Side Effects (Allen book)

Contents

1. Remembering Needleman
2. The Condemned
3. By Destiny Denied
4. The UFO Menace
5. My Apology
6. The Kugelmass Episode
7. My Speech to the Graduates
8. The Diet
9. The Lunatic's Tale
10. Reminiscences: Places and People
11. Nefarious Times We Live In
12. A Giant Step for Mankind
13. The Shallowest Man
14. The Query
15. Fabrizio's: Criticism and Response
16. Retribution
17. Confessions of a Burglar

    Some of the tales in detail

• The first story, "Remembering Needleman", is a one-liner and non-sequitur filled obituary for Professor Sandor Needleman.
• The third work, "By Destiny Denied", presents the reader with notes for a fictional "eight-hundred-page novel - the big book they're all waiting for."
• The fifth story, "My Apology", is Allen's tale of a recurring fantasy/dream of his where he imagines himself in the sandals of Socrates during the philosopher's final days in prison.
• The sixth story, "The Kugelmass Episode", is about a CCNY professor named Sidney Kugelmass who, thanks to the powers of an obscure magician, is projected into Madame Bovary to carry on an affair beyond the scrutiny of his overbearing wife.
• The seventh story, "My Speech to the Graduates", is a parody of platitude-laden commencement speeches.
• The eleventh tale, "Nefarious Times We Live In", is the most off-the-wall of them all, and concerns the events that lead to its protagonist, Willard Pogrebin, to fire a Luger at President Gerald Ford. They involve at least five kinds of drugs and three cults.

  Running jokes