Still something to smile about ... Woody Allen accepting an honorary degree in Barcelona last month. Photograph: Manu Fernandez/AP
To be reminded of how hysterical Woody Allen can be - and lord knows after some of his recent movies we need reminding - turn to his prose. While he's most famous for his films, he's probably funniest in his writing, tiny gems of first class absurdity - and he has a new collection out this week.
It's the combination of elegant erudition and utter silliness that best defines Allen's prose, the sort of humour that was typical of his earlier films - Bananas, Love & Death, Sleeper - but has dropped away in favour of the nebbishy, over-neurotic nervous tics of later films. But it has always been strongly present in his writing.
Who else would write, "The Russian revolution simmered for years and suddenly erupted when the serfs finally realised that the Czar and the Tsar were the same person"? Or could conceive of an intellectual brothel where the prostitutes discuss Paradise Lost and Platonism?
His first three volumes of essays - now reissued as The Insanity Defence - are where his humour, unrestrained by physical possibilities or even logic, runs free, looping through genre and style but always unmistakeably Allenish. One piece is a mini-play recreating Socrates' last days, with Allen himself in the starring role ("I guess I should never have suggested having a philosopher king." "Especially when you kept pointing to yourself and clearing your throat.") Another describes what happens when Count Dracula mistakes an eclipse for evening, another the difficulties of interpreting mime artists.
These scenarios are completely bizarre and won't appeal to everyone. You may well consider them self-indulgent pseudo-intellectual whimsies, but that is to underestimate them. They are certainly not pseudo-intellectual - in fact, they deal with major philosophical issues, just in a comic form. In particular, Allen is concerned with existentialist dilemmas: who are we? Why are we here? Is there an afterlife, and if so, can you get a good burger there?
As any close Allen-watcher knows, he regularly says that he makes films for his own amusement, to stave off thoughts of death and decay while making jokes about them. The same can be said for his prose: he deals with death by regularly writing about it, mixing his fears and his funnies.
Perhaps the best thing about Allen's prose is that it works on both of these levels: you can be cackling at the absurdity of Death playing gin rummy with an imminent victim while staring into the void of human existence. But if that sounds too dark, just keep laughing - that's what Allen is best at.
