What’s with Baum? is Woody Allen’s first novel, but since it involves a morbidly introspective Jewish man whose natural habitat is New York — and who is obsessed by the futility of life and has the hots for much younger women — it’s patently more of a fictional take on Woody Allen than an actual work of fiction.
Our hero Asher Baum has two failed marriages behind him and one failing marriage in progress. Insensitive critics have harsh things to say about his plays and books for being pointlessly bleak about life’s great questions, but he maintains it’s the critics who are shallow. He has made an imprudent pass at a young Asian interviewer and there’ll be hell to pay. His bitterness is all the greater because Thane, the stepson he dislikes (it’s mutual), is turning into a celebrity on the back of his new novel.
