Illustrated Woody Allen Reader

This smoothly edited collage splices snippets of dialogue from director Woody Allen's movies; brief excerpts from his previously published monologues, essays, interviews, sketches and plays; and hitherto unpublished stand-up routines. Interwoven with film clips and photographs, plus paintings by Marc Chagall, Edvard Munch, Paul Klee, Grant Wood and others, the selections are loosely organized around Allen's abiding themes and obsessions--his childhood, love's highs and lows, intellectuals' pretensions, psychoanalysis, New York City vs. Los Angeles, etc. Some of the excerpts are hilarious, others tend to be repetitious. Allen's unique brand of existential humor shines through as he keeps bumping into life's incongruities and takes on the Big Questions of love, death, God, suffering and the meaning of it all. (Nov.)