Customer Reviews

Without Feathers

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Absolutely painfully funny. Allen's madness as a humourist shines through on this one of the "main three" collections of short works. Allen, who still writes a movie a year on a typewriter, delivers enjoyment in a book that still stands out today as an amazing classic of American Humour. Worthy of mention are the two one-act plays which I would love to see someone take on live.

I have never written a review before, but as this book is one of the funniest things I've ever stumbled upon... here goes. I was lucky enough to find Without Feathers about 10 years ago, in a hardcover edition along with Getting Even and Side Effects. I decided to take a quick look through it on the drive home from the book store (I was'nt the one driving!) and within minutes I was laughing uncontrolably! After the first paragraph I simply could'nt put it down. The other people in the car demanded to know what was so funny, but my attempts to read out loud were useless as I was crying with laughter and could no longer see the page!?! I handed the book over to one of my friends for him to read, and eventually we had to pull the car off the road due to the histerical giggling that ensued! "A Brief, Yet Helpful, Guide To Civil Disobedience" is possibly the funniest thing I've ever read!?! A decade has gone by since I first read these books and they are still as funny and unique. I read them whenever I'm dangerously close to forgeting how cathartic sheer silliness can be! Truly joyful prose!

I was recommended this book because of the play "Death." I found the two plays to be much funnier than some of the short stories and essays. The short stories are written in the older style of Allen's humor. They are funny because Allen is constantly using unexpected silly plot twists. I found these silly twists to be a bit much at times. However, if you like his older movies then you will probably like the way he writes the short stories. The plays were, I thought, much more clever. They were still silly (of course) but they had more continuity than the short stories. In addition the unexpected still occurred frequently but it seems more in context, in the plays.

Regardless, this book is very funny and if you like Allen's movies, then you'll definitely find this book funny as well.

"Without Feathers" was Woody Allen's second collection of humorous pieces, and probably his best. These originally appeared in the early 1970's, in magazines like "The New Yorker" and "The New Republic."

Some are short stories, like "No Kaddish for Weinstein" and "The Whore of Mensa." There are two plays, "Death" (the inspiration for Allen's "Shadows and Fog"), and the much better "God", a masterpiece of absurdity.

There are parodies of Encyclopedia Brown ("Match Wits with Inspector Ford") and Henrik Ibsen (the hysterical "Lovborg's Women Considered"), irreverent essays on English literature and civil disobedience, reviews of some very bizarre ballets, and more.

"Without Feathers" is fantastic and, as a bonus, much less expensive than many inferior humor books.

Every review that I have looked at for the book Without Feathers by Woody Allen pretty much starts out saying how hilarious this is. I'm not. The reason I picked up the book was, to laugh out loud. I didn't. The story was horribly boring, and while I should have been laughing out loud I was yawning. Twice, did I fall asleep reading the story and not during the middle of the night as one would suppose, but at about noon on a sunny weekend. Only in two parts of the book did anything appear remotely amusing to me.
I love how Mr. Allen made fun of history, and normally serious topics, but he did it in such a way that I feel he was overdoing it. The skit-like format of the book didn't do much for me either. This procedure didn't allow anything to flow, so it was very abrupt and brief in places. I don't know about what other people care for but I do not like stories that don't seem to flow well. I would ly confused in my chair by many of things that occurred, longing to read more about it, but the format doesn't allow for such things.
It's nice to see that someone can make a joke out of life, and death, but Mr. Allen seems to be going a liitle to far. In this Mr. Allen created two different plays, always ending with someone dying. Maybe I'm just odd but something tells me that death isn't something to laugh at. Along with that seeing the ghost of your dead brother isn't funny, but Mr. Allen goes a little overboard trying to make it so by making the two characters of that 'skit' start singing a boyhood song and having the living one try to walk through a wall. Spirits of the dead should be respected and sometimes feared, but not made a mockery of.
I'm going to say it again, maybe I'm just a little strange but at no point did I get to laugh out loud

This is one of the most hilarious, actually, the most hilarious book I have ever read. I don't know how he does it, but the combination of entirely random situation with common cliches makes even the most worn out ideas and themes hilarious.
Mr. Allen takes some of the biggest questions in human existence, "What happens to us when we die?" and "Is there a God?" and makes them into plays that are so incredibly disjointed and out of the common literary form that I almost couldn't follow them. Its such a relief after Shakespeare, where everything goes in the exact same pattern (gimme a break, I'm in high school)! Instead of having to read between the lines to pick up sarcasm, you have to look to pick up the plot of the play! It might be annoying to some people, but once you do figure out what "the Writer" is trying to say, it's a great feeling. Almost as good as knowing that there IS someone on this earth who is stranger than you. But then, we're not all as funny as Mr. Allen is either.
And it truly is his ramblings, not his spoof of big, deep, messages, that will make you fall out of your chair laughing. The friends I have shown this book ( I had to! They all seem to give me incredibly strange looks when I'm sitting at a pep rally and laughing hysterically after someone gets hurt) have tried to steal it after reading the first paragraph.
And what is almost the best thing is, is that he gives you a break. (in exception to the plays, which can get tedious at times) he skips around from idea to idea so quickly that it takes you by surprise, especially when he goes from trying to convince you that Shakespeare was someone else, who was someone else, who was someone else, to analyzing great impressionist art in the form of dentistry. Oops, I hope I haven't given away too much.
It fits perfectly into the spare minutes you have everyday and you an skip around, and read it however you like, and no matter what you do, it will still be funny. Now I have to go run and give it to the first person who tried to steal it from me.

This is one of the funniest bks you are ever going to read.

And dont miss GETTING EVEN, which, in spite of its earlier date and vengeful title, is even funnier...

...after that, until you are ready for the subtle humour of Jane Austen, Thomas Love Peacock, James Joyce, and Robert Musil, PGWodehouse is the funny man to go with for now.. and LOTS of him, especially the Bertie Wooster/Jeeves novels...

.. then you can thank me, after you've split your sides laughing ;)

This is one of the funniest bks you are ever going to read.

And dont miss GETTING EVEN, which, in spite of its earlier date and vengeful title, is even funnier...

...after that, until you are ready for the subtle humour of Jane Austen, Thomas Love Peacock, James Joyce, and Robert Musil, PGWodehouse is the funny man to go with for now.. and LOTS of him, especially the Bertie Wooster/Jeeves novels...

.. then you can thank me, after you've split your sides laughing ;)

Well, what can I say? This was written back in the early 70s but isn't dated and provokes a proverbial "laugh out loud" on the odd occasion. The humour is predictable, but not (I think) formulaic... probably represents Woody Allen's golden period, simple down-to-earth observations and silly notes to himself.

The two plays, especially "Death", are particularly good and show the dialogue is typical Woody Allen in top-form (eg. dealing with a Kafka-esque situation).

Without Feathers is good vintage Woody Allen writing. Interestingly, the breadth of essays contained in this book are a lot like his movies... there are great ones, there are good ones, and there are bad ones. I would say that this classifies the 18 different essays contained within this book to a tee with most of them landing in the "good" category. I've read all of his books, and I would say the most classic Woody Allen essay's are in Getting Even. I would recommend that anyone interested in reading a Allen book go there first, and then come to this one if they like it (plus it is in chronological order that way).

Perhaps the best thing about this book was not the essays but rather the two plays that were contained within. The play Death is hilarious, and ultimately was made into one of Woody Allen's films. This play gives an insight into how he writes primarily dialogue and very little description. Additionally, the play God was also very funny. The purchase is worth it to see the contrast between how Allen writes essays versus how he writes screenplays. The essays were good (not all that laugh out loud funny), but the plays were excellent.