And death remains the ultimate punch line to the absurdity that is life's joke. How does one overcome a fear of death? he...
Late last year, Nora Ephron, a writer renowned for Manhattan-sharp observations and a penchant for probing personal neuroses, released I Feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, her first collection of short pieces in decades. Now comes Woody Allen with Mere Anarchy, an intermittently funny sequel to his popular trilogy of humor collections: Getting Even (1971), Without Feathers (1975), and Side Effects (1982).
It appears that Woody Allen is back in the business of being Woody Allen, having resumed writing for The New Yorker (where the last ten of these selections first appeared; the first eight are new to this collection), and making movies (at least 2005's Match Point) that cause a cultural ripple beyond the dwindling ranks of Allen diehards. Since much of Allen's appeal depends on public perception of his persona, the question is how profoundly the changes in that public persona have affected the work and its reception. When he last published a collection 26 years ago, he was still almost universally beloved as the director-star of Annie Hall, with The Purple Rose of Cairo and Hannah and Her Sisters soon to come. He had established himself as the intellectual nebbish who found it easier to make a woman laugh than ignite her lust. He touched a common nerve by sharing the insecurities that so many of us share – and by making our darkest fears funny. People thought they knew Woody Allen, and they liked what they knew. Then came scandal: the notorious breakup with Mia Farrow after his seduction of her adopted daughter (subsequently his wife). For many who had formerly found Allen hilarious, his explanation that "the heart wants what it wants" sounded pathetic, his romance a little creepy. So the new Allen establishes a considerably less personal relationship with his readers, as Mere Anarchy doesn't explore Allen's heart or his libido. Instead, it offers riffs of various amusement on oddities that he has read in the New York Times – one about the abduction of an Indian movie star, another about "Technologically Enabled Clothing," another about film camp for kids. Yet even when he was much younger, Allen's obsessions were those of a much older man, haunted by mortality. In the year that he will turn 72, he addresses man's place in the cosmos in "Strung Out," which explores the practical applications of everyday physics (again inspired by a Times piece). "I am greatly relieved that the universe is finally explainable," he opens. "I was beginning to think it was me."
And death remains the ultimate punch line to the absurdity that is life's joke. How does one overcome a fear of death? he asks in "Sing, You Sacher Tortes": "By dying," he writes. "I figured it out – it's really the only way."Pub Date: June 19, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6641-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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