I Like __ A Lot
I Like Nicholson Baker A Lot
Last week I read Nicholson Baker’s new novel, The Anthologist, all in an evening sitting propped uncomfortably across the smaller of two sofas in my apartment. One thing about reading Nicholson Baker is in his exorbitantly minute and often startling descriptions (his first novel, The Mezzanine, is simply the thoughts of a guy during a ride up an escalator, which sounds boring but is incredible), you might think that it would then be easy to get caught up in the vibe, overthinking ideas and elements as you sit in the presence of a master doing the same. And yet, Baker is so good at catching all the spillage of thought you might have in listening to him speak, there is actually very little loosening of one’s own awareness while in the grip of even such an often everyday-aimed and frank voice as he wields. I hardly even recognized how uncomfortable I get usually while reading. It all went down, as have all of his books, leaving me hungry and excited, even in, again, a seemingly arbitrary subject matter: The Anthologist is about a guy, Paul Chowder, preparing to write the introduction to a poetry anthology. There is simply probably no one else alive who could pull this off, and Baker does, quite so.
Beyond the conscious-to-the-point-of-jesus-christ logic running through Baker’s work, which for the most part, no matter what he’s talking about, carries you through as if you’re in the middle of an action movie, one of the great things I love about Baker’s writing is how honest beyond honest he is in the fact that you are a reader, and he is talking to you through the paper, in whatever voice, without seeming haughty or trickster. A lot of this book was written, I’ve heard, 
during a process where Baker set up a bunch of microphones all through his house and went around ‘in character’ as it were, talking to himself or to the house or whoever in the manner of the anthologist talking out his introduction. He then took those tapes and somehow compiled them into what we have here, which is not only a man talking about what he likes about poetry (its sound, meter, the pleasure of the rhyme (it’s an anthology of rhyming poetry), and various other candid craft-style notes), but it also manages to tie in a life of the narrator around him, without seeming forced, or backstory-laden, or even really anything but just a man talking to himself about his own surroundings in the magical way Baker has made part of his DNA. He envisions meeting Poe in a laundromat, has a strange floor-tile laying relationship with his neighbor, sleeps with his books where his recently left lover used to lay, and otherwise concerns himself with everyday, if peculiar, pastimes that further echo the layering of the anthologist’s head. It kind of mesmerizes and opens you out, constructing a wayward but very engrossing narrative simply out of not only sound, but ideas: ideas about objects and conditions and the way we concern ourselves with them. You laugh, and you don’t feel put upon by process or by ‘journey’ or by wit for wit’s sake, but more like a wise old weird uncle letting you in on his bag, twinkling and nudging your shoulder sometime, trickily honest. His word choices and manners of description are so specific and perfect in their own way it can make you sit up in the room and look around. It’s kind of hard to explain with you just actually jumping in, but it’s unlike anything else, really.
Rather than provide direct excerpts (you can read the novel’s beginning here), here’s Baker on the book himself, with his amazing beard.
I enjoyed reading The Anthologist so much after a while passed in having read all of his older work when it came out, that I went back to U and I, his third book, which when I read the first time I didn’t get as well as the others. I think at the time I’d bought it in a Barthelme obsession and was upset that his talk of the passed Donald was only briefly, and so I’d put it down, but in the momentum of wanting more in the mode of The Anthologist, I 
went right back on in that same sitting. U and I is a truly uniquely conceived nonfiction book if there ever was one: basically Baker is writing about his lifelong obsession with John Updike, despite having hardly read half of the man’s work. The book becomes a psycho fan letter (but in Baker’s benign obsessing way) mixed with a rumination on what he can remember of his reading (Baker refuses to go back and look at any of Updike’s writing in the process of his own writing, which clouds the remembrances and ruminations of the work in a very cool way, not to mention the fact that Updike is still alive) mixed with a sublimely honest and so-raw-its-funny recreation of Baker’s own becoming as a writer (his aspirations, his methods, his awkward poising, and all and all). Some of the bits are so raw and frank in laying bare Baker’s young aspirations as a young artist they made me do the blink-once-slowly-and-stomach-giggle laugh. He’s not afraid to say the things we don’t say because we assume everybody wishes we’d all keep it underneath our sleeve, and in a way that makes you smile, not squirm. The noun is delight. Once again, I couldn’t stop until I was finished with the whole book, and afterwards I couldn’t help but wish everybody on earth were reading and being influenced by this sublime, hyper-conscious memory making, and propulsion, in and outside of the word.
