The first novel by the film-maker Woody Allen is due to be released later this year by independent publisher Swift Press.
The book, titled What’s With Baum?, is about a middle-aged Jewish journalist turned novelist “consumed with anxiety about everything under the sun”, according to a description from the publisher. Baum’s “turgid philosophical books receive tepid reviews and his prestigious New York publisher has dropped him”.
Baum’s third marriage is “on the rocks”, 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”.
Since the 1970s, Allen has written several books of short stories and essays, as well as a memoir, Apropos of Nothing, published in 2020. The memoir was dropped by its original US publisher, Hachette, after a staff walkout over allegations that Allen sexually abused his daughter in the early 90s, which have come to define his public image in recent years. The memoir was eventually published by Arcade.
Allen’s daughter, Dylan Farrow, has alleged that he sexually assaulted her in 1992, when she was seven years old. Allen has always denied the allegations, calling them “a total fabrication from start to finish” in his memoir. Two investigations at the time did not lead to criminal charges.
What’s With Baum?, which runs to 160 pages, is “a portrait of an intellectual crippled by neurotic concerns about the futility and emptiness of life”, said Swift Press.
Baum “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 neighbour in Connecticut.”
“Is it any wonder Baum has started talking to himself?” states the publisher’s description. “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?”
The novel is due to be published in September. Swift Press publisher Mark Richards said the company was “thrilled” to be publishing the book. “It is all we could have hoped – funny, clever, engrossing and wonderfully human. Woody Allen may have waited almost 90 years before he wrote a novel, but it’s been worth the wait.”
Swift Press was established in June 2020. In 2022, it launched an imprint, Forum, to publish “thinkers who expand the realms of debate and aren’t afraid to question contemporary orthodoxies”, and has since published titles including Liberal Bullies: Inside the Mind of the Authoritarian Left by Luke Conway and Gay Shame: The Rise of Gender Ideology and the New Homophobia by Gareth Roberts.