Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Woody Allen picks five influential books

The Five Books feature on TheBrowser.Com offers some famous folk commenting on five books that are important to them, and then allows them to explain why. Woody Allen chooses two novels, a collection of stories, a book about jazz and a biography. The story collection, by S.J. Perelman, is no longer in print, but there are other collections of the humorist. Allen explains the choice to interviewer Eve Gerber:

"Those of us who grew up with Perelman found it impossible to avoid his influence. In music, if you grow up listening to Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk or Louis Armstrong and you listen to their recordings over and over, then you start to play their kind of riffs and rhythms naturally. I’m sure an actor who adores Marlon Brando – worships him and sees every movie he’s made – starts to play a scene and a little bit of Brando creeps into it. It’s the same with Perelman: you read him over and over again – as I did and many of my contemporaries did when we were growing up – and then when you write, it’s hard to escape his influence. He had such a strong, inventive style."

Read the whole article: Woody Allen on Inspiration.

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