What's with Baum?

by Woody Allen

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, Baum’s 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 into the New York publishing establishment; above all, a highly entertaining, tightly plotted, beautifully wrought piece of fiction 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.

Genres: Fiction, Humor

192 pages, Hardcover

First published September 23, 2025

About the author

Noted American actor, screenwriter, and filmmaker Woody Allen, originally Allen Stewart Konigsberg explored the neuroses of the urban middle class in comedies of manners, such as Annie Hall (1977) and Deconstructing Harry (1997).

This director, jazz musician, and playwright thrice won Academy Award. His large body of work mixes satire, wit and humor in the most respected and prolific cerebral style in the modern era. Allen directs also in the majority of his movies. For inspiration, Allen draws heavily on literature, philosophy, psychology, Judaism, European cinema, and city of New York, where he lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_A...

Reviews

[Tom Mooney · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

This would be so much easier to review if it was crap.

Whenever a celebrity writes a novel - especially one with such a scandalous reputation as Woody Allen - there are questions to be answered...

First, would this have been published if it wasn't authored by Allen? I think the answer is yes, it's a very solid first novel, with good characters and tight writing. There are some funny lines and plenty of insightful and relatable bits.

Second, can you escape into the book enough that you forget it's Woody Allen. This is much more difficult. It is, in many ways, classic Allen, full of typical one-liners and nods to camera. But there are some lines, particularly when the Baum discusses young women when your brain is screaming at you, 'Woody Allen wrote that line! Fucking gross!'

Overall it's a good novel and worth the read. But it is kind of a shame it was written by him.

[Edu Moyano F · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leer ¿Qué pasa con Baum?, primera novela de Woody Allen, publicada a sus 89 años, es como reunirte con un viejo amigo, o un amigo viejo, que te cuenta las mismas historias una y otra vez, pero no hay problema porque a ti te encanta escucharlas. 

Miserias morales, anhelos de grandeza, relaciones marchitas, ilusiones adolescentes y neuras, muchas neuras. La carta por la que siempre vuelves a esta cafetería. Si no te reconforta el aroma, ni te acerques. El café viene bien cargado.

Una obra breve y pequeña, acerca de un cretino atormentado por no ser grande y contundente. No ha dudado Allen en utilizar la voz en off cuando lo ha necesitado en sus películas, pero en esta novela el recurso del monólogo interior se torna en un descacharrante diálogo desdoblado, en el que los neuróticos podemos reconocernos fácilmente tras las risas.

Una anécdota que tu viejo amigo viejo todavía no te había relatado y, aunque no es de las más memorables (quizá porque "no va de nada", quizá porque le falta esa esperanza tan característica suya), escuchas/lees con fruición porque sabes que le quedan pocas por contar.

[Peter Schutz]

Admirably structured as steady gush of narrative, freely and naturally transitioning between past, present, exposition, action. The main conceit, of the protagonist talking to himself, is also natural and admirably rendered.

Plot can be clumsy at times. No worse than his films, honestly. It’s dealing with more great ideas than its page length can justify, so if it naturally fumbles a few of them, we can at least rightly call them noble fumbles. But the characterization is rich and given ample room, and the writing is consistently enjoyable. A note on the writing: on a few occasions I found his phrasing clumsy, or unnatural, but on a quick second pass through I universally discovered he was merely writing as one talks. Again—admirable!

Plenty of quotables, but here are a few at random that tickled me:

“The sexual signal goes round and round endlessly like radar on a ship.”

“He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a huge wad of fresh Kleenex. He raged against a universe where they promised you when you took a Kleenex a fresh one would pop up but whenever the box became half full the Kleenex stopped popping up and he had to grasp them manually and inevitably took fat stacks of them because it was too hard to just take one. This was a betrayal and he raged against it as vehemently as the fate of mankind.”

“What the crafty schemers never realize is that you may be able to fool the brilliant people, the educated, but the world is full of nerds and roach men and them, you won't fool.”

“Baum loved art and thought of all the young artists struggling to emerge in a world that loved art, was moved by art, needed art, and paradoxically gave artists such a hard time.”

