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.
Contents The Metterling ListsThe Metterling Lists in The New Yorker, May 10, 1969 A Look at Organized Crime The Schmeed Memoirs My Philosophy Yes, But Can the Steam Engine Do This? Death Knocks Spring Bulletin Hassidic Tales The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers Notes from the Overfed A Twenties Memory Count Dracula A Little Louder, Please Conversations with Helmholtz Viva Vargas! The Discovery and Use of the Fake Ink Blot Mr. Big
Some of the tales in detail "Mr. Big" is a parody of the style and structure of hardboiled detective stories. The protagonist, Kaiser Lupowitz, is a parody of the characters which were typically played by Humphrey Bogart on film: Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon,Vittorio Hösle (2007) Woody Allen: an essay on the nature of the comical p.70 Mickey Spillane's Mike HammerGuido Almansi and Guido Fink (1976) Quasi come, p.197Philological papers, Volume 29 p.110 and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.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." Kaiser smokes Lucky Strike like Sam Spade, and is also used by Allen in another hard boiled parody, The Whore of Mensa (1974), collected in Without Feathers (1975). The philosophical arguments of "My Philosophy" will be later used in the films Bananas and Love and Death. The play "Death Knocks" is a direct parody of Ingmar Bergman's 1957 The Seventh Seal.Richard Alan Schwartz (2000) Woody, from Antz to Zelig: a reference guide to Woody Allen's creative work, 1964-1998 p.38 "The Schmeed Memoirs" heavily parodies Felix Kersten.
Notes and references
External links Woody Allen's bibliography