monday. October 27, 1975
page 8
daily Ocui (aSkail
orts & c
Thought-provoking lunacy
in Allen's unruffled book
Review By Bill Roberts
Without Feathers, by Woody Allen,
Random House, New York $7.95
"Money is better than poverty, if only
for financial reasons. . . Whosoever loveth
wisdom is righteous but he that keepeth
company with fowl is weird. . .Of all the
wonders of nature, a tree in summer is
perhaps the most remarkable, with the
possible exception of a moose singing
'Embraceable You in spats.
Pithy, thought-provoking statements
like these are typical of Woody Allen, and
his new book, Without Feathers, is full of
them. But Allen's talents go beyond the
aphorism. What makes this book so lively
are the many forms of his unique lunacy.
In the short story "The Whore of
Mensa, we follow private detective Kaiser
Lupowitz as he uncovers a ring of call
girls who are willing to discuss intellectual
subjects with any John-for a price.
Allen satirizes literary criticism in three
pieces dealing with unrecognized
"geniuses" and the true identities of
Elizabethan writers. In "If the
Impressionists Had Been Dentists," we read
CDNEIVBASC
By Robert Thurber
Six new movies grace the cinema scene
this week, which, up until now, has been
bleak to say the least. Monty Python and
the Holy Grail finally gets its Lincoln
showing at the Stuart Theatre.
Best bets for the connoisseur of the sil
ver screen include Peeper, a spoof of 1940s
detective movies, and Butley, a classic with
Alan Bates.
CooperLincoln (54th and O) - Gone with
the Wind, the classic tale of struggle in the
Civil War.
Cinema Theatre (13 th and P) -1 - Liszto
mania, (R) a Ken Russell film starring
Roger "Tommy" Daltrey, Ringo Starr and
Rick Wakeman. A brief sketch of Franz
Liszt's life. (R) II- The Man Eaters with
Burt Reynolds.
Douglas Theatres (13th and P) -1 -Peeper,
with Michael Cain and Natalie Wood. Best
performance of the movie is turned in by
Liam Dunn, playing a bungling confidence
man who always turns up in the wrong
place. (PC) II- Walt Disney's wonderful
cartoon Fantasia. (G) 111- American Graf
fiti Richard Dreyfuss (of Jaws fame") heads
the private letters of Vincent Van Gogh,
DJD.S.
Two plays, Death and God compose
more than half the book. We all knew
Woody Allen could write dramatically;
each of the six movies he's written was a
success. Considering that his last film was
called Love and Death, it's no surprise he
has again tackled the big subjects.
But these two plays, unlike the movies,
are so tightly constructed! Even in God,
which features an on-stage phone call to
Woody Allen and a couple of appearances
by Tennessee William's character Blanche
DuBois, there are neither wasted lines nor
digressions detracting from the play's
main point.
Woody Allen's main point is that there
is no hope, we might as well give it up,
but we ought to slide down the tube
laughing. He got the book's title from
Emily Dickinson's remark that "Hope is
the thing with feathers." The reply of the
Jewish kid from New York to the spinster
poet from Massachusetts: "The thing with
feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I
must take him to a specialist in Zurich.
pES
an excellent cast through an early 60s
revival.
Hollywood and Vine Theaters (12th and
Q) I- Return of the Pink Panther with
comic genius Peter Sellers. (PG) 11 - Under
14. (X)
Plaza Theaters (12th and P) I - The Ameri
can Film Theatre's Butley with Alan Bates.
Director Harold Pinter expertly stages this
play about marriage relationships. (PG) II
Apple Dumpling Gang. Another Walt
Disney flick for 14 and under. (G) III
Rooster Cogbum (. . .and the Lady). From
those people who brought us True Grit,
another western saga of rough men (John
Wayne) and even rougher women
(Katharine Hepburn). (PG) IV- Diana Ross
in Mahogany. A story about a star on the
rise.
Stuart TheatK (13th and P Monty Py
thon and the Holy Grail Medieval farce
from six of the craziest Englishmen alive.
"Say the right word and the duck flies
down."
State Theater (14th and 0) James Coburn
and Charles Bronson team up for Hard
Times. (PG)
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"Bernstein on rasfd,
That's been done correctly
By Theodore M. Bernstein
Something that's been done before.
Here we go again settling a bet. Terrie
Elain Leventhal of Philadelphia, saying that
she has a bet with her boss, asks, "Is it
grammatically correct to contract the
words that has by using an apostrophe?
The phrase in question in our office is,
'The thing that's impressed me most. . . "
It's correct, all right, as you can discover
by looking into any dictionary toward the
start of the letter s. Now the question is,
which is the one that's won the bet?
Reluctant adverbs. A sentence read,
"The appeal was dismissed on the ground
that it was untimely filed. "Robert
Townsend of Elkins Park, Pa., asks whether
that word shouldn't be untimelyly or
untimelily, recalling a quotation that read,
"We embraced friendlily.
Although untimely doesn't sound like
an adverb, it is one. Still, some words
ending in y seem to fight off being turned
into adverbs.
Although happy is happy to help out in
a sentence such as "He sang happily,"
the word ugly screams and squawks when
it has to play an adverbial role, as in, "He
behaved ugily," despite the fact that it has
that adverbial form.
Several other words-friendly, masterly,
funny, kindly-are reluctant to appear in
clumsy adverbial garb and so they are
rarely used in that form.
When such words rebel, the thing to do
is to give in and reword the sentence. That
opening sentence above would have been
more graceful if it had read, 'The appeal
was dismissed on the ground that its
filing was untimely."
Word oddities. A scenario was originally
used -and still is used -to refer to an
outline of a film, play, opera or the like.
But within the last decade or so it has
been taken up by politicians and journalists
to designate a proposed course of action,
often one that has been proposed before.
Most recently it was employed during
New York City's financial troubles and
employed so much that it has become a
cliche.
(c) 1973 Thaodort M. Barnrtoin.
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