Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker (born January 7, 1957) is a contemporary American novelist.
Work
Baker's highly unconventional novels de-emphasize traditional elements (particularly plot), emphasizing instead a very close level of introspection and sifting of thoughts and memories of the narrator.
Web postings and other data suggest that readers divide sharply in their evaluation of Baker's work. Many feel that the work wastes their time with trivia (Stephen King has notoriously compared Baker's work with fingernail clippings), but those who do enjoy the novels seem to appreciate them very much indeed. Baker's enthusiasts find his ability to minutely inspect and appreciate the contents of a human mind fascinating and unique. They often find echoes of their own thoughts, only better expressed, in Baker's books; and they judge that Baker can be extremely funny.
Plot ingredients of several of Baker's books (in particular, voyeurism and planned assassination) are called extremely offensive by some. Other readers admire Baker's courage in taking on such topics with directness and honesty.
Life
Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 in Rochester, New York. He studied briefly at the Eastman School of Music and received his B.A. from Haverford College. He lives today with his wife and two children in South Berwick, Maine. Baker has been a fervent critic of librarians destroying materials. He wrote several vehement articles in The New Yorker critical of the San Francisco Public Library sending thousands of books to a landfill, the elimination of card catalogs, and destruction of old books and newspapers in favor of microfilm. He published a book based on his researches in this area, Double Fold, in which he accuses certain librarians of lying about the decay of materials and having an obsession for technological fads, at the expense of both the public and historical preservation. In 1999, he established a non-profit corporation, the American Newspaper Repository to rescue old newspapers from destruction by librarians.
In 1997 Baker received the Madison Freedom of Information Award.
Nicholson Baker's books
The Mezzanine: A Novel was Baker's first book. It presents the thoughts and memories of a young male office worker as he ascends an escalator up to the mezzanine of the office building where he works. The novel created the genre for which Baker is best known and is perhaps its boldest representative. It abounds in long footnotes, including a vivid paean to long footnotes.
Room Temperature: A Novel follow's Mezzanine in the same spirit, though this time the action spans a few minutes at home (in Quincy, Massachusetts). Mike is feeding his baby daughter, "the Bug", as her head rests in the crook of his arm. He blows in the direction of a mobile; twenty seconds and two dozen pages later he is surprised to see the mobile move. Mike's thoughts wander as he contemplates, for example, the possibility of admitting to one's wife that one has been picking one's nose — body functions are discussed extensively, perhaps prompted by the baby's presence — or the juxtaposition of Debussy and Skippy peanut butter jars in a symphonic poem. The novel was reviewed warmly but with no great enthusiasm, as an enjoyable but slightly demure domestic follow-up to The Mezzanine.
Vox: A Novel covers an episode of phone sex between two young single people. The book created a mild sensation, particularly when it was reported that Monica Lewinsky gave a copy to Bill Clinton. The sex scenes in the novel, though quite vivid, nevertheless share the basic approach that Baker has taken since The Mezzanine: in this case, he explores his two characters' accumulated thoughts and memories as they relate to sex. For some readers, Baker's obsession with detail detracted from a hoped-for pornographic effect. Others, in reading the imaginative sex stories that the two protagonists make up for one another, have perceived a budding romantic affection: the last act they perform before hanging up is to exchange phone numbers.
U and I: A True Story is a non-fiction study of how a reader engages with the work of an author: partly an appreciation of John Updike, and partly a kind of self-exploration. Rather than a traditional literary analysis, Baker begins the book by stating that he will read no more Updike than he already has up to that point. All of the Updike quotes used are presented as coming from memory alone.
The Fermata is perhaps the most controversial of Baker's novels. To quote the dust jacket of one edition: "Arno Strine likes to stop time and take women's clothes off. He is hard at work on his autobiography, The Fermata. It proves in the telling to be a very provocative, funny, and altogether morally confused piece of work."
A Book of Matches: A Novel is in many ways a continuation of Room Temperature, similarly mining the narrator's store of reflections and memories, many of them domestic. The narrator is now middle-aged and has a family. He rises each morning at about 5:30, lights a fire in the fireplace, and ponders. The work is admired, though some have found it rather less exuberant than its predecessor.
Checkpoint is composed of dialogue between two old high school friends, Jay and Ben, who discuss Jay's plans to assassinate President George W. Bush. Jay is an unbalanced day laborer who, in the depths of anger and desperation at Bush's actions and his inability to do anything to stop them, has traveled to Washington, D.C. to kill the president. He considers many far-fetched means of killing, such as by using depleted uranium boulders, flying radio-controlled CD saws, homing bullets marinated with the President's picture, and hypnotized Manchurian scorpions. Ben has met Jay in a Washington, D.C. hotel room, unaware that his friend is planning to commit "a major, major, major crime." Over the course of the novella Ben discusses what drove Jay to plot an assassination. Baker explores a sense of desperation felt widely at present, as well as the extremes of frustration that a person can be driven to. Reviewers have pointed out that the book is mild and the planned violence so cartoonish that it is not threatening.
Publication data
Novels
- The Mezzanine: A Novel (1988, Weidenfeld & Nicolson; ISBN 1-55584-258-5 / 1990, Vintage; ISBN 0679725768)
- Room Temperature: A Novel (1990, Grove Weidenfeld; ISBN 0-8021-1224-2 / 1990, Vintage; ISBN 0679734406 / 1990, Granta; ISBN 0-14-014212-6 / 1991, Granta; ISBN 0-14-014021-2)
- Vox: A Novel (1992, Random House; ISBN 0-394-58995-5 / 1992, Vintage; ISBN 0679742115 / 1992, Granta; ISBN 0-14-014057-3)
- The Fermata (1994, Vintage; ISBN 0679759336)
- The Everlasting Story of Nory: A Novel (1998, Random House; ISBN 0-679-43933-1 / 1998, Vintage; ISBN 0679734406)
- A Box of Matches: A Novel (2003, Random House; ISBN 0375502874 / 2003, Chatto & Windus; ISBN 0-701-17402-1)
- Checkpoint (2004, Random House; ISBN 1-4000-4400-6)
Nonfiction
- U and I: A True Story (1991, Random House; ISBN 0-394-58994-7 / 1991 Penguin/Granta; ISBN 0-14-014226-6 (hard) / 1992, Penguin/Granta; ISBN 0-14-014040-9 (paper) /1995, Vintage; ISBN 0679735755 / 1998, Granta; ISBN 1862070970)
- The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber (1996, Random House, ISBN 0-679-43932-3 / 1996, Vintage; ISBN 0679776249 (paper) / 1996, Chatto & Windus; ISBN 0-7011-6301-1 (hard) / 1997, Vintage; ISBN 0099579715 (paper)
- Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (2001, Random House; ISBN 0-375-50444-3 / 2001, Vintage; ISBN 0375726217 / 2002, Vintage; ISBN 0099429039)
External links
Secondary literature
- Cox, Richard J. Vandals in the Stacks? A Response to Nicholas Baker's Assault on Libraries. Greenwood Press, 2002. ISBN 0313323445
- Saltzman, Arthur M. Understanding Nicholson Baker. University of South Carolina Press, 1999. ISBN 157003303X
- Star, Alexander. "The Paper Pusher." The New Republic. May 28, 2001. 38-41.