Getting Even (Allen book)

Last updated
Getting Even

Getting Even (book by Woody Allen).jpg

Hardcover edition
Author Woody Allen
Country United States
Language English
Genre Fiction
Publisher Random House
Publication date
 1971
Media type Print
Pages 151 pp.
ISBN 978-0394473482
OCLC 244836

Getting Even (1971) is Woody Allen's first collection of humorous stories, essays, and one short play. Most pieces were first published in The New Yorker between 1966 and 1971.

Woody Allen American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Heywood "Woody" Allen is an American director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. He began his career as a comedy writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for television and publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen began performing as a stand-up comedian, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comedian, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen fourth on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third-greatest comedian.

<i>The New Yorker</i> Magazine on politics, social issues, art, humor, and culture, based in New York City

The New Yorker is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It is published by Condé Nast. Started as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is now published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans.

Contents

Contents

  1. The Metterling Lists [1]
  2. A Look at Organized Crime
  3. The Schmeed Memoirs
  4. My Philosophy
  5. Yes, But Can the Steam Engine Do This?
  6. Death Knocks
  7. Spring Bulletin
  8. Hassidic Tales
  9. The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers
  10. Notes from the Overfed
  11. A Twenties Memory
  12. Count Dracula
  13. A Little Louder, Please
  14. Conversations with Helmholtz
  15. Viva Vargas!
  16. The Discovery and Use of the Fake Ink Blot
  17. Mr. Big

Some of the tales in detail

Hardboiled tough personality, usually as a fiction genre

Hardboiled fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction. The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who witnesses the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, and The Continental Op.

Humphrey Bogart American actor

Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American film and stage actor. His performances in numerous films from the Classical Hollywood era made him a cultural icon. In 1999, staffers at the American Film Institute selected him as the greatest male star of Classic American Cinema.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, and the Continental Op.

Notes and references

  1. ↑ The Metterling Lists in The New Yorker, May 10, 1969
  2. ↑ Vittorio Hösle (2007) Woody Allen: an essay on the nature of the comical p.70
  3. ↑ Guido Almansi and Guido Fink (1976) Quasi come, p.197
  4. ↑ Philological papers, Volume 29 p.110
  5. ↑ Franco Contorbia (2009) Giornalismo italiano, Volume 4, p.222, quotation: "In Mr Big Allen scrive una perfetta novella poliziesca, genere hard boiled, tra Dashiell Hammett, Spillane e Chandler."
  6. ↑
  7. ↑ Richard Alan Schwartz (2000) Woody, from Antz to Zelig: a reference guide to Woody Allen's creative work, 1964-1998 p.38
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

Related Research Articles

Raymond Chandler American novelist and screenwriter

Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime. All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.

<i>The Maltese Falcon</i> (novel) novel by Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 detective novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine Black Mask beginning with the September 1929 issue. The story is told entirely in external third-person narrative; there is no description whatever of any character's internal thoughts or feelings, only what they say and do, and how they look. The novel has been adapted several times for the cinema.

Michael Hammer is a fictional character created by the American author Mickey Spillane in the 1947 book I, the Jury. Hammer is a no-holds-barred private investigator who carries a .45 Colt M1911A1 in a shoulder harness under his left arm. His love for his secretary Velda is outweighed only by his willingness to kill a killer. Hammer's best friend is Pat Chambers, Captain of Homicide NYPD. Hammer was a World War II army veteran who spent two years fighting jungle warfare in the Pacific theatre against Japan.

Philip Marlowe fictional character created by Raymond Chandler

Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep, published in 1939. Chandler's early short stories, published in pulp magazines like Black Mask and Dime Detective, featured similar characters with names like "Carmady" and "John Dalmas".

<i>Black Mask</i> (magazine) American magazine

Black Mask was a pulp magazine first published in April 1920 by the journalist H. L. Mencken and the drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine was one of several money-making publishing ventures to support the prestigious literary magazine The Smart Set, which Mencken edited, and which had operated at a loss since at least 1917. Under their editorial hand, the magazine was not exclusively a publisher of crime fiction, offering, according to the magazine, "the best stories available of adventure, the best mystery and detective stories, the best romances, the best love stories, and the best stories of the occult." The magazine's first editor was Florence Osborne.

