Getting Even (Allen book)

Contents

1. The Metterling Lists
2. A Look at Organized Crime
3. The Schmeed Memoirs
4. My Philosophy
5. Yes, But Can the Steam Engine Do This?
6. Death Knocks
7. Spring Bulletin
8. Hassidic Tales
9. The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers
10. Notes from the Overfed
11. A Twenties Memory
12. Count Dracula
13. A Little Louder, Please
14. Conversations with Helmholtz
15. Viva Vargas!
16. The Discovery and Use of the Fake Ink Blot
17. Mr. Big

Some of the tales in detail

• "Mr. Big" is a parody of the style and structure of hardboiled detective stories. The protagonist, Kaiser Lupowitz, is a parody of the characters which were typically played by Humphrey Bogart on film: Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Kaiser smokes Lucky Strike like Sam Spade, and is also used by Allen in another hard boiled parody, The Whore of Mensa (1974), collected in Without Feathers (1975).
• The philosophical arguments of "My Philosophy" will be later used in the films Bananas and Love and Death.
• The play "Death Knocks" is a direct parody of Ingmar Bergman's 1957 The Seventh Seal.
• "The Schmeed Memoirs" heavily parodies Felix Kersten.

References

1. [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1969/05/10/1969_05_10_034_TNY_CARDS_000290756 ''The Metterling Lists''] in ''The New Yorker'', May 10, 1969
2. Vittorio Hösle (2007) ''Woody Allen: an essay on the nature of the comical'' p.70
3. [[Guido Almansi]] and [[Guido Fink]] (1976) [https://books.google.com/books?id=jTMIAQAAIAAJ ''Quasi come''], p.197
4. [https://books.google.com/books?ei=5TdOTtWqLMij8QPC4_CqBw Philological papers, Volume 29] p.110
5. Franco Contorbia (2009) ''Giornalismo italiano, Volume 4'', p.222, quotation: "In ''Mr Big'' Allen scrive una perfetta novella poliziesca, genere ''hard boiled'', tra Dashiell Hammett, Spillane e Chandler."
6. "The Author".
7. Richard Alan Schwartz (2000) [https://books.google.com/books?id=cWhZAAAAMAAJ ''Woody, from Antz to Zelig: a reference guide to Woody Allen's creative work, 1964-1998''] p.38