If Woody Allen never makes another film (whatever the recent rumors about a Barcelona project) Coup de Chance hits a passable, albeit minor final note that, in its own way, exceeds precedent. Nearing 90 and still lacking major commercial demand stateside, he’s worked well past any expected retirement date. More notable, then, is a debut novel being published later this year: What’s with Baum? arrives on September 23 from Simon & Schuster’s Post Hill Press, who describe Allen’s novel (bearing a slim 192 pages and recognizable typeface) as the “portrait of an intellectual crippled by neurotic concerns about the futility and emptiness of life [and] amusing glimpse at the New York publishing establishment.”
While nowhere near Allen’s first published work––a quick count reveals five anthologies spanning 1971 to 2022, while 2020 brought the not-quite-serene release of his memoir Apropos of Nothing––it’s certainly a major shift so late in life and career. Some motifs abound, still: those familiar with accusations might raise an eyebrow at the main character, Asher Baum, being married to a woman who makes him “uneasy with her close relationship with her son, a more successful author than he, and suspicious of her closeness with their neighbor in Connecticut.” Between this and the notice of “irrationality” causing him to kiss a journalist who’ll go public with the news, let’s imagine a rich text is en route.
Find the synopsis and cover below, and order here:
Asher Baum is quietly losing his mind. Can you blame him? A middle-aged Jewish journalist turned novelist and playwright, consumed with anxiety about everything under the sun, his turgid philosophical books receive tepid reviews and his prestigious New York publisher has dropped him. His third marriage is on the rocks and he suspects his handsome and successful younger brother may have seduced his Harvard-educated wife. He is uneasy with her close relationship with her son, a more successful author than he, and suspicious of her closeness with their neighbor in Connecticut. And in a moment of irrationality, he has impulsively tried to kiss a pretty young journalist during an interview that she is about to go public with.
Is it any wonder Baum has started talking to himself? Strangers shake their heads and walk around him on the street. Meanwhile he learns a startling secret that could cause havoc should he expose it. Should he keep it to himself or reveal it and blow up his marriage?
What’s with Baum? is Woody Allen’s first novel and it is everything you would expect of him—and more. A portrait of an intellectual crippled by neurotic concerns about the futility and emptiness of life; an amusing glimpse at the New York publishing establishment; above all, a highly entertaining, tightly plotted, beautifully wrought masterwork from one of America’s greatest and most versatile cinematic and literary talents. This comic novel will set the literary world on its ear. It is not to be missed.