“When the poet Robert Burns wrote ‘the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft a-gley’ he didn’t know how goddamned a-gley they could actually gang.”

[Özgün · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t want it to end. I feel like I just walked out of a movie theater. Thanks for existing Woody Allen.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many reviewers have pointed out that there’s not much new here — meaning, this Woody Allen novel feels much like a Woody Allen film. Others have emphasized that they refused to pay money for this book, that they rented it from their local library, found a used copy lying in a gutter, etc. — their moral codes not allowing them to give money to this reprobate.

Regarding the second point, okay, fine, people gotta do what they gotta do. I respect that, even though I did pay money for the book. There’s probably a good argument opposing my purchase and probably a good argument defending it, but I don’t feel like getting into all that.

About the first point, yes, the novel definitely feels like certain Woody Allen films, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve been in the mood for a Woody Allen film, and this book does the things that many of his films do — giving us a quirky, likeable-enough protagonist, some genuinely funny quips, and a plot that keeps chugging along.

What’s with Baum? rises to the level of Manhattan Murder Mystery and Bullets Over Broadway. In other words, it’s good, it’s fun, a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Of course, it’s no The Purple Rose of Cairo or Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The protagonist is familiar and mostly amusing, although at times I found myself wanting to shake him. I actually wanted to shake Woody Allen, hoping such violence might jolt loose a new thought. He’s already given us this character, many times over — the hypochondriac shlimazel, so obsessed with death and meaninglessness that he can’t function, wandering around worrying that every new liver spot might be skin cancer. Camus imagined Sisyphus smiling. Allen can only imagine his characters fretting.

And yet I felt gripped by this novel, continuing to read even though I had real-life demands pressing on me. My heart literally quickened — with dread and a feeling I can only describe as ick — when Baum fell in love with a much younger woman. I found myself hoping he would resist his impulses. Short of that, I hoped that Allen would resist giving the younger woman reciprocal impulses. As the final chapter began, I felt even more compelled to keep reading, again hoping that Baum would do the right thing — this time not with his love interest but with his nemesis-stepson.

Spoilers coming...

This became the novel’s emotional pull for me, as I found myself cheering that Baum would extricate himself, not from some external danger, but from his own smallness. Sadly, he cannot overcome his jealousy and pettiness and ends up exposing his stepson, providing a moral justification that, well, falls far short of his own professed Kantian standards.

Of course, if the universe is devoid of meaning and value, as Baum insists, then his pettiness is no more blameworthy than nobility would have been admirable. Similarly, if the universe contains no higher order, then the novel’s loose ends — we never learn, for instance, what comes of Cindy Tanaka’s allegations — cannot be deemed narrative failings but rather reflections of a meaningless world.

This seems to be Allen’s point. If there’s no ultimate point to life, then even our most noble sacrifices and most beautifully told sagas are mere “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Life is a riddle that cannot be solved. No, life is absolute gibberish, incapable of offering anything as meaningful as a riddle.

[nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

“𝘐𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘐 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧? 𝘉𝘢𝘶𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵. 𝘐𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘦𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘣𝘣𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘧 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦.”

B-grade Woody Allen reworking Blue Jasmine in self-indulgence of the voice with his mediocre setups from the early 2000’s, I’m thinking Anything Else and Whatever Works.

About a man who talks to himself, and, honestly, only 1 Woody Allen is manageable for his own films, but when you have two? I think this could’ve been done a lot better where Baum’s other self materializes, and would make for an interesting story around identity, the self, and duality of man à la Kurosawa’s Doppelganger.

But here, it seems his concern is trying to poke fun or offer minute perspective on the other side of “cancel culture”, but it soon slips into a scandal around plagiarism and saving the self and flattens out quite quickly.

Definitely fan service and surprised to see this be his first fleshed-out novel. A lot of the one-liners pack punches in the first half, but fizzle out in the end, as if he got tired writing the story himself.

But the man hasn’t put out a good film since god knows when. I mean, Coup de Chance was okay, but the plot threads have loosened up, jumbled up into repeats of other films and the writing itself is tiring itself out. Fine by all means. Best read in an afternoon when you’re up in the country missing New Yorkers and the city itself.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

[4.6]

[Milly Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Crecí con Woody Allen y sus puntadas y su humor y sus pelìculas y sus metidas de pata y su jazz. Y su autobiografía que me gustó mucho.

