Mere Anarchy by Woody AllenI try hard to love Woody Allen. I really do. I love quite a few of his films, especially Deconstructing Harry. So, I decided to give his latest collection of short stories a try. I did.
This collection of short stories appears to aim at satire of the New York elite—upper middle class and up. And that could be funny except that this is the class that Woody Allen falls into. So, it rings a little false coming from him. Sure, he should know the comings and goings of this group of people, but his attempt to distance himself from "them" just further points out how close he really is.
Another piece that doesn't allow me to fully enjoy these stories is some of the language. I had to read with a dictionary close at hand, which is not a bad thing. But, it becomes tiresome when some of the same words and phrases are used in one story after another. The most egregious violators were, in no particular order: lagniappe, boychick, momser, myrmidon, porcine, profiteroles, sacher torte, marbelized meats, and Planck (as in Planck's length and Planck's constant). Most of these words are not part of anyone's everyday language and so their use in more than one character's dialogue is just too much to ask of a reader.
I had higher hopes for these short stories, and I believe they probably worked much better in The New Yorker, where many of them first appeared. In this collection, for me, however, they fail. The saving grace was that they were short, as was the overall collection, which meant that the damage done to me was only minimal.
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