Woody at his best

Must one be a reader to be a writer? Film director Woody Allen would answer in the negative. Once in a Newsweek interview, Allen said he read very little for the first 15 years of his life. He was too interested in playing ball. Then he added, "Even when I was reading nothing but Donald Duck and Batman I could write real prose in school compositions. There was never a week when the composition I wrote was not the one that was read to the class."

To experience Allen's skill as a writer one could read one of his books, such as the humor classics Without Feathers and Side Effects, or watch any of his movies, which he wrote as well as directed (and in most cases starred in). There is a third alternative, and that is The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader, edited by Linda Sunshine.

The book was published in the United Kingdom in 1993, so all his work from the past two and a half decades is unrepresented. Still there are nearly 300 pages of choice material here, excerpts from his movies, books, monologues (he was a standup comic back in the 1960s), essays and interviews. Sunshine organizes the material according to the major themes of his work: his own life, love, analysis, New York City, religion and death, for instance.

Here are a couple of brief samples:

In Shadows and Fog, he has one character say, "Oh, now there's only one kind of love that lasts. That's unrequited love. It stays with you forever."

He writes in Without Feathers, "What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet."

The book has a generous amount of illustrations, mostly stills from his movies.

Not everyone likes Woody Allen or approves of his moral character, but for those who can separate the work from the man, this book offers a great deal of pleasure.