon

  Customer Reviews

  Inventive and funny.

  
  This is pretty much what you'd expect from Woody Allen: eighteen amusing fictional essays -- I don't know what else to call them except maybe "pieces" -- mostly parodies, mostly from The New Yorker. If you've read any of his earlier books, like "Without Feathers," you'll find the subjects and style familiar, if maybe not quite so fresh and adventurous.
  
  Here's an example, the opening lines of "Thus Ate Zarathustra," a take-off on Nietzsche.
  
  "Fat itself is a substance or essence of a substance or mode of that essence. The big problem is when it accumulates on your hips. Among the pre-Socratics, it was Zeno who held that weight was an illusion and that no matter how much a man ate he would always be only half as fat as the man who never does push-ups."
  
  That excerpt is emblematic. First, it's utter nonsense. "A substance or essence of a substance or mode of that essence."
  
  Second, it plunges abruptly from the intellectual to the most quotidian plane. The problem with "the mode of that essence" is that it accumulates on your hips and makes you fat.
  
  Third, it's a bit challenging. You don't need to know Nietzsche but you need to have been exposed to a page or two of a certain kind of philosophy book in order to appreciate the absurdity of the statements. That first sentence, for instance, is a parody of Nietzsche but it could actually BE Nietzsche or some other philosopher like him. (Even the title, "Mere Anarchy", although it applies to Allen's reckless prose, is taken from Yeats' "The Second Coming.")
  
  Finally, some of the humor, while real enough, is hidden behind the obvious craziness of the idea. Zeno argues that "no matter how much a man ate he would always be only half as fat as the man who never does push-ups." As it stands, it's more silly than funny. But its comic quotient goes up if we know that Zeno's paradox was that a man running a given distance would never reach the finish line because, no matter how far or fast he ran, it would always take him some time to run half the remaining distance. Allen's statement is not just a send-up of philosophy but, more specifically, of Zeno and his paradox.
  
  We have to get used to big, rare, exotic, foreign, jargonistic words and names too, though we don't need to look them up. The name 'E. Coli Biggs' is more amusing if you've heard of E. coli bacteria. I couldn't define "corybantic" and probably Allen couldn't either without the help of a thesaurus. But if you go with the flow, as they say, the deliberate pomposity itself is kind of amusing. And, again, much of the humor lies in the juxtaposition of this highbrow lingo with the lowest-brow interpretations of human nature. As other humorists have observed, "hockey puck" is a funny term. So is "opthalmologist," although "optometrist" is not funny. It's the same effect that W. C. Fields so often aimed for. "My dear, what symmetrical digits!"
  
  Allen's comic inventions are his own but his style is borrowed from the late New Yorker writer of the 1930s and 40s, S. J. Perelman, with whom Allen shares several tastes, including contempt for Los Angeles. Here's an example from Perelman. It could almost as easily have been Allen:
  
  "Does anyone here mind if I make a prediction? I haven't made a prediction since the opening night of 'The Women', when I rose at the end of the third act and announced to my escort, a Miss Chicken-Licken, 'The public will never take this to its bosom.' Since the public has practically worn its bosom to a nubbin niggling up to 'The Women', I feel that my predictions may be a straw to show the direction the wind is blowing away from. I may very well open up a cave and do business as a sort of Cumaean Sibyl in reverse."
  
  Two nebbishes, only Woody Allen really means it.
  
  Aside from the self debasement, there are other similarities in the pieces themselves. If Allen writes a piece on his and his wife's renovating a Manhattan apartment, Perelman had a cabin in Bucks County to contend with. If Allen sometimes adopts the persona of a detective out of films noir ('This Nib For Hire'), Perelman often masked himself as a private investigator from the pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s ('Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer'). I didn't find the similarities at all disturbing. Great minds run in the same channels, especially if they've been raised in New York and are Jewish.
  
  If there's a problem with Allen's latest book, and there is, it's that the entries are all a little too repetitious in style. The comic tactics are usually effective but the overall strategy hardly ever changes. And, of course, as in any real world, some of the jokes are better than others.

  Rating: 4
  Mere Anarchy review by Steven Daedalus, 2010-06-06

  MERE S.J. PERELMAN

  One of the greatest and most popular American humorists of the 20th century was S.J. Perelman. His style is absolutely unique as regards vocabulary,, narrative persona,premises, titling of pieces, characters' names - everything. It cannot be mistaken. In "Mere Anarchy", Woody Allen, who has said that Perelman was a huge influence on him, has done his level best to reproduce exactly Perelman's style and incorporate very little of his own. It boggles the mind how well Allen has copied Perelman, in all aspects. Why he has done it, and almost completely abandoned his own distinctive style, is another question. An homage? Just to see if he could? (He can.) He's so successful, though, that it makes it difficult to review this book. If you love Allen's previous books like "Without Feathers," then you won't care much for this. If you loved Perelman, you'll enjoy this odd reincarnation of him but perhaps resent just a tiny bit the usurpation of a singular mind and gift. And you might want to read some of Perelman's work while you're at it ("Baby, It's Cold Inside" or "The Most of S.J. Perelman")-he was a genius. In fact, I would recommend just getting the Perelman collections and leaving "Mere Anarchy" alone.

  Rating: 2
  Mere Anarchy review by LionLady, 2009-10-20

  Hits and Misses

  Woody Allen still has the ability to make me laugh out loud and in this collection of short sketches he succeeded several times. There are an equal number of entries that fell somewhat flat and felt like either incomplete filler or in other instances like he was trying too hard.
  Overall it's a harmless enough offering with a few laughs in it. Not so bad.

  Rating: 3
  Mere Anarchy review by R. J. Marsella, 2009-04-03

  Five stars for fantastic writing and one hit line after another...

  Oi. I actually hurt from laughing. There are lines in this book that will punch you out. It helps to be Jewish, too. One complaint: Woody, you made the book too short.

  Rating: 5
  Mere Anarchy review by hawthorne wood, 2008-12-06

  SJ Perelman is Alive and ... Well?

  SJ Perelman wrote for the Marx Brothers in the 1930's and won a screenplay Oscar for "Around the World in 80 Days" in '56. But he is best remembered for his numerous articles published in the New Yorker Magazine. Perelman would spot a quirky newspaper story or magazine article and write a story or short playlet about it. Using alter egos such as JS Peebelman and JP Pringleman, Perelman would portray himself as a hapless every man frustrated by the aburdities of life. Another feature of his work was a vocabulary that could send even the most well-read scrambling for the Oxford Dictionary. In the first few stories in "Mere Anarchy", Woody Allen (remember him?) seeks to connect with his inner Perel-man borrowing SJ's style right down to the news blurbs and mind-boggling vocabulary. Interestingly, the Perelman clones are not as amusing as the later stories in "Mere Anarchy" where Allen writes with a style more reminiscient of "Getting Even" and "Without Feathers". When Allen knocks off the knock offs and sticks with his own writing style, he's funnier. As for the Master? Check out: "The Most of SJ Perelman" and "The Best of SJ Perelman".

  Rating: 4
  Mere Anarchy review by Fred J. Klingenhagen, 2008-09-12

  

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