"Shoes are the first adult machines we are given to master." -- Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker (born January 7, 1957) is a contemporary American writer of fiction and non-fiction and professor at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. As a novelist, he often focuses on minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness, and has written about such provocative topics as voyeurism and planned assassination. His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization. Baker's enthusiasts appreciate his ability to candidly explore the human psyche, while critics have charged that his subject matter is trivial.
"For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo.""Haven't you felt a peculiar sort of worry about the chair in your living room that no one sits in?""I no longer want to live in an apartment furnished with forklifts and backhoes.""Rarely do pens go dry in restaurants.""Spoon the sauce over the ice cream. It will harden. This is what you have been working for.""That was the problem with reading: you always had to pick up again at the very thing that had made you stop reading the day before.""Until a friend or relative has applied a particular proverb to your own life, or until you've watched him apply the proverb to his own life, it has no power to sway you."
Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 in New York City, and spent much of his youth in the Rochester, New York area. He studied briefly at the Eastman School of Music and received a B.A. in philosophy from Haverford College. He lives today with his wife and two children in South Berwick, Maine. He received a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2001 for his nonfiction book Libraries and the Assault on Paper.
Baker has been a fervent critic of what he perceives as libraries' unnecessary destruction of paper-based media. He wrote several vehement articles in The New Yorker critical of the San Francisco Public Library for sending thousands of books to a landfill, the elimination of card catalogs, and the destruction of old books and newspapers in favor of microfilm. In 1997, Baker received the San Francisco–based James Madison Freedom of Information Award in recognition of these efforts.
In 1999, Baker established a non-profit corporation, the American Newspaper Repository, to rescue old newspapers from destruction by libraries. In 2001 he published Double Fold, in which he accuses certain librarians of lying about the decay of materials and being obsessed with technological fads, at the expense of both the public and historical preservation.
Baker describes himself as having "always had pacifist leanings."
In March 2008, Baker reviewed John Broughton's The Missing Manual in the New York Review of Books. In the review, Baker described Wikipedia's beginnings, its culture, and his own editing activities under the username "Wageless". His article, How I fell in love with Wikipedia, was published in The Guardian newspaper in the UK on April 10, 2008.
The Mezzanine (1988) is Baker's first novel. It presents the thoughts and memories of a young office worker as he ascends an escalator to the mezzanine of the office building where he is employed, a building based on Baker's recollections of Rochester's Midtown Plaza. 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 (1990) mines the same vein as The Mezzanine, though this time the action spans a few minutes at the narrator's 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 received warmly but without great enthusiasm, as an enjoyable if slightly demure domestic follow-up to The Mezzanine. Mike may be expressing Baker's approach to writing when he thinks "...that with a little concentration one's whole life could be reconstructed from any single twenty-minute period randomly or almost randomly selected."
A True Story (1991) is a non-fiction study of how a reader engages with an author's work: partly an appreciation of John Updike, and partly a kind of self-exploration. Rather than giving 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 quotations used are presented as coming from memory alone, and many are inaccurate, with correct versions and Baker's (later) commentary on the inaccuracy given in brackets.
Vox (1992) consists of an episode of phone sex between two young single people on a pay-per-minute chat line. 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 two characters' accumulated thoughts and memories in relation to sex. For some readers, Baker's obsession with detail detracted from a hoped-for pornographic effect. Others, in reading the imaginative sex stories the two protagonists produce for one another, have perceived a budding romantic affection: in the last act they perform before hanging up, the man gives the woman his phone number. The book was Baker's first New York Times bestseller. Monica Lewinsky supposedly once gave a copy to President Bill Clinton.
The Fermata (1994) also addresses erotic life and fantasy. 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 fermata is a mark in musical notation indicating a long pause.)
The Everlasting Story of Nory (1998) was inspired by Baker's daughter Alice, "the informant", to whom he dedicates the book. In this work, Baker tries to see the world through the eyes of a curious nine-year-old American girl attending school in England.
Libraries and the Assault on Paper (2001) is a non-fiction book about preservation, newspapers, and the American library system. An excerpt first appeared in the July 24, 2000, issue of The New Yorker, under the title "Deadline: The Author's Desperate Bid to Save America's Past." The exhaustively researched work (there are 63 pages of endnotes and 18 pages of references in the paperback edition) details Baker's quest to uncover the fate of thousands of books and newspapers that were replaced and often destroyed during the microfilming boom of the 1980s and 1990s.