Es imposible leer su primera novela y no esperar por un lado una genialidad y por el otro, compasión. Tiene casi 90 años y busca escribir su primera novela.

Me entretiene y me divierte, pero me sentí en ocasiones como obligada a reírme por ser èl.
El clásico: si no fuera escrita por Woody Allen se hubiera publicado? Yo que sè!

Me gustan más las últimas 50 pàginas.
Vale porque es de él. Eso creo.
Harè podcast.
Eso creo.

[Matthew Wilder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Armond White was not wrong in suggesting that Woody should do his DECONSTRUCTING HARRY for 2025 as CANCELLING WOODY. This first novel by Woodrow lacks the acrid taste of HARRY (I still chuckle to recall Manohla Dargis lamenting that Woody used the word “cunt” more frequently than Henry Miller). But it has the warm feel of a conversation with an old—and I mean old— friend, and there are some nasty chuckles for anyone familiar with the Woody narrative. The hero’s wife has a blonde, simpering, overly impressed-with-self son who may recall a certain Me Too icon who might have been sired by Frank Sinatra. (Woody must be pretty sure of Ronan’s parentage—one can’t imagine him savaging his own blood like this.) Asher Baum, the hero, has his own brush with cancellation via a journalist who claims he furtively groped her—and Woody is an astute enough dramatist to make it feel quite possible he actually did. In brief, it’s as if Woody took Armond’s advice but what came out was as soft and personable and as “boulevard” as, oh, MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY—but in this day and age, a moment spent with Woody is the closest thing to being near Astaire, Noel Coward, even Lubitsch.

[Amit Gairola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like watching a Woody Allen movie - pure comfort food. An entertaining and quick read.

[Muffin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Found this in a little free library and it was under 200 pages. I’m probably likely to rate this low even if I liked it, Just Because I Believe Its Author To Be A Sexual Predator. However, I also did not like it.

The plot was very slight and only gets interesting at the very end, and then diffuses pretty awkwardly. Most of the book feels like he had a 50 page story and was contractually obligated to flesh out characters’s backstories aimlessly.

On one episode of the great sitcom Difficult People, Julie gets cast in a Woody Allen project playing a cigarette girl. “Oh so it’s a period piece?” “No, Woody just thinks cigarette girls are still a thing.” There are a lot of moments like that in the book, like it was written by someone who hasn’t interacted with the real world for quite a few decades. And indeed it was!

He’s not good at making movies anymore, who knows why he thought he’d be good at something he was never good at instead.

Anyway, time marches on and ask not for whom the bell tolls, etc.

One last note - whoever had this book before me annotated it a bit, especially pointing out subject-verb agreement errors. That definitely improved the reading experience.

[Xenja · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quando Dio ha creato l’universo, si è sbrigato a finire il lavoro in sei giorni. Che fretta aveva? A cosa gli serviva il settimo giorno libero? A fare un pisolino tra le fottute nuvole? Che cosa puoi fare di decente in sei giorni?

Questa è l'unica battuta che mi ha fatto ridere. Tutto il resto: già visto e già sentito, e più d'una volta. C'è da stupirsi? Allen ha novant'anni: chiunque abbia genitori anziani sa che il cervello si impigrisce molto prima di quell'età. La colpa è dunque nostra se leggiamo questo libro aspettandoci qualcosa di nuovo. Woody Allen ha scritto molti bellissimi libri di racconti decenni fa, straordinariamente originali e creativi, e esilaranti. Il mio consiglio è: lasciate perdere questa zuppa riscaldata e procuratevi quelli. (Idem per i film.)

