Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen

I decided to jump on the books by comedians wagon… I wish I had jumped onto it with a better book.

I adore Woody Allen. I like his ridiculous glasses, his sometimes too grandiose gesticulations, and his movies. I did not, however, like Mere Anarchy. It called seductively from the library bookshelf, misplaced beside a Post Secret collection. When brilliant men call you, you answer…On the rare occasion that this happens. I think that maybe Woody was calling to someone other than me, like the cute chick in the overstuffed arm chair near the section of books about Iraq and the war. They could have been more compatible.

When asked at my interview to write for The (Cr)Appalachian and was asked what I wanted to write on, I said I would be interested in doing book reviews on recent releases and dropped the name of Mere Anarchy, just knowing it would be fabulous before I even opened it.

I was so wrong. It’s a collection of short stories about everything obscure you could imagine, where someone who was clearly modeled after Allen himself is being subjected to numerous improbable situations that should be comical but aren’t. I’m not sure if the main character is always meant to be the same or not, but in most all of them, the character is called boychick, which for some reason seemed to get under my skin. The language employed was too hip, too forced, and too much after the first several stories. This might have been better as an audio book with everything read in his voice.

My honeymoon period with Allen is over. Or maybe I’m just jealous that the story about the New Age commune taught boychick, but not the reader, how to levitate.