A Box of Matches (2003) 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 about 4:00, lights a fire in the fireplace, and ponders. The work is admired, although some have found it rather less exuberant than its predecessor.
Checkpoint (2004) 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 his 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 assassination, such as depleted uranium boulders, flying radio-controlled CD saws, homing bullets trained to target the victim by being "marinated" in a tin with a picture of the president, 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. Reviewers have pointed out that the book is mild, and the planned violence so cartoonish as to be non-threatening.
The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (2008) is a history of World War II that questions the commonly held belief that the Allies wanted to avoid the war at all costs but were forced into action by Hitler's unforgiving crusade. It consists largely of official government transcripts and other documents from the time. In form it is similar to Sven Lindqvist's "A History of Bombing" (New York: New Press, 2001), which Baker includes in the book's copious list of references. Baker cites documents that suggest that the leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom were provoking Germany into war (showing, for example, that Britain bombed Germany before Germany bombed Britain) and that the leaders of those two nations had ulterior motives for wanting to participate. In the epilogue to the book he suggests that the pacifists (who are often vilified by WWII historians) had it right all along, stating: “They failed, but they were right.” 'Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization' by Nicholson Baker - BOOK REVIEW - Los Angeles Times Some reviewers were dismissive of Human Smoke, the historian Noel Malcolm describing it as a "strangely childish book" and William Grimes as a "self-important, hand-wringing, moral mess of a book". Conservative political commentator R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. awarded his J. Gordon Coogler Award for Worst Book of 2008 to Human Smoke. Other reviewers praised Baker's use of documentary research and the intricate construction of the text. Colm Toibin wrote in his New York Times review that "the issues Baker wishes to raise, and the stark system he has used to dramatize his point, make his book a serious and conscientious contribution to the debate about pacifism," and Mark Kurlansky wrote for the Los Angeles Times that "People are going to get really angry at Baker for criticizing their favorite war. But he hasn't fashioned his tale from gossip. It is documented, with copious notes and attributions. The grace of these well-ordered snapshots is that there is no diatribe; you are left to put things together yourself. [Human Smoke] may be one of the most important books you will ever read."
The Anthologist (2009) is narrated by Paul Chowder, a little-known poet, who is attempting to write an introduction to a poetry anthology. Distracted by problems in his life...Chowder's career is going nowhere, and his girlfriend has recently left him...he is unable to begin writing, and instead ruminates on poets and poetry throughout history.
The Mezzanine (1988, Weidenfeld & Nicolson; ISBN 1-55584-258-5 / 1990, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-72576-8)
Room Temperature (1990, Grove Weidenfeld; ISBN 0-8021-1224-2 / 1990, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-73440-6 / 1990, Granta; ISBN 0-14-014212-6 / 1991, Granta; ISBN 0-14-014021-2)
A Novel (1992, Random House; ISBN 0-394-58995-5 / 1992, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-74211-5 / 1992, Granta; ISBN 0-14-014057-3)
The Fermata (1994, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-75933-6)
The Everlasting Story of Nory (1998, Random House; ISBN 0-679-43933-1 / 1998, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-73440-6)
A Box of Matches (2003, Random House; ISBN 0-375-50287-4 / 2003, Chatto & Windus; ISBN 0-7011-7402-1)
Checkpoint (2004, Random House; ISBN 1-4000-4400-6)
The Anthologist (2009, Simon & Schuster; ISBN 1-8473-7635-5)
Non-fiction
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 0-679-73575-5 / 1998, Granta; ISBN 1-86207-097-0)
Essays and Other Lumber (1996, Random House, ISBN 0-679-43932-3 / 1996, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-77624-9 (paper) / 1996, Chatto & Windus; ISBN 0-7011-6301-1 (hard) / 1997, Vintage; ISBN 0-09-957971-5 (paper)
Libraries and the Assault on Paper (2001, Random House; ISBN 0-375-50444-3 / 2001, Vintage; ISBN 0-375-72621-7 / 2002, Vintage; ISBN 0-09-942903-9)
With Margaret Brentano (his wife). Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer's Newspaper (2005, Bulfinch; ISBN 0-8212-6193-2)
The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (2008, Simon & Schuster; ISBN 978-1416567844)
Other writings
"The following are other writings - essays and short stories by Nicholson Baker:
Narrow Ruled. The American Scholar, Autumn, 2000, 5-8.
Deadline: A desperate plea to stop the trashing of America's historic newspapers. The New Yorker, July 24, 2000, 42-61.
