The autobiography of filmmaker Woody Allen comes out this Wednesday at Stock editions under the title "Let it be said in passing". He recounts his childhood, his passions and defends himself for a hundred pages of accusations of sexual assault on his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow. 

Woody Allen's autobiography comes out this Wednesday in bookstores, at Stock editions. Originally scheduled for April 29, the release of the controversial book has been delayed due to the coronavirus epidemic. In this book, entitled By the way , the 84-year-old filmmaker retraces his childhood in Brooklyn, his theater, jazz and his various passions. He also defends accusations of sexual violence made by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow. 

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Childhood in Brooklyn

And the book begins at Woody Allen. He dedicates his writing to his current partner, Soon-Yi, "the best of all". "She was eating me in the hand until the day I saw that I was missing an arm." Then, the director starts from the beginning: his childhood. He lives in Brooklyn and an IQ test sends him to a class for the gifted. But, he writes, "I hated all educational institutions". We would have suspected it. 

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We learn in By the way that Woody Allen reads assiduously. Comics. The adventures of Spiderman, Batman… "My friends", he writes again, "you are reading the autobiography of an illiterate misanthrope and fan of gangsters as a bonus. A solitary without culture." He nevertheless began to take an interest in the classics, music and philosophy, at the end of high school, when he noticed that girls were not insensitive to it. He talks about his theater and jazz years. His films too, of course.

The sexual assaults mentioned

Woody Allen does not ignore the accusations of sexual assault against him and defends it for a hundred pages. For these reasons, the release of the book had caused an uproar in the United States and its publisher Grand Central Publishing (a subsidiary of the Hachette group) had refused to publish it after protests from some of its employees and Ronan Farrow, the son of the filmmaker, in open war against his father.

This work retracing the director's journey allows us to rediscover his strangely familiar universe, which resembles his films. Incredibly well-written and funny lines, with the tongue-in-cheek humor that characterizes Woody Allen. He is not only a filmmaker who has marked his time, he is also a great writer.