Woody Allen : New Yorker /

If McCann's entire book stayed at the level of the first chapter and the last, this would be the most penetrating, far-reaching of all books about Woody Allen. (The nine-page bibliography is a wonder, lurching off to such authors as Barthes, Baudelaire, Bellow, Benchley, Catullus, Cummings, Derrida, Emerson, Freud, Gombrich, Hobbes, Leavis, McLuhan, Orwell, Perelman, Plato, Rousseau, Stendhal, Thoreau, DeToqueville, Wittgenstein.) Chapter 1 analyzes Allen as New Yorker--less biography than investigation of the image of Allen emerging from his writings and movies. McCann, of Cambridge, England, has a keen perspective on what it means to be a New Yorker. Chapter 6 is a compact summary of Allen's philosophy of love, death, sex, solitude, authority, despair, humor, women, and trust. Between these two essays, intensity lags. Topics turn casual--especially about Allen's Jewishness and "The Schlemiel"; plot summaries reach the level of padding; technical or cinematic virtuosity is neglected; distinctions between verbal and visual humor are elementary. Along the way, McCann does usefully compare Allen to Bob Hope, the Marx Brothers, Stan Laurel, Keaton, Chaplin, Mel Brooks, etc. And he does explore, amusingly, Allen's worrying or "bluebird of anxiety." The first and last chapters (one third of the book) contribute solidly to our knowledge of "America's most significant comic movie-maker since the silent era, and, arguably, one of the most important figures in the movie world as a whole." -P. H. Stacy, University of Hartford