WITHOUT FEATHERS

Our most successful literary humorist in his second collection of satiric blips. Less hyperthyroid than Getting Even, it still has much of Allen's rocking stand-up rhythm, e.g.: ""Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable, with the possible exception of a moose singing 'Embraceable You' in spats""; or ""The position of the body indicated that the victim had been surprised singing 'Sorrento' to his goldfish."" Allen continues to extend his range and technique. Consider his version of Scripture (God to Abraham re Isaac: ""Doth thou listen to every crazy idea that comes thy way?""); Malamud (titled ""No Kaddish for Weinstein""); Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd in two plays titled ""God"" and ""Death""--which come close enough to the originals to burn holes in Clive Barnes; and a virtuoso riddling of Yeats/Joyce scholarship in the explication of a masterpiece titled ""Beyond Ichor"": ""Civilization is shaped like a/ Circle and repeats itself, while/ O'Leary's head is shaped like/ A trapezoid."" (That's ""MountO'Leary, where O'Shawn proposed to Polly just before she rolled off."") And there are detective tales, a bestiary (""The Nurk"" refers to himself in the third person such as ""He's a great little bird, isn't he?""), psychic phenomena and more and more. Many of these pieces have appeared previously in the New Yorker. Horsefeathers and some brilliant fooling.