Side Effects is an anthology of 17 comical short stories written by 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...

 between 1975 and 1980, all but one of which were previously published in, variously, The New Republic

The New Republic

The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

, The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, 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...

, and The Kenyon Review

The Kenyon Review

The Kenyon Review is a Literary magazine based in Gambier, Ohio, USA, home of Kenyon College. The Review was founded in 1939 by John Crowe Ransom, critic and professor of English at Kenyon College, who served as its editor until 1959...

. It includes Allen's 1978 O. Henry Award

O. Henry Award

The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....

 winning story, The Kugelmass Episode.

Contents

1. Remembering Needleman
2. The Condemned
3. By Destiny Denied
4. The UFO Menace
5. My Apology
6. The Kugelmass Episode
7. My Speech to the Graduates
8. The Diet
9. The Lunatic's Tale
10. Reminiscences: Places and People
11. Nefarious Times We Live In
12. A Giant Step for Mankind
13. The Shallowest Man
14. The Query
15. Fabrizio's: Criticism and Response
16. Retribution
17. Confessions of a Burglar

Some of the tales in detail

The first story, Remembering Needleman, is a one-liner and non-sequitur filled obituary, four weeks after the fact, of Professor Sandor Needleman.

The third work, By Destiny Denied, presents the reader with notes for a fictional "eight-hundred-page novel - the big book they're all waiting for."

The fifth story, My Apology, is Allen's tale of a recurring fantasy/dream of his where he imagines himself in the sandals of Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

 during the philosopher's final days in prison. The dialogue proceeds in a manner reminiscent of Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett

Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels...

, and the ending contains two unexpected twists.

The sixth story, The Kugelmass Episode, is about a CCNY professor named Sidney Kugelmass who, thanks to the powers of an obscure magician, is projected into Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life...

to carry on an affair beyond the scrutiny of his overbearing wife.

The seventh story, My Speech to the Graduates, is a parody of platitude

Platitude

A platitude is a trite, meaningless, biased, or prosaic statement, often presented as if it were significant and original. The word derives from plat, the French word for "flat." Whether any given statement is considered to have meaning is highly subjective, so platitude is often—but not...

-laden commencement speech

Commencement speech

A commencement speech or commencement address is a speech given to graduating students, generally at a university, although the term is also used for secondary education institutions. The "commencement" is a ceremony in which degrees or diplomas are conferred upon graduating students...

es.

The eleventh tale, Nefarious Times We Live In, is the most off-the-wall of them all, and concerns the events that lead to its protagonist, Willard Pogrebin, to fire a Luger

Luger pistol

The Pistole Parabellum 1908 or Parabellum-Pistole , popularly known as the Luger, is a toggle-locked recoil-operated semi-automatic pistol. The design was patented by Georg J...

 at President Gerald Ford. They involve at least five kinds of drugs and three cults.

Running Jokes

Throughout the book, frequent references are made to composer Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

. In addition, numerous gags are made with an implication that people bear an innate knowledge of the Dutch language

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

. Love interests of characters are compared to a grotesque, golem

Golem

In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter. The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material in Psalms and medieval writing....

-like Aunt Rifka in two separate stories.