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Article: Clueless Biographer's Bile--Baxter to Allen: Drop Dead!(Arts&Entertainment)
- Article from:
- The New York Observer (New York, NY)
- Article date:
- December 13, 1999
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 The New York Observer. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Daniel Mendelsohn
Woody Allen: A Biography, by John Baxter. Carroll & Graf, 492 pages, $27.
To those of you leery of back-jacket "advance praise," let me say straight off that British biographer John Baxter's nearly 500-page deconstruction of Woody Allen amply lives up to the adjectives that adorn its hindquarters. "Often hilarious"? You betcha! How else to describe Mr. Baxter's strenuous exercises in overinterpretation? ("Pervaded as it is by a sense of personal helplessness and inadequacy, Sleeper also offers an insight into Allen's psychology.") Is this new bio really a "bracing corrective to the usual ... studies"? Yup!-though the studies ...