Παρενέργειες

by Woody Allen, Σωτήρης Κακίσης (Translator)

A humor classic by one of the world’s funniest writers, Side Effects is a treat for Allen fans and those just discovering how gifted he is. In classics including "Remembering Needleman", "The Kugelmass Episode", "Confessions of a Burglar", and others,

Genres: Humor, Fiction, Short Stories, Comedy, American, Essays, Literature

161 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Noted American actor, screenwriter, and filmmaker Woody Allen, originally Allen Stewart Konigsberg explored the neuroses of the urban middle class in comedies of manners, such as Annie Hall (1977) and Deconstructing Harry (1997).

This director, jazz musician, and playwright thrice won Academy Award. His large body of work mixes satire, wit and humor in the most respected and prolific cerebral style in the modern era. Allen directs also in the majority of his movies. For inspiration, Allen draws heavily on literature, philosophy, psychology, Judaism, European cinema, and city of New York, where he lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_A...

Reviews

[Meredith Holley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woody Allen has that way of writing awkward attractions and selfish motivations that is forgiving and neat. He ties up the loose ends, but then at the same time, there is always an absurdity to the tying up. The characters will probably never be content, but somehow I, as their audience, am left content through the catharsis of watching Allen’s characters self-destruct. Despite the dissonance in the character relationships, what was secret is now in the open, the bad guy is murdered or permanently tortured with guilt, the underdog had his day, the boy found a girl. It is a good combination of satisfying and dissatisfying.

This book is great. The Abraham Lincoln play cracked me up; the hospital romance was sad and smart; and the story with Madame Bovary came right while Kelly and I were having our epic battle, so that was perfect. Woody Allen is cool.

[obligatory part where I say how much I completely adore Mia Farrow until the end of time.]

I’m listing below my ranking of favorite to least favorite Woody Allen films. I only rank based on personal preference, not based on a weird guess at objective quality because I am a bad guesser. Also, admittedly, it’s been about six years since I’ve seen some of them, so it gets a little vague and messy in the middle.

1. Another Woman
2. Purple Rose of Cairo
3. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
4. Stardust Memories
5. Sweet and Lowdown
6. Broadway Danny Rose
7. Manhattan
8. Sleeper
9. Crimes and Misdemeanors
10. Husbands and Wives
11. Alice
12. Interiors
13. September
14. Bananas
15. Small Time Crooks
16. Bullets Over Broadway
17. Radio Days
18. Shadows and Fog
19. Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
20. Annie Hall
21. Play It Again, Sam
22. New York Stories
23. Take the Money and Run
24. Love and Death
25. Zelig
26. Cassandra’s Dream
27. Match Point
28. Manhattan Murder Mystery
29. Hollywood Ending
30. Midnight in Paris
31. Scoop
32. What’s Up, Tiger Lily?
33. Hannah and Her Sisters
34. Curse of the Jade Scorpion
35. Mighty Aphrodite
36. Whatever Works
37. Anything Else
38. Melinda and Melinda
39. Celebrity
40. Deconstructing Harry

That’s how the films go for me, I think. It is a very unfair list because I basically love most of them. I think you hit the “Yeah, that was pretty good” place around Hollywood Ending, but psychosomatic blindness? Yes, please.

When I was in high school, my best friend’s family watched Woody Allen movies all the time, and I couldn’t stand him. He seemed so smug, saying, “Look, I write a couple of jokes and everyone forgives me screwing people over.” Gross.

Then, suddenly, I hit maybe age twenty-four, and I watched Purple Rose of Cairo and got hooked. I watched everything I could get my hands on. He was no longer smug voice of screwing people over, but somehow, instead, this voice of compassion – a voice saying, “Look at how shallow we all are, but that doesn’t mean we are unimportant.” And I still value that. He combines the daily, mundane dissatisfactions of life with the epic curiosities of time travel and murrrrder and true love. What a wonderful storyteller. Purple Rose of Cairo is a good place to start.

[Luís · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woody Allen practices humor version prolo - but only. So try his jokes at kebab Victor Hugo during ralouf and white sauce. I'm not sure we will understand the subtle allusions to Schopenhauer, Marlowe, or Shaw. He is not a prolo who wants, and Woodywood may have regretted not having this rope his bow. Already, one felt without his films that he had never really known the dirt of poor neighborhoods, garbage dumps, and depressed workers.
It's not a reason for him to want it. Instead, pride flattered, seizing his jokes like Schopenhauer was no more difficult to grasp than philosophizing on his tricycle; his absurd humor can almost compete with Monty Python.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just finished reading Camus's The Outsider and the book was a peqrfect antidote for the intensity and gloom. Wait a minute, Allen has kind of an existential point of view but through comedy. I recommend pairing the two writers.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Sure I stole. Why not? Where I came from you had to steal to eat. Then you had to steal to tip. Lots of guys stole fifteen percent, but I always stole twenty… My dad was always on the run, and I never saw him out of disguise until I was twenty two….He was a professional bank-robber, but sixty-five was the mandatory retirement age, so he had to get out.” From the Last piece in the book, “Confessions of a Burglar,” (207-213).
This led to my first professional publication, in "California English", about teaching Tone of Voice.
I would give the full paragraph without telling the author, and my freshman English community college students would mostly take it seriously, “I didn’t know robbers have to retire…” My point was that all my students know tone when they hear it—from parents, from relatives, from ads and TV, but it takes skillful reading to catch tone unperformed, on paper.

