MERE ANARCHY

Name: MERE ANARCHY
Author: Woody Allen
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6641-4

by Woody Allen ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 19, 2007

And death remains the ultimate punch line to the absurdity that is life's joke. How does one overcome a fear of death? he...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ZERO GRAVITY
by Woody Allen

- BOOK REVIEW
APROPOS OF NOTHING
by Woody Allen

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.