Woody Allen's Memoir Is Out: 'I Never Laid a Finger on Dylan'

Woody Allen's memoir, dropped by its original publisher after widespread criticism, has found a new home. The 400-page book, still called Apropos of Nothing, was released Monday by Arcade Publishing. With little advance notice, the 84-year-old filmmaker's book arrives at a time when much of the world is otherwise preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic. Arcade is an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, and a spokeswoman said no decisions had been made on whether Allen would give any interviews. Financial details for his deal with Arcade weren't released. The AP calls attention to two topics in particular:

• Soon-Yi Previn: Allen and Mia Farrow were essentially apart by the time he began dating her daughter Soon-Yi Previn, more than 30 years younger than him, in the early 1990s. "At the very early stages of our new relationship, when lust reigns supreme ... we couldn't keep our hands off each other," he writes of Previn, whom he married in 1997 and to whom he dedicates the book. Recalling the day Farrow learned of the affair, after discovering erotic photographs of her 20-something daughter at Allen's apartment, Allen writes: "Of course I understand her shock, her dismay, her rage, everything. It was the correct reaction." But he also expresses no regret over he and Previn becoming lovers.
• Abuse allegations: "I never laid a finger on Dylan, never did anything to her that could be even misconstrued as abusing her; it was a total fabrication from start to finish," he writes of Dylan Farrow, his daughter with Mia Farrow. Describing a visit to Farrow's Connecticut house in August 1992, when he allegedly molested Dylan, he acknowledges briefly placing his head on his 7-year-old daughter's lap, but adds: "I certainly didn't do anything improper to her. I was in a room full of people watching TV mid-afternoon." Later, discussing the related public outcry: "I can't deny that it plays into my poetic fantasies to be an artist whose work isn't seen in his own country and is forced, because of injustice, to have his public abroad. Henry Miller comes to mind. DH Lawrence. James Joyce. I see myself standing amongst them defiantly. It's about at that point my wife wakes me up and says, 'You're snoring.'"

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