Tails of Manhattan

Excerpt from The New Yorker, March 30, 2009

Two weeks ago, Abe Moscowitz dropped dead of a heart attack and was reincarnated as a lobster. Trapped off the coast of Maine, he was shipped to Manhattan and dumped into a tank at a posh Upper East Side seafood restaurant. In the tank there were several other lobsters, one of whom recognized him. “Abe, is that you?” the creature asked, his antennae perking up.

Slow News Week

If you're anything like us, you've found that critical essays and biographies of Woody Allen careen between tedious and helpful. But if you're willing to take a plunge in those waters, Google Books is your friend. Be warned, however, that some of these titles are only partial previews limited to select chapters or essays from its respective volume.

Love, Sex, Death, and the Meaning of Life: The Films of Woody Allen by Foster Hirsch.

Woody Allen on Woody Allen by Stig Bjorkman.

Woody Allen, a biography by Eric Lax.

The essay A Little Faith in People from Brooklyn is Not Expanding: The Comic Universe of Woody Allen by Annette Wermblad.

The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen by Peter J. Bailey.

Art, Love, and Life in the Films of Woody Allen by Mary P. Nichols.

Eighteen Woody Allen Films Analyzed by Sander H. Hall.

Woody Allen: A Casebook by Kimball King.

Woody Allen's Angst by Sander H. Lee.

Once again, please be forewarned that pretense levels are often toxic with film critics, and all the more incoherent when missing pages here and there. William S. Burroughs would have loved it.

New Short Story

Think Hard, It'll Come Back to You, The New Yorker, November 10, 2008.

The Lost Novel

J.D. Salinger is not dead.

Many are surprised to learn that Salinger is among the living. Old, but alive.

Decades ago the champion novelist did a weird thing. He retreated from public life, but not from his work. Although his last published work appeared some 40 years ago, we've not seen the last of J.D. Salinger. We'll be hearing from him after he's gone.

According to literary folklore, Salinger has continued to write. In fact, there are accounts that he is sitting on a treasure trove of novels and stories, the sum product of his self-imposed exile. They're meticulously organized and edited; they're ready for publication.

Woody Allen is not J.D. Salinger. But he too should enjoy a posthumous publication or two:

He [Allen] fears that his fame may also work against him. 'I tried to write a novel,' he says. 'And I finished it. But I didn't want to have a novel out there that would be regarded as the work of a celebrity. I didn't want it looked down upon or embraced because it had a celebrity name. I wanted to write a novel that could hold its own with professional novels, and I didn't think that this could, so I have it in my drawer. I just didn't think it was good enough.'

Woody Allen's "lost" novel. It makes one wonder what else is in that drawer.