Without Feathers

Woody Allen Without Feathers (1972)
I have no illusions regarding the possibility of Woody Allen having turned out to be an absolute shocker - before anyone feels compelled to begin a sentence with don't you realise that... but I remember when he was funny, and I remember reading this book when it had cartoon Woody as a plucked chicken on the cover and laughing my ass off.

I have decided to break off my engagement with W. She doesn't understand my writing, and said last night that my Critique of Metaphysical Reality reminded her of Airport. We quarrelled, and she brought up the subject of children again, but I convinced her they would be too young.

It still makes me laugh, even that punchline. I'm still not sure that I believe in cancel culture as an actual thing, but I sure am tired of new puritans attempting to police my reading habits, almost to the point of actively seeking out that which has inspired a thousand whiny blogs; but, as I said, I'm here mainly because I wanted to find out whether it was still funny, and whether it had ever been funny. I have some vague recall of Allen's Love and Death being side-splitting when first I saw it, and yet it barely raised a smile during a more recent viewing.

Revisited in 2021, Without Feathers reveals itself as surprisingly formulaic with most of these reprinted New Yorker articles reliant upon the same peppering of the grandiose with small change absurdities as has served Monty Python, Spike Milligan, Vic, Bob and many others so well. Allen has a good sense of conversational dialogue, so mostly it works without the author grinning, winking, and digging you in the ribs every thirty seconds - which you wouldn't want, for obvious reasons. I've seen it suggested that Allen is essentially a creep, and that even this persona of the nerdy autodidact who ain't getting any represents a calculated projection designed to lure the vulnerable with their defences duly lowered; which may well be the case, but has no bearing on the fact of Without Feathers being still mostly funny. Furthermore, both The Whore of Mensa and Death, his Kafka-inspired one act play, are surprisingly profound, and enough so as to inspire the wish that things had turned out different - even with the possibility that maybe we're only talking about his later films being a bit more watchable.

For what it may be worth, Off the Wall is still a great album.