Other gems here, “My Speech to the Graduates,” “The UFO Menace,” and “The Lunatic’s Tale.” In My Speech, he defines “modern man” as anyone “born after Nietzche’s edict that ‘God is Dead’ but before the hit recording ‘I Wanna Hold your Hand” (81). “The Government is unresponsive to the needs of the little man. Under five-seven, it is impossible to get your Congressman on the phone.” He concludes, “Never before has pornography been so rampant. And those films are lit so badly!”(85).

On UFO’s he observes, “when we talk of ‘life’ on other planets, we are frequently referring to amino acids, which are never gregarious, even at parties” (37). He saw three orange objects in the heavens, that “circled midtown Athens.” “Suddenly the room turned bright orange. At first, I thought my wife had caught me eating between meals and set fire to the house.” Flying in a plane, the objects force him to land on the turnpike, “and I continued the trip on the ground and only got into trouble when the toll collector tried to collect for four wheels, not three.”

Other pieces, like the Lunatic’s Tale, issue from deranged speakers: in “Nefarious Times we Live in,” the speaker as a kid wanted to play cello, but ended up shooting at the president. He blames this on his military service where he had LSD tested on him; then he came under the influence of a fraudulent preacher, Rev Ding. “I learned that Rev. Ding had been sued by a fifteen-year-old Maharishi over which of them was actually God and therefore entitled to a free pass at Loew’s Orpheum”(124).

[Drew Canole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook which is probably the best way to do this. It feels like a long lost early period Allen film that way.

Lots of - not quite "funny" but humorous - short stories. It's something I could see myself revisiting, but I can't see anyone calling this essential.

[Shankar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This must be the umpteenth re read. In some ways I was brought up on Woody Allen among others as well. I read Inside Woody Allen strips every day on our city newspaper and even had a scrap book with these pasted and saved. It was lost mysteriously when we moved homes.

This book was coincidentally bought in a store named Side Effects way back in 1987. These “short stories” still are a great laugh if you enjoy Woody Allen’s brand of humour. I don’t think I will ever stop re reading this and enjoying them.

A big RECOMMENDED.

[Sean Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of existential absurdist short stories by Woody Allen. As a fan of Woody Allen the filmmaker, I am quite naturally going to enjoy Woody Allen the writer. There are a few stories that fall short (must be expected in a collection of 17 stories) but there are some absolutely brilliant and imaginatively funny stories/sketches. Look forward to his other books.

[david · Rating 5 out of 5]

The side effects of reading these stories are:
extreme laughing.
lunch
continued laughing.
dinner
(several hours later...)
dream laughter.

[Antonis Giannoulis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Για κάποιο λόγο ενοχλήθηκα με τα αντικομμουνιστικά αλλά και αντιφεμινιστικά νευρωτικά σχόλια που υπάρχουν μέσα σε αυτο το βιβλιο . Σε γενικές γραμμες μου φάνηκε αδιάφορο με εξαίρεση 3 ιστοριών του που με κέρδισαν και ήταν κλάσεις ανώτερες από τις υπόλοιπες . Στο κομματι της φαντασίας βεβαια παίρνει 4/5 καθώς κάθε ιστορία είναι τραβηγμένη από τα μαλλιά

συνολικά το βρήκα εύπεπτο και κτ που δεν χρειάζεται να ασχοληθώ και πολύ περισσότερο ….

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

He's the last of a dying breed. Some people celebrate that fact, but I don't. Cozy up with a vodka tonic, wrap yourself in a warm blanket of self-loathing, and dig into this.

[Veronika Sebechlebská · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toto si sem odkladám na horšie dni:

Zhrzen osudem

"Ústředním problémem jeho života bylo, že neustále někam zakládal věci. Jedného dne šel spát, a když se probudil, nemohl najít postel."

