"Vengeance is mine!" declares Woody Allen.

How many times has one watched a comedian try to make the transition from verbal humor to the printed page and fail miserably? I've seen attempts by comedians ranging from Robin Williams to Cedric The Entertainer to reproduce their stage patter in book form. Unfortunately, books lack sound systems and more often than not: the routines fail when you can't hear the performer (Dennis Miller is one funnyman whose comic rants work as well on the page as they do on the stage).

That said; Woody Allen is one comic who can deliver the humor as well on paper as he can in his routines and movies. That may have something to do with the fact that Allen is essentially a literate cynic at heart and he's also a damn good writer. Getting Even (one of three collections of comic essays and stories that he originally published in The New Yorker and a few select other magazines) is proof of this.

Getting Even is a very short book (112 pages) and consists of 17 pieces altogether. The pieces are largely short satirical/burlesque ones complete with non-sequitors and wordplay (ala SJ Perelman). Some examples:

"A Look At Organized Crime" which is a hilarious spoof of many serious articles about the Mafia. Allen talks about their illicit activities which include "gambling, narcotics, prostitution, hijacking, loan sharking and the transportation of a large whitefish across state lines for immoral purposes...The tentacles of this corrupt empire even reach into the government. Only a few months ago, two gang lords under indictment spent the night at the White House and the president slept on the sofa".

"The Schmeed Memoirs" (which is one of those stories that I find myself wishing I'd thought of) is a hilarious short memoir by Hitler's personal barber. Schmeed explains how the Germans tried to win the war by sending Rudolph Hesse to give Churchill the scalp treatment.

"Spring Bulletin" is a hilarious spoof of the catalogs of spring courses that colleges frequently send out in the mail. At this college one of the courses offered is as follows: "History Of European Civilization...It has been suspected that at one point Europe and America were connected by one strip of land which either sank or became East Rutherford New Jersey". In Introduction To Psychology "Special consideration is given to a study of consciousness as opposed to unconsciousness, with many helpful hints on how to remain conscious".

In addition we are also introduced to the Earl Of Sandwich, the inventor of that famous lunch food in "Yes, But can the steam engine do this?" ("At school he comes in contact with cold cuts for the first time and displays an unusual interest in thinly sliced strips of roast beef and ham. By graduation this has become an obsession.) and two men who play chess via correspondence in "The Gossage-Vardebedian papers". "Death Knocks" is a hilarious playlet, which focuses on dialogue between the black suited man and his next victim.

Pretty much all of the pieces in Getting Even are funny to some degree or another. The only one that didn’t quite work was "Count Dracula" which was basically saddled with a one-joke premise and never quite got out of the ditch, although the ending of it is hysterical.

Getting Even is a hilarious; quick read that would appeal to those of us who like their humor smart yet zany.