The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose

I love these essays. Laughs and smiles.

These are unquestionably three of the best books ever written by the author. Just buy it, read it, and treasure it in the many revisits you will certainly make to it for years to come.May the books you collect gather no dust, and may you never meet your heroes.

I won't go into detail on this, but I defy anyone to read this and not laugh out loud. Do not bring to funerals or divorce proceedings. The topics and styles are so broad as to be nearly exhaustive. There is no stone unturned, but combined with Allen's hilarious, sometimes absurd, style I flew through these books. I've owned each of these individually, but having loaned them out many times I decided it was time to own a complete collection which I could keep for myself. And I still laugh every time I read it.

However you feel about Woody Allen as a person in light of scandalous allegations, should not influence how you judge his art! Genius is Genius! Jefferson,Picasso,Poe,Hemmingway,Lovecraft... the list of flawed geniuses is endless-

I first read these short stories when they were in their original volumes, "Without Feathers" etc. back in the college days of skinny coed hot tube soakings with homemade wine coolers (7Up and Jug-O-Wine), and midnight movies "Rock Horror Picture Show" style. I was already bent, and Woody Allen's ass-backwards points-of-views gave me a literary and comedic rope-a-dope made me laugh strangely enough. After all, his movies belly-flop for me, mostly, but his written short story voice blows my sense of humor in the dirt.Have a wine-cooler, or something else, enjoy the laughs and bent angles and cock-eyed P.O.V.s.

I got his other books (without feathers,side effects,etc.) 30 years ago,but they fell apart. This has those books and they still make me laugh out loud to this day. Only complaint is it does not have the story "death knocks",shame because that was one of my faves.

Not what I expected but a really fun read. Vintage Woody Allen once you get into it.

Woody Allen is, as always, brilliant and funny. This is the ultimate collection of his non-film writings, but similar themes to his cinematic works will be found here as well. He has a unique (and, beneath the humor, accurate) perspective on the realities of life and the human condition. There is often more than meets the eye.

Definitely a book of all time, for me. One of those that belong in my "personal canon", if you will. Allen is an immensely amusing and creative writer of comic prose, so it's almost a shame that he didn't write more of it. ("Almost" just because 2007's Mere Anarchy was a comparative disaster, bloated and even fatuous where the older material remains light-of-touch and pleasingly absurd.) The Insanity Defense contains two of my favourite short stories in English: "The Whore of Mensa", a parody of hardboiled detective fiction, and "The Kugelmass Episode", a romantic fantasy with perhaps the most absurdly funny ending to a story that I've read.

Good but not his best, His humour translates better on film than paper but he is still one of the top American humourists

impeccable

Everything was perfect. I ordered that book as a gift. It was delivered even earlier.Thank you so much!

First reading of Woody. Can't put it down.