Sam Spade fictional private detective

Sam Spade is a fictional private detective and the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon. Spade also appeared in four lesser-known short stories by Hammett.

The Continental Op

The Continental Op is a fictional character created by Dashiell Hammett. He is a private investigator employed as an operative of the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office. The stories are all told in the first person and his name is never mentioned.

<i>Murder by Death</i> 1976 film by Robert Moore

Murder by Death is a 1976 American satirical mystery comedy film with a cast featuring Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker, and Estelle Winwood, written by Neil Simon and directed by Robert Moore.

<i>The Simple Art of Murder</i> book by Raymond Chandler

The Simple Art of Murder is hard-boiled detective fiction author Raymond Chandler's critical essay, a magazine article, and his collection of short stories. The essay was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in December 1944. The magazine article appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature, April 15, 1950. The article, somewhat rewritten, served to introduce the collection The Simple Art of Murder, 1950, which contained eight of Chandler's early stories pre-dating his first novel, The Big Sleep.

<i>The Glass Key</i> novel by Dashiell Hammett

The Glass Key is a novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett. It was first published as a serial in Black Mask magazine in 1930, then was collected in 1931 It tells the story of a gambler and racketeer, Ned Beaumont, whose devotion to Paul Madvig, a crooked political boss, leads him to investigate the murder of a local senator's son as a potential gang war brews. Hammett dedicated the novel to his onetime lover Nell Martin.

Satan Met a Lady is a 1936 American detective film directed by William Dieterle and starring Bette Davis.

Vincent Calvino is a fictional Bangkok-based private eye created by Christopher G. Moore in the Vincent Calvino Private Eye series. Vincent Calvino first appeared in 1992 in Spirit House, the first novel in the series. His latest appearance is in "Jumpers", the 16th novel in the series published in October 2016. “Hewn from the hard-boiled Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler model, Calvino is a tough, somewhat tarnished hero with a heart of gold.”—Mark Schreiber, The Japan Times.

<i>Pulp</i> (novel) novel by Charles Bukowski

Pulp is the last completed novel by Los Angeles poet and writer Charles Bukowski. It was published in 1994, shortly before Bukowski's death. He began writing it in 1991 and encountered several problems during its creation. He fell ill during the spring of 1993, only three-quarters of the way through Pulp.

The Maltese Falcon Society is an organization for admirers of Dashiell Hammett, his novel The Maltese Falcon, and hardboiled mystery books and writers in general. Founded in San Francisco in 1981, the organization is no longer active in the United States; however, a chapter in Japan has been active continuously since 1982. The Japanese branch of the society presents the Falcon Award, Japan's highest honor in the mystery field, to honor the best hardboiled mystery novel published in Japan.

Woody Allen bibliography Wikimedia list article

A list of published works by or about the American film director Woody Allen.

Mister Dynamite is a 1935 American action film directed by Alan Crosland and written by Doris Malloy and Harry Clork. The film stars Edmund Lowe, Jean Dixon, Victor Varconi, Esther Ralston, Verna Hillie and Minor Watson. The film was released on April 22, 1935, by Universal Pictures.

Nick Danger is a fictional character created by the comedy group The Firesign Theatre, portrayed by Phil Austin. Danger is a parody of the hard-boiled detective, and is often announced as "Nick Danger, Third Eye", a parody of the term private eye. Danger stories involve stereotypical film noir situations, including mistaken identity, betrayal, and femmes fatales. Danger originally appears on the 1969 album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All, and is reprised in the 1979 Nick Danger: The Case of the Missing Shoe, 1984 The Three Faces of Al, and 2001 The Bride of Firesign.

"He’s based on the [Dashiell] Hammett Sam Spade character, but as I got more into writing him over the years, he’s become much more like [Philip] Marlowe. I love [Raymond] Chandler’s writing.”