What's with Baum?
Sep 2025 · Sold by Simon and Schuster
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192
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About this ebook
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.
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.
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 thir...
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2 reviews
Monkfish2 Monkfish2
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March 23, 2026
Asher Baum talks to himself, and by the end you will too, mainly to confirm this is both a novel and a well-dressed therapy session. It works as either, depending on your tolerance for existential dread delivered with pharmaceutical precision. Baum, a failed novelist with Freud’s insight and Job’s luck, paces a Connecticut pond obsessing over fidelity, success, and a universe that clearly didn’t RSVP to his suffering. He’s anxious, self-aware, self-defeating, and medicated. The book explores the gap between ambition and reality, mercifully with jokes. Its best lines sting, then linger. The internal dialogues are the real trick, Beckett with one actor, sustained with sharp timing. Supporting characters mostly orbit his neurosis, though a few moments land. There’s padding. Digressions sprawl. A late moral dilemma adds bite. The ending answers nothing important, which is the point. It won’t change your life, but it may make your next argument with yourself feel literary.
About the author
Woody Allen is a writer, director, and actor. An avid jazz enthusiast and sports fan, he has been a stand-up comedian and a published author. His first novel, What’s with Baum?, was published by Post Hill Press in 2025. He lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with his wife and two daughters.
Woody Allen is a writer, director, and actor. An avid jazz enthusiast and sports fan, he has been a stand-up comedian and a published author. His first novel, What’s with Baum?, was published by Post Hill Press in 2025. He lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with his wife and two daughters.
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