{"id":129531,"date":"2025-10-18T05:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T05:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/129531\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T05:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T05:13:07","slug":"woody-allens-first-novel-whats-with-baum-reads-like-an-unfinished-script-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/129531\/","title":{"rendered":"Woody Allen\u2019s first novel What\u2019s With Baum? reads like an unfinished script \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s With Baum?<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Author:<\/strong> Woody Allen <\/p>\n

ISBN-13:<\/strong> 978-1800756298 <\/p>\n

Publisher:<\/strong> Swift <\/p>\n

Guideline Price:<\/strong> \u00a318.99<\/p>\n

If an average reader was handed the uncredited manuscript of Woody Allen<\/a>\u2019s first novel, how long would it take that person to identify the author? Well, by page eight, like the title character\u2019s angsty suitor in Annie Hall<\/a>, Asher Baum, a blocked middle-aged novelist, is already declaring a passion for the Evil Queen in Disney\u2019s Snow White. <\/p>\n

Apparently unconcerned about replaying the old tunes, Allen, 40 pages later, embarks upon an apparent rewrite of the famous opening monologue from Manhattan<\/a>. \u201cHe lived in a Manhattan where men came home from work and changed into tuxedos,\u201d he writes. Lest we fail to make the connection with the 1979 film \u2013 which begins to the strains of George Gershwin\u2019s Rhapsody in Blue \u2013 the author, in the same paragraph, has his hero listening to \u201cCole Porter, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Do I really care?\u2019 Woody Allen comes out fightingOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It is impossible not to think of What\u2019s With Baum? as a sketch for the movie Allen, whose staggeringly prolific cinematic run came to a halt with the likable Coup de Chance in 2023, is now no longer able to finance. The book is, literally and figuratively, thin stuff. Allen\u2019s flat prose, dotted with cliches, serves merely as a mechanism to take us from one lengthy dialogue sequence to the next. Visual descriptions are sparse. Characterisation is shallow.<\/p>\n

Yet one longs to see the film it might have become. Mia Farrow, the author\u2019s now bitterly estranged partner, would once have slipped easily into the role of Baum\u2019s disappointed wife. If shot today, Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet<\/a>, star of Allen\u2019s A Rainy Day in New York<\/a>, would be perfect for her smug, talentless son. Baum\u2019s jealousy at his stepchild\u2019s undeserved success with a shallow novel is just the sort of unstable fuel that has powered the best (and bitterest) of Allen\u2019s later films.<\/p>\n

What to make of the subplot involving accusations against Baum of sexual assault? It is there. It gives one character a chance to rage against the supposed unfairness of the post-#MeToo rearrangements. \u201cIn today\u2019s culture an accusal is as good as a conviction,\u201d Baum\u2019s agent sympathises. <\/p>\n

That story then retreats embarrassedly into the murky clutter of the novel\u2019s penumbra. Readers seeking meaningful engagement with the allegations Dylan Farrow, the author\u2019s adopted daughter, made against Allen \u2013 which he has denied \u2013 will leave this compromised, though diverting, work in a state of queasy disappointment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What\u2019s With Baum? Author: Woody Allen ISBN-13: 978-1800756298 Publisher: Swift Guideline Price: \u00a318.99 If an average reader was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[1879,359,18,117,19,17,968,13805,17377],"class_list":{"0":"post-129531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-book-reviews","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-timothee-chalamet","16":"tag-woody-allen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}