Zero Gravity

Woody Allen is a writer, director, and actor. He has been a stand-up comedian and a published author. He lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with his wife of twenty-four years, Soon-Yi, and their two daughters, Manzie and Bechet. He is an avid jazz enthusiast and devoted sports fan. In his own words, he regrets that he has never made a great film, though he says he is still trying.

Daphne Merkin is a novelist and critic who has made a name for herself with her often unnerving candor and forthright attitude toward issues of family, religion, money, and sex as well as her ability to straddle the high/low cultural divide. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, Elle, and Tablet. She has written frequently for other publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, New York Review of Books, Wall Street Journal, Bookforum, Travel & Leisure, and Departures. Merkin has also published five books, which include two novels, a memoir of depression, and two collections of essays. She is a longtime fan of Woody Allen.

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