Getting Even is Woody Allen

Woody Allen

Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...

's first collection of humor short stories and plays. Most pieces were first published in The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

between 1966 and 1971.

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

Hardboiled

Hardboiled crime fiction is a literary style, most commonly associated with detective stories, distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex. The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined...

 detective stories. The protagonist, Kaiser Lupowitz, is a parody of the characters which were typically played by Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....

 on film: Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...

's Sam Spade

Sam Spade

Sam Spade is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon and the various films and adaptations based on it, as well as in three lesser known short stories by Hammett....

 in The Maltese Falcon, Mickey Spillane

Mickey Spillane

Frank Morrison Spillane , better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American author of crime novels, many featuring his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally...

's Mike Hammer

Mike Hammer

Michael "Mike" Hammer is a fictional detective created by the American author Mickey Spillane in the 1947 book I, the Jury .-Description:...

 and Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

's Philip Marlowe

Philip Marlowe

Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...

. Kaiser smokes Lucky Strike

Lucky Strike

Lucky Strike is a brand of cigarette owned by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and British American Tobacco groups. Often referred to as "Luckies", Lucky Strike was the top selling cigarette in the United States during the 1930s.- History :...

 like Sam Spade, and is also used by Allen in another hard boiled parody, The Whore of Mensa (1974), collected in Without Feathers

Without Feathers

Woody Allen's Without Feathers is one of his best-known literary pieces. The book spent 4 months on the New York Times Bestseller List...

(1975).

The philosophical arguments of My Philosophy will be later used in the films Bananas

Bananas (film)

Bananas is a 1971 comedy film written by Mickey Rose and Woody Allen, directed by Allen, and starring himself and Louise Lasser. Parts of the plot were based on the book Don Quixote, U.S.A. by Richard P. Powell. It was filmed on location in New York City, Lima , and various locations in Puerto...

and Love and Death

Love and Death

Love and Death is a 1975 comedy film by Woody Allen. Starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, Love and Death is a satirical take on Russian epic novels. Coming in between Sleeper and Annie Hall, Love and Death is in many respects an artistic transition between the two...

.

The play Death Knocks is a direct parody of Bergman's 1957 The Seventh Seal

The Seventh Seal

The Seventh Seal is a 1957 Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Set during the Black Death, it tells of the journey of a medieval knight and a game of chess he plays with the personification of Death , who has come to take his life. Bergman developed the film from his own play...

.