Without Feathers

Woody Allen's Without Feathers (1975, ISBN 0-394-49743-0) is one of his best-known literary pieces. The book spent 4 months on the New York Times Bestseller List. The book is a collection of short stories and also features two one act plays, Death and God.

Title meaning

The title "Without Feathers" is a reference to Emily Dickinson's poem "'Hope' Is the Thing with Feathers", reflecting Woody Allen's neurotic sense of hopelessness. The Dickinson poem is mentioned in one of the stories in the collection.^[1]

Contents

1. Selections from The Allen Notebooks
2. Examining Psychic Phenomena
3. A Guide to Some of the Lesser Ballets
4. The Scrolls
5. Lovborg's Women Considered
6. The Whore of Mensa^[2]
7. Death (A Play)
8. The Early Essays
9. A Brief Yet Helpful Guide to Civil Disobedience
10. Match Wits With Inspector Ford
11. The Irish Genius
12. God (A Play)
13. Fabulous Tales and Mythical Beasts
14. But Soft. Real Soft.
15. If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists
16. No Kaddish for Weinstein
17. Fine Times: An Oral Memoir
18. Slang Origins

Notes and references