Contents
COVER
ABOUT THE BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY WOODY ALLEN
TITLE PAGE
TO ERR IS HUMAN—TO FLOAT, DIVINE
TANDOORI RANSOM
SAM, YOU MADE THE PANTS TOO FRAGRANT
THIS NIB FOR HIRE
CALISTHENICS, POISON IVY, FINAL CUT
NANNY DEAREST
HOW DEADLY YOUR TASTE BUDS, MY SWEET
GLORY HALLELUJAH, SOLD!
CAUTION, FALLING MOGULS
THE REJECTION
SING, YOU SACHER TORTES
ON A BAD DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER
ATTENTION GENIUSES: CASH ONLY
STRUNG OUT
ABOVE THE LAW, BELOW THE BOX SPRINGS
THUS ATE ZARATHUSTRA
SURPRISE ROCKS DISNEY TRIAL
PINCHUCK’S LAW
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE BOOK
‘I am greatly relieved that the universe is finally explainable. I was beginning to think it was me. ’ Thus begins ‘Strung Out’, Woody Allen’s hilarious application of the laws of the universe to daily life.
Surreal, absurd, rich in verbal play, bitingly satirical and just plain daft in the mode we have grown to love from his finest films, this flight-of-fancy collection includes tales of a body double who, mistaken for the film’s star, is kidnapped by outlaws; a pretentious novelist forced to work on the novelisation of a Three Stooges film; a nanny secretly writing an expose of her Manhattan employers; crooks selling bespoke prayers on eBay; and how to react when you’re asked to finance a Broadway play about the invention and manufacture of the adjustable showerhead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WOODY ALLEN’S prolific career as a comedian, writer, and filmmaker has now spanned more than five decades. He writes frequently for
Also by Woody Allen
TO ERR IS HUMAN—TO FLOAT, DIVINE
GASPING FOR AIR, my life passing before my eyes in a series of wistful vignettes, I found myself suffocating some months ago under the tsunami of junk mail that cascades through the slot in my door each morning after kippers. It was only our Wagnerian cleaning woman, Grendel, hearing a muffled falsetto from beneath myriad art-show invitations, charity squeezes, and pyrite contest jackpots I’d hit that extricated me with the help of our Bugsucker. As I was carefully filing the new postal arrivals alphabetically in the paper shredder, I noticed, amongst the profusion of catalogues that hawked everything from bird feeders to monthly deliveries of sundry drupe and hesperidium, there was an unsolicited little journal, banner-lined