{"id":40499,"date":"2025-09-24T10:56:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T10:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/40499\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T10:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T10:56:09","slug":"would-woody-allens-wince-inducing-first-novel-be-better-as-a-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/40499\/","title":{"rendered":"Would Woody Allen\u2019s \u2018wince-inducing\u2019 first novel be better as a film?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read \u201cWhat\u2019s with Baum?\u201d without knowing who wrote it and you might think it\u2019s a \u201cstraightforwardly unremarkable\u201d novel charting the \u201cmidlife crises of a neurotic, vaguely lecherous writer\u201d, said Louis Chilton in The Independent<\/a>. \u201cBut, of course, we do know the author of \u2018Baum\u2019. And that author is 89-year-old filmmaker Woody Allen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allen\u2019s novel \u2013 his first \u2013 comes five years after the release of his memoir, \u201cApropos of Nothing\u201d, and arrives at a time when his film career appears to have \u201ctailed off<\/a>\u201d following allegations (which he vehemently denies) that he sexually abused his daughter in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

\u2018Dancing around taboos\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s with Baum?\u201d is \u201calmost exactly what you\u2019d expect from Woody Allen the novelist\u201d, said Darragh McManus in the Irish Independent<\/a>. The action follows Asher Baum, a neurotic Jewish journalist (and \u201cfrustrated\u201d author) who loves beautiful women, good conversation and jazz. His marriage to his third wife, Connie, is \u201chitting the rocks\u201d; he hates living out in the countryside in their Connecticut mansion and can\u2019t stand Connie\u2019s son Thane, an \u201cinsufferably handsome and smug youngster on the fast track to literary stardom\u201d.<\/p>\n

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In what is presumably an oblique reference to Allen\u2019s own \u201ccancellation\u201d following allegations of sexual abuse, there\u2019s a \u201cbrewing #MeToo-style scandal<\/a>\u201d as Baum is accused of \u201cacting inappropriately\u201d with a female journalist.<\/p>\n

Allen spends much of the novel \u201cdancing around taboos\u201d as he details Baum\u2019s \u201cinfatuation\u201d with younger women and Connie\u2019s oddly close relationship with her son, said Chilton in The Independent. Female characters are repeatedly referred to as \u201ccreatures\u201d, and Baum\u2019s wife is described as a \u201ccomplex thoroughbred\u201d. It\u2019s all rather \u201cwince-inducing, even if it weren\u2019t coming from Allen\u2019s pen\u201d. The book is stuffed with cultural references that \u201cadd little to the story\u201d, instead reaffirming the filmmaker as a \u201cman out of time\u201d. And these issues aren\u2019t helped by the \u201cinelegant\u201d prose that veers into \u201cabjectly clunky\u201d territory at times.<\/p>\n

\u2018Impish\u2019 prose <\/p>\n

I thought Allen\u2019s familiar new book was \u201cfine\u201d, said Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times<\/a>. It afforded me \u201ca few hollow chuckles\u201d after a particularly gruelling week. \u201cEven kneecapped by the entertainment industry, he rises to knock out an impish piece of autumn prose as others might a game of pickleball.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wish he\u2019d addressed the cancel culture<\/a> subplot more directly, said Tanya Gold in The Telegraph<\/a>. But there\u2019s some \u201clovely comedy\u201d peppered throughout the book and Baum has \u201call the hallmarks\u201d of an archetypal Allen protagonist from a film \u201cI would love to watch\u201d.<\/p>\n

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While a very clever filmmaker might be able to \u201cget round the plot\u2019s implausibility, the thinness of the characters and occasional discordant political correctness with good acting and cinematic technique\u201d, in a novel these things are important, said Melanie McDonagh in London\u2019s The Standard<\/a>. \u201c\u2018What\u2019s with Baum?\u2019 might work better as a film.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Read \u201cWhat\u2019s with Baum?\u201d without knowing who wrote it and you might think it\u2019s a \u201cstraightforwardly unremarkable\u201d novel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[288,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-40499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}