The three volumes of Woody Allen’s short comic pieces, mainly from the pages of the New Yorker. It’s a little strange that the volumes are out of order, with the first volume second and the second first. If you’re familiar with Allen’s other work the style and often absurd humour won’t surprise, and are more likely to raise a chuckle than a belly laugh. As with any anthology of work some pieces appeal more than others (for me it’s Viva Vargas! and The Kugelmass Episode) and some float by unmemorably. Only the penultimate piece in the book, Revolution, feels uncomfortable after Allen’s romantic history and recent accusations. ( )

I LOVE "The Kugelmass Episode"! There are some gems in here. ( )

En este único volumen reunimos los tres libros de cuentos -Cómo acabar de una vez por todas con la cultura, Sin plumas y Perfiles- del gran cineasta, guionista y actor cómico Woody Allen, publicados ya en otra colección. Considerados así, como obra unitaria, estos escritos satíricos reflejan, con la habitual sabiduría de su inteligente humor, la esencia misma de las preocupaciones que acostumbran a obsesionarle : Dios, la muerte, el amor y el sexo.

First of all, maybe my favorite title ever. Allen's humor is, in my opinion, even more effective on the page than it is on the screen. I've never laughed so loud while reading prose, and it may have even surpassed the belly shaking satisfaction of my friends Calvin and Hobbes (no disrespect to Mr Watterson). A specific selection from this collection was handed out at the winter break in one of my high school English classrooms, the only instruction being read it and enjoy the holidays. The story was one in which a man has an affair with Madame Bovary, of the book of that title, via a magical box. Of course, the class had only recently finished reading said book, and I'm glad that the teacher introduced me to a side of Woody Allen that I was not at that point familiar with.

Funny, yes, but not uproarious. Good one-liners here and there, but the absurdist style of the humour becomes a bit formulaic after a while. Plus, in my paperback edition every piece (most of which are only five to ten pages long) is introduced by a title page, a blank verso and then a half-page drop, so there's a lot of white space and the volume could easily have been forty pages shorter.

A highlight: "The Gossage–Vardebedian Papers", in which two academics play chess – and then Scrabble – by correspondence. But at least one of them is cheating, both are more interested in intellectual one-upmanship than enjoying a social pastime, and neither of them can admit that the game has long since become hopelessly confused. ( )