The new book by American director Woody Allen collects stories published by him over the years in the cult literary magazine The New Yorker. Reading the collection, our literary reviewer Elena Pestereva found at least three reasons to laugh
1. Mastery of intellectual comedy. The unique ability of the New York TV screenwriter to wit, using the achievements of psychoanalysis and world culture in general, combining psychological drama and absurdity, was quickly noticed in The New Yorker. The stories published in the cult American magazine are collected in this book.
2. Allen knows all about the absolute fearlessness of a joke: with inimitable grace, he juggles great writers and statesmen, steam engines and flyers, chicken sandwiches, God and death – all that life is made of. For him, there are no forbidden topics and “sacred cows”, and if the terrible is also funny, then life is easier.
3. Laughing is good, and laughing at yourself is doubly good. And in this ability the author cannot be surpassed. On the plane, Allen reads Dostoyevsky and Diet magazine (it’s our favorite menu!), and his conclusions are so familiar: “I’m fat. Disgustingly oily. Fat as such is above bourgeois morality.”
Translation from English by Oleg Dorman, Anastasia Zakharevich, Sergei Ilyin, Nikolai Makhlayuk, Alexander Smolyansky.
Corpus, 224 c.