[Jill Shaw Ruddock · Rating 4 out of 5]

What’s With Baum? is quintessential Woody Alan - far from perfect, but it succeeds way more than it fails. It’s a thoughtful, bittersweet work from an artist confronting his sense of legacy and relevance. While it sometimes feels like Woody Allen trying to wrestle with his own demons, there is a lot of heart here — in the shame, the longing, the comparisons to younger, more successful people, the desperate need to be taken seriously. I was very happy to read it

[Pablasa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo mismo de siempre, es decir, nada nuevo, pero nada malo; puritito Woody. Podría escribir otros 60 años la misma historia, que ahí estaría yo para beberla.

[Gary Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Mirror and the Monologue

Woody Allen’s first novel, What’s with Baum?, arrives not as a late-career reinvention but as a refined distillation of a lifelong aesthetic. The book is a keenly observed and interior portrait of Asher Baum, a middle-aged Jewish writer whose turgid philosophical books are meeting an increasingly indifferent world. The novel’s central, clever device is that Baum has begun talking to himself, full conversational volleys that articulate his anxieties, resentments, and philosophical despondency. This is not a sign of dementia, the reader is assured, but rather the logical outcome of a mind fiercely and endlessly wrestling with itself.

The prose is fluent and possesses a comic timing that feels native to the page, suggesting this form may suit Allen’s voice as well as, if not better than, his recent cinematic efforts. The novel functions as an amusing glimpse into the New York publishing establishment, but its true focus remains firmly on the protagonist's internal landscape. Baum is a man beset by modern irritants, a struggling career, a rocky third marriage, and the looming threat of public shaming after an ill-advised encounter with a journalist. Yet these are merely the triggers for his deeper, more existential ruminations on the futility and emptiness of life.

Allen slyly engages with the novel as a form. There is a self-referential awareness to the narrative, which at one point notes that "in a film, this would be a fade-out," acknowledging the different muscles being flexed here. The story is tightly plotted, and despite the neurotic maelstrom at its center, it moves with a purpose that feels both literary and engaging. For those who appreciate Allen’s particular brand of humor, the book offers a steady supply of finely crafted gags and witty lines that emerge naturally from Baum’s predicament.

What’s with Baum? is a cerebral and highly entertaining piece of fiction. It is a portrait of an intellectual crippled by his own acuity, a man for whom every thought carries the weight of the world. It does not break new ground for its creator so much as it cultivates a familiar garden with a fresh and effective tool. The result is a beautifully wrought masterwork that confirms the enduring sharpness of Allen’s literary talents.

[Todd Charlton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Woodman has had his first novel published at the age of 90. Gives us all hope, mind you he has written something like 50 screenplays and books of prose.
What's With Baum? is like a 3 hour Woody Allen movie, instead of 93 pages we have 186. It's about Asher Baum and his failing marriages and failed literary career and his envy over his step-son Thane who has gained much praise for his first novel. The thing is Baum finds out Thane plagiarized his novel from an obscure text that the Roachman told Asher about in the stacks of The Strand Bookstore in New York.
The prose is clear and true, as Hemmingway would have said, and the bottom line is What's With Baum? is wonderfully entertaining. Which is ironic because Asher says a great book needs to be more than just entertaining. But Woody is no Dostoevsky. It's Woody giving us his take on life and love and fulfilment; which is always funny and sad and poignant; with the gaping maw of death waiting just under the surface.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this is his first novel, I have to say classic Woody Allen. The neuroses, the anxiety, the convoluted plot. Great read!

[Grant F. Booth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woody's first novel is brilliant!

Another brilliant first from Mr. Allen! "What's with Baum?" is wonderful, and difficult to put down. More, please, Woody! This is great.

[Robert D · Rating 5 out of 5]

hilarious, but too short

This has got to be made into a movie! Let’s see: Timothy Chalamet as Thane, Scarlett Johansson as Sam, Bette Midler as Connie and of course Woody as Baum.

