Zero Gravity

by Woody Allen, Daphne Merkin (Foreword by)

Overview

His first new collection of short humor in fifteen years is classic Woody Allen.
 
Zero Gravity is the fifth collection of comic pieces by Woody Allen, a hilarious prose stylist whose enduring appeal readers have savored since his classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, Side Effects, and Mere Anarchy. This new work combines pieces that have appeared in The New Yorker along with eleven written exclusively for this book, each a comic inspiration. Whether he’s writing about horses that paint, cars that think, the sex lives of celebrities, or how General Tso’s Chicken got its name, he is always totally original, broad yet sophisticated, acutely observant, and most important, relentlessly funny. Along with titles like “Buffalo Wings, Woncha Come Out Tonight” and “When Your Hood Ornament Is Nietzsche,”  included in this collection is his poignant but very funny short story,  "Growing Up in Manhattan.” Daphne Merkin has written the foreword.

Zero Gravity implies writing not to be taken seriously, but, as with any true humor, not all the laughs are weightless.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781956763294
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	06/07/2022
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	240,729
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Woody Allen is a writer, director, and actor. He has been a stand-up comedian and a published author. He lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with his wife of twenty-four years, Soon-Yi, and their two daughters, Manzie and Bechet. He is an avid jazz enthusiast and devoted sports fan. In his own words, he regrets that he has never made a great film, though he says he is still trying. 

Daphne Merkin is a novelist and critic who has made a name for herself with her often unnerving candor and forthright attitude toward issues of family, religion, money, and sex as well as her ability to straddle the high/low cultural divide. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, Elle, and Tablet. She has written frequently for other publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, New York Review of Books, Wall Street Journal, Bookforum, Travel & Leisure, and Departures. Merkin has also published five books, which include two novels, a memoir of depression, and two collections of essays. She is a longtime fan of Woody Allen.

Table of Contents

Foreword Daphne Merkin ix

Acknowledgments xvii

You Can't Go Home Again-And Here's Why 1

Udder Madness 12

Park Avenue, High Floor, Must Sell-Or Jump 19

Buffalo Wings, Woncha Come Out Tonight 28

Will the Real Avatar Please Stand Up 36

A Little Face Work Never Hurt 44

Tails of Manhattan 53

Wake Me When It's Over 58

Now Where Did I Leave That Oxygen Tank? 66

Flap in the Dynasty 73

Not a Creature Was Stirring 81

Think Hard, It'll Come Back to You 88

Sorry, No Pets Allowed 94

Money Can Buy Happiness-As If 100

When Your Hood Ornament Is Nietzsche 105

Over, Around, and Through, Your Highness 111

There Is Nothing Like a Brain 119

Rembrandt by a Nose 128

Growing Up in Manhattan 136

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Mere Anarchy, Woody Allen's previous collection of his short humor pieces:

“The stories in Mere Anarchy deliver the same joys and foibles that have been with its author from the start.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Uproarious . . . In each story the ornate and the vulgate slam together and make it rain polysyllabic absurdity.”—Wall Street Journal

“Like the Carnegie’s one-pound sandwiches, Allen’s literary slapstick is . . . comedy on wry.”—USA Today

“Brilliant neurotica . . . Unfailingly entertaining . . . [An] obsessive and seriously funny book.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Will put a rictus on your kisser. . . . The animating comedy is part S. J. Perelman and part borscht belt: Allen piles the ludicrous on top of the ridiculous and tops it with an acidic lemon squeeze, and then just keeps the jokes coming.”—Publishers Weekly

"The topsy-turvy literary allusions pour from Allen's pen like bullets from a Gatling gun (an appropriately obscure simile), exposing the intellectual pretensions of a ragtag assortment of Allenesque everymen—endearingly unkempt nebbishes who, despite knowing their Dostoevsky, can't quite deal with the absurdities of daily life."—Booklist

From the Publisher

2022-03-22
A tired blend of putatively comic stories old and new, and good luck telling them apart.

Once a regular in the New Yorker, from which many of these pieces (the most recent from 2013) are gathered, Allen serves up stories that will make readers long for his Without Feathers heyday. The jokes are thin, the puns obvious and labored unless you crack up at character names such as Al Capon, “a small-time egg baron.” Many stories center on showbiz types, often has-beens struggling to remain relevant or even employed. In that poultry-lashed yarn, for instance, the narrator recounts a “circus geek whose specialty is eating a live chicken” playing before a barnyard of birds, one of whose members, “flapping and squawking uncooperatively, managed to vitiate all pathos.” In one of many creepy moments, Allen’s protagonist describes himself as “a supplicant who has yet to achieve double digits when it comes to bedding the juicy gender,” by way of prelude to a Hollywood carnal encounter featuring “the sleek, white-jacketed Chinese houseboy, Hock Tooey.” A later story hinges on the prospect of an orgy, a bit of shtick fit for 1960s-era Playboy, while another tale that plays on the racist “Confucius Say” trope—see the Chinese houseboy above—is a flat-out embarrassment. The most current reference is to Brad Pitt, who, an impresario hopes, will play opposite to “a hot blond biologist…kind of an Eve Curie but with a great rack” who “wears a tight white lab coat” and “the black bikini underwear she got as a gift from her peers for making the Nobel short list.” One of the book’s rare winning bits involves a man “reincarnated as a lobster” and latching onto Bernie Madoff’s nose. Read the whole thing as an anachronism that belongs on the cutting-room floor circa Love and Death, and you’re on the mark.

Zero gravitas, zero laughs—satisfying only to the most die-hard of Allen fans.

Kirkus Reviews