Vzpomínky na Needlemana

"Dávam mnohem větší přednost kremaci před uložením v zemi, a obojímu před víkendem s manželkou"

Odsouzenec

"Sní, pomyslel si Clocquet, stojící nad ním s pistolí v ruce. Tak on si sní a já existuju ve skutečnosti. Cloquet skutečnost nesnášel, ale uvědomoval si, že je to pořád jediné místo, kde dostanete slušný biftek"

Hrozba létajících talířů

"Profesor Leon Specimen předpokládá ve vesmíru existenci civilizace, která je pokročilejší než ta naše přibližně o čtvrt hodiny. Má pocit, že tím jsou její obyvatelé oproti nám ve velké výhodě, protože nemusí tolik spěchat na schůzky."

Paměti lupiče

"Jasné, že jsem krad. Proč ne? Tam, kde jsem vyrůstal, člověk musel krást, aby mal na večeři. Pak musel ještě krást, aby měl na spropitné."

Obrana Allenova

"Sokratova statečná smrt nakonec dodala jeho životu autentický smysl, což je něco, co moje existence zcela postrádá, přestože není zcela bez alespoň nepatrného významu pro berní úrad"

Postava Kugelmasse
Kugelmass je chlapík, ktorému sa podarí preniesť sa do knihy Pani Bovaryová a začať si s jej hlavnou hrdinkou. Na konci sa však čarovný stroj pokazí a Kugelmass sa neprenesie do Pani Bovaryovej ani žiadneho iného románu ale

"namísto toho se ocitl ve staré učebnici španělštiny pro začátečníky a prchal po holém skalnatém terénu, aby spasil život před velkým a chlupatým nepravidelným slovesem tener ("míti"), které ho pronásledovalo na pavoučích nohou."

Projev k maturantům

"Více než kdy předtím v dějinách dnes lidstvo stojí na križovatce. Jedna cesta vede k zoufalství a naprosté beznaději, Druhá k úplnému vyhynutí. Doufejme, že budeme dost moudří a vybereme si správně."

.....Čím to je, že z písania v češtine mám vždy strašnú svalovku na medziprstových svaloch?

[Hunter Freiburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woody Allen is one of my all time favorite movie directors, recently I found out that he had several books of short stories and plays, SIDE EFFECTS is the first I read of his. Just like his films, his writing is over the top and hilarious. Side Effects was original because of the way it was done. It's a compilation of short stories, but no two are the same. All over the place with content and style, but all in a good way. Side Effects is definitely the strongest book I have read by him. Highly recommend if you love comedic writing.

I learned a lot about timing for comedy from this book. I feel a lot of the time when authors attempt to be funny in their books it can be lost on the reader. Allen has mastered the art of making sure you know when to laugh because he doesn't really give you an option. I also learned how to be over the top with out being ridiculous. Allen can be too much at times, but you always keep reading.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's just say that his neurotic wit made me forgive the prejudice I held against the perversity of marrying your own daughter... even if she's adopted.

P.S. I'm currently re-reading this for the 10th time.

[Mustafa Şahin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yer yer muzip ve absürt, yer yer sıkıcı denemelerden ve öykülerden oluşuyor. Yani güzel olanlar gerçekten güzel, kötü olanlar da gerçekten kötü diyebilirim.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up for light bedtime reading after much time spent with learned tomes. Remembered liking Allen's humorous essays back in the day. This expectation was somewhat disappointed by this collection, the jokes of which were rather repetitive. I still like his early stand-up performances, however.

[Lukasz Pruski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woody Allen’s “Side Effects” is most likely the funniest book I have read in my life. Almost each of the about two hundred pages contains at least one passage that made me laugh out loud, which makes things a bit tricky, especially when you read on the trolley and your fellow passengers look at you suspiciously and move to far-away seats.

Already the second paragraph on the first page is hilarious: “Needleman was constantly obsessing over his funeral plans and once told me, ‘I much prefer cremation to burial in the earth, and both to a weekend with Mrs. Needleman’”. As a mathematician I cannot avoid to laugh out loud at the “Oh, I ran into Isosceles. He has a great idea for a new triangle.” And the totally fabulous passage “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” And yet one more pearl of humor: “Never before has pornography been this rampant. And those films are lit so badly!”

Most of the book is just pure fun and devoid of any deeper content. However, I found four stories to be much more meaningful. “The Kugelman Episode” in which professor Kugelman meets Emma Bovary thanks to magician Persky (funny, I once met a Mr. Persky in Zakopane, and he was sort of a magician). Then “The Shallowest Man”, which is a great story about death and love. In “Fabrizio’s: Criticism and Response” Mr. Allen displays virtuoso literary skills writing about pasta. Finally, “Retribution” is one of the funniest stories about sex I have ever read.