Grab Me a Gondola. The New Yorker, June 1998, 64-68.
Weeds: A talk at the Library. In Reclaiming San Francisco: history, politics, culture. A City Lights anthology. Edited by James Brook, Chris Carlsson & Nancy J. Peters. City Lights, 1998. (p. 35-50, with photographs).
China Pattern. The New Yorker, 3 February 1997, 68-69.
The Author vs. the Library.The New Yorker, 14 October 1996, 50ff.
Short Story Contest! And the Winner is... (The Remedy, begun by Nicholson Baker; finished by Robert Phillips.) The New York Times, Aug 18, 1996, Section 6, 38.
My Life as Harold. The New Yorker, June 26/July 3, 1995, 92-93.
Books as Furniture. The New Yorker, June 12, 1995, 84-92.
From the index of first lines [poem]. The New Yorker, December 26, 1994/January 2, 1995, 83.
Clip Art. The New Yorker, November 7, 1994, 165-167.
Infohighwaymen. The New York Times, Oct. 18, 1994, Section A, 25.
Leading With the Grumper. The New York Review of Books, August 11, 1994, 3-5.
Subsoil. The New Yorker, June 27/July 4, 1994, 67-70. Reprinted in American Gothic Tales anthology by Joyce Carol Oates.
Lost Youth. London Review of Books, June 9, 1994, 6. Reprinted The Size of Thoughts (as A Novel by Alan Hollinghurst).
Discards. The New Yorker, April 4, 1994, 64-70+. Reprinted The Size of Thoughts (as Discards).
The Projector. The New Yorker, March 21, 1994, 148-153. Reprinted in The Size of Thoughts (as The Projector).
Survival of the Fittest. New York Review of Books, 4 November 1993, 17-21. Reprinted in The Size of Thoughts (as The History of Punctuation).
Reading Aloud. The New Yorker, March 1, 1993, 92-94. Reprinted in The Size of Thoughts.
Exchange: Pennies for Thoughts. The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1991, 18ff.
War and Pieces. Esquire , March, 1990, 178-83. Reprinted in The Size of Thoughts (as Model Aeroplanes).
Room Temperature. The New Yorker, January 8, 1990, 31-39. Later recycled in Room Temperature.
Precipitates. In Literary Outtakes, ed. Larry Dark. New York: Ballantine, Fawcett Columbine, 1990. 118-19. Reprinted in The Size of Thoughts (as Mlack).
Men's Room. The New Yorker, August 15, 1988, 22-27. Later recycled in The Mezzanine.
Shoelace. The New Yorker, March 21, 1988, 30-32. Later recycled in The Mezzanine.
Pants on Fire. The New Yorker, June 2, 1986, 28-29. Later recycled in The Mezzanine.
Rarity. The Atlantic Monthly, October, 1984, 36ff. Reprinted in The Size of Thoughts.
Comma. The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1984, 14. In revised and greatly expanded form, recycled within Room Temperature.
The Size of Thoughts. The Atlantic Monthly, March 1983, 32ff. Reprinted in The Size of Thoughts.
K590. First published in Little Magazine. Reprinted in The Best American Short Stories 1982, ed. John Gardner (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982) 116-23.
Changes of Mind. The Atlantic Monthly, November, 1982, 45-46. Reprinted in The Size of Thoughts.
Playing Trombone. The Atlantic Monthly, March, 1982, 39ff.
Snorkeling. The New Yorker, December 7, 1981, 50-55.
The Harold Munger's Story. StoryQuarterly, Issue 13, 1981."
Cox, Richard J. Vandals in the Stacks? A Response to Nicholson Baker's Assault on Libraries. Greenwood Press, 2002. ISBN 0-313-32344-5
Fabre, Claire. "Aux frontières de l’intime : l’intériorité exhibée dans Room Temperature (1984) de Nicholson Baker." Revue française d’études américaines. 2006. 113-121.
Richardson, Eve, "Space, Projection and the Banal in the Works of Jean-Philippe Toussaint and Nicholson Baker", in Emma Gilby et Katja Haustein (ed.), Space. New Dimensions in French Studies, Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Brussels, Francfurt, New York and Vienna, Peter Lang, 2005. ("Modern French Identities", 30)
Saltzman, Arthur M. Understanding Nicholson Baker. University of South Carolina Press, 1999. ISBN 1-57003-303-X
Star, Alexander. "The Paper Pusher." The New Republic. May 28, 2001. 38-41.
