Praise for Mere Anarchy, Woody Allen's previous collection of his short humor pieces: "The stories in Mere Anarchy deliver the same joys and foibles that have been with its author from the start."--Janet Maslin, The New York Times "Uproarious . In each story the ornate and the vulgate slam together and make it rain polysyllabic absurdity." --Wall Street Journal "Like the Carnegie's one-pound sandwiches, Allen's literary slapstick is . comedy on wry." --USA Today "Brilliant neurotica . Unfailingly entertaining . [An] obsessive and seriously funny book.

" --Los Angeles Times Book Review "Will put a rictus on your kisser. The animating comedy is part S. J. Perelman and part borscht belt: Allen piles the ludicrous on top of the ridiculous and tops it with an acidic lemon squeeze, and then just keeps the jokes coming."-- Publishers Weekly "The topsy-turvy literary allusions pour from Allen's pen like bullets from a Gatling gun (an appropriately obscure simile), exposing the intellectual pretensions of a ragtag assortment of Allenesque everymen--endearingly unkempt nebbishes who, despite knowing their Dostoevsky, can't quite deal with the absurdities of daily life."-- Booklist.