What the heck, I am going to round my four and a half star rating up. The book is, of course, nothing in the class of Coetzee, Pynchon, Joyce, Faulkner, Vonnegut, etc., but the sheer hilarity factor is stunning. Allow me one last quote: “Wittgenstein used the above model to prove the existence of God, and later Bertrand Russell used it to prove that not only does God exist but He found Wittgenstein too short.” The previous five-star book I have read, Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five", is a masterpiece. This one is not, but it has been so much fun to read it.

Four and a half stars.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

As much as I love Woody Allen, I always felt his short stories work best when he isn't going for the serious-with-punchline-style, as evidenced in The Kugelmass Episode. My Apology and The Query are hilarious; Fabrizio's: Criticism and Response is brilliant. A food critic analyzes a restaurant like it's a film or a piece of literature.

The Lunatic's Tale features one of my favorite punchlines: "My first wife was brilliant, but had no sense of humor. Of the Marx Brothers, she was convinced the amusing one was Zeppo." Retribution is an interesting piece when you consider Woody's love life. The Shallowest Man seems to be the Woody story that everyone forgot. It's a rare, oddly serious turn for something he's written. Of course, he wraps it up with another funny joke.

Side Effects is a solid effort, with most of the brilliant stuff being towards the back of the book. Woody is funny if you dig his sense of humor and he always has good ideas. Sure, some of the stories are a bit weak, but most of them are great. The one thing I don't like is the lack of a piece like the one in Without Feathers that's like his diary. I always love his brand of neurotic paranoia humor and that's sadly missing here.

[David B · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a hilarious collection of humorous pieces that Woody Allen wrote for the New Yorker in the 70s. The absurdity of the humor and the intelligence of the references combine well in an engagingly zany, pseudo-intellectual read. I laughed out loud often. The classic Allen joke begins with a deadpan, pedantic statement that takes a left turn into absurdity or brilliant non sequitur. In these days when reading is on the decline and even many of the people who rise to the top levels of society wear their ignorance like a badge of honor, it is bittersweet to read a book from a time when a bestselling author could rely on the audience for this book of silly jokes to have at least a passing familiarity with people like Schopenhauer and Victor Hugo.

[Nawal · Rating 4 out of 5]

After watching many of Allen's movies, I was more than pleased to read this humorous collection of ALLEN's short stories . His prose is the same as the dialogue that gushes from the characters mouths in his films!

An interesting journey through the absurd mind of such an eccentric nervous genius that enables you to think and laugh at the same time!

[Tieu uyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tuyệt. Giễu nhại cực kì hay ho.

[Kathleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Smart? Sure, but just not that funny to me. I was scalded by Allen's apparent hostility and disgust with the whole human race, it just leaks out all over like some caustic material that would require a hazmat team response. Ugh. Rampantly misanthropic.

[Clare Bear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woody Allen has me laughing out loud long after I have finished reading. Apparently I even laugh in my sleep after reading him.

[Matt Micucci · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of Allen's short writings, so him that you can actually hear him read them out to you. It's rare to find such funny and intelligent humour.

[Ezgi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Çeviri, kötü çeviri. Yine çeviri.

[Jasenka Hoffmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny, smart but in some moments a bit annoying.

[Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let's just say one of these stories convinced me that Ratatouille is a Marxist propaganda film

[Yeshi Dolma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewing all the three Woody Allen books: Without Feather was a work of genius, 5 star! A collection of prose in the form of stories, short plays, articles and essays, each giving me a short laugh and never being short of it. It is simple and filled with matter-of-fact-ly writing of the most bizarre things and conversations. Satirical and utterly hilarious, that first book- and WA won my heart! I swiftly jumped to the rest of his works. If not for anything, read it for- "If the impressionists had been dentists", though it feels so wrong, to not mention alllll the other articles/stories in Book 1. A 5 star!

Book 2: Getting Even and Book 3: Side effects - are written in the same line. Collection of short stories and articles. Both mocking and each of his work chuckle-to-oneself funny!
Overall, a four star. And definitely recommended.

[Rudvan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the part about the ufos other stories were very complex me to understand and laugh . I prefer another jewish comedian Sacha Cohen a.k.a Borat rather than Woody Allen comedies. see here ==> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dnw-...

[Nika Vardiashvili · Rating 4 out of 5]

ჯო ალენის შემდეგ საუკეთესოა გვარში.
სასჯელი, შეკითხვა პრეზიდენტ ლინკოლნს, ჩემივე აპოლოგია 5/5
- ეს ოხერი, სკამი მინდა, ტანკი ხომ არა! - შესჩივლა მამამისს, - კუზის გაჩენის კი არ მეშინია, მაგრამ ფეხებს რომ მაგიდაზე შემოვაწყობ ხოლმე, წამსვე უკან ვვარდები...

[Anuka Chitishvili · Rating 2 out of 5]

არც გამღიმებია 🥴