[JJ Conti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nunca he sido mucho del woody allen director pero sí del escritor. Es imposible a veces no compararlo, aunque siempre sale mal parado en la comparación, con Groucho. Ambos son dos frasólogos (no se si existe la palabra, pero si existe sí tengo claro que esdrújula y va acentuada). Este libro me ha parecido insufrible, me lo he terminado por el que dirán ya que leer a Woody es como leer a Kant: da cierta dignidad en la pose. No tengo mejor forma de describir este libro que parafrasear al mismo personaje de esta novela, la cual no tengo claro si está escrita en primera o tercera persona y el por qué de no usar los guiones para señalar los diálogos si es el código que todos nos hemos impuesto para entendernos. Pero bueno, para no parecer a Baum terminaré como he dicho con una cita de libro que describe a la perfección el mismo, aunque en él sea un indio quien lo dice, y claro si lo dice un indio parece que tiene como más autoridad: “No digo que no tengas tus virtudes, más bien modestas, con destellos ocasionales de imaginación e ingenio.
Pues eso dos estrellas.

[Mateo Ellacott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the best thing the Woodman has put out in the last 15 years. Really scratches that itch for a comfy dark comic Woody caper, feels very akin to Deconstructing Harry and a lot of his post-divorce 90s stuff. Am already hard at work mentally casting who would play some of the characters in a film adaptation: for the moment I’ve settled on Jude Law as Baum, Elle Fanning or Sophie Thatcher as Sam, Rebecca Hall as Connie (if Anne Hathaway turns down the part first) and probably Jacob Elordi as Thane (Chalamet probably slightly too old for the part now)

[Santi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Típica novela urbana, neoyorquina, librerías, exposiciones, gente guay... Woody Allen, vaya. Se deja leer, pero esperaba más humor cínico y corrosivo. Lo más salvable, algunas frases ingeniosas repartidas por el libro ("los animales son humanos fallidos", y cosas así). Se nota que Allen ya está muy mayor, y quiere tener una vejez tranquila y apacible.

[Fabio Stancati · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quasi mezza in più. Un romanzo nostalgico, chiaramente e pienamente Alleniano, che mi ha ricordato, in alcuni momenti, Irrational Man. Perchè questo unico flusso narrativo di Woody è in tutto e per tutto una sorta di soggetto per un film. Tanto è vero che a volte non può fare a meno di descrivere scene, dissolvenze e stacchi di montaggio. Se, inizialmente, il romanzo è in tutto e per tutto un manuale delle nevrosi metropolitane che hanno reso celebre Allen, divertendo e allietando il lettore con molto mestiere, andando avanti - tra flashback delle precedenti mogli di Asher Baum e dei pregressi insuccessi letterari- l’intreccio si complica.
E se già nella prima parte c’erano degli elementi “perturbanti” che iniziavano a farsi strada tra le pagine del libro, come il sogno del padre sepolto, il riferimento ad accuse di molestie che muovono il protagonista, ma restano sullo sfondo, nelle ultime 50 (di 184) pagine escono fuori, progressivamente, dilemmi morali, etici che Allen gestisce magistralmente fino ad arrivare ad un ottimo finale tragicomico che mi sarebbe piaciuto vedere sul grande schermo.
E a novant’anni suonati, non è mica poco.

[Erlantz Céspedes Oribe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cine.

Woody Allen añade un nuevo capítulo a su Comedia Humana. En cada gracia, en cada referencia, hay una verdad sencilla que desnuda el nihilismo imperante.

Desde Aristofanes no ha habido nadie tan grande.

[Ane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quiero más novelas de Woody Allen.

[Javier Bollain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entretenido, como una película medians de el

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woody Allen siendo Woody Allen. No ha estado mal, es como leer una de sus películas pero me ha resultado sin más. Me hace preguntarme si está novela no fuera suya, ¿se habría publicado? La histeria del personaje es lo que me ha mantenido activa en la lectura.

[Andrés · Rating 3 out of 5]

La historia no está mal, pero habría sido mejor que se haya desarrollado en una película y no en una novela.

Y dale, no te costaba nada separar la novela en capítulos.

[Tomás Demarco Martínez]

Notas:

«Mira, es pura física. El placer que obtienes en una relación es equivalente al dolor sufrido cuando te abandonan»

La inercia es una de las fuerzas más poderosas de la física.

[Pablo Reyes · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Woody le perdono hasta sus malas películas así que también le perdono y busco las pequeñas virtudes cómicas en esta novela mediocre con un protagonista mezquino y repulsivo que parece una parodia malintencionada del alter ego habitual de su cine.