If there’s anything beyond style and pleasure to take away from Baker (which is a lot already), one could do a lot to recognize the great breadth of reinvention and self-challenge he has managed over his career: 11 books in a little over 20 years, each one very different in its manner (from intricate sex fantasy (The Fermata, perhaps my favorite of them all) to unprecedented history tome (Human Smoke, I hate historical nonfiction and I read this 600 pg masterpiece in two days) to phone sex correspondence (Vox, Bill Clinton famously gave this to Lewinsky, and it is amazing) to children’s book (The Everlasting Story of Nory) to a father’s candid ruminations while holding his child (Room Temperature) on and on) and yet each of a style unique only to Baker, sentences built from the syllable up and awake in a way most language is never, and so wholly him that you could pick it out of probably any grouping of other sentences ever. He challenges himself not only to write what no one else could, but in manners and methods he might not have simply fallen on or into. He invents. Where many authors work for themselves first and only, Baker works not only for himself but in the pleasured mind of speaking to the reader like someone sitting beside him in a small room, mouth to paper to mind. I mean he’s an artist, and a person: a seeming kind one. I’ll read every word he ever writes.
Tags: Nicholson Baker, the anthologist, u and i
Great appreciation, great words. Going to start Human Smoke tonight.
Great appreciation, great words. Going to start Human Smoke tonight.
thanks Ken. I think HS is going to crush your skull, in the best way.
thanks Ken. I think HS is going to crush your skull, in the best way.
also: Baker has a really nice voice, and strong beard.
also: Baker has a really nice voice, and strong beard.
Enjoyed this post, Blake. I’ve only read Vox, so I’ll have to get to work.
Enjoyed this post, Blake. I’ve only read Vox, so I’ll have to get to work.
Read The Anthologist on an airplane to Korea. God. So good. One of the first books I’ve read that I wanted to immediately re-read.
Read The Anthologist on an airplane to Korea. God. So good. One of the first books I’ve read that I wanted to immediately re-read.
I highly recommend reading U and I back-to-back with Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage.
I highly recommend reading U and I back-to-back with Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage.
“There is simply probably no one else alive who could pull this off, and Baker does, quite so.”
come again?
N.B.=O.G.
“There is simply probably no one else alive who could pull this off, and Baker does, quite so.”
come again?
N.B.=O.G.
thanks Andrew. yes, you can’t go wrong really.
thanks Andrew. yes, you can’t go wrong really.
i’ve had baker on the burner for a while but this post gets me hot for him.
where to start with his fiction?
i’ve had baker on the burner for a while but this post gets me hot for him.
where to start with his fiction?
excellent stuff. will definitely be reading more NB now. greatly enjoyed U and I back in the day, and have always meant to read more NB. I remember the way he described his skin condition and of course how he drove himself nuts refusing to go back and read any of U’s actual books.
i haven’t read half U’s stuff either. “A&P”, especially its ending,bgot me so fired up to write in college. I really liked the first Rabbit book when I read it…but yeah there is a lot more to read.
excellent stuff. will definitely be reading more NB now. greatly enjoyed U and I back in the day, and have always meant to read more NB. I remember the way he described his skin condition and of course how he drove himself nuts refusing to go back and read any of U’s actual books.
i haven’t read half U’s stuff either. “A&P”, especially its ending,bgot me so fired up to write in college. I really liked the first Rabbit book when I read it…but yeah there is a lot more to read.
I just finished The Mezzanine and while reading, I kept thinking DFW must surely have taken inspiration from Baker. The circular, self-referential, hyper-self-conscious sentences mixed with a finely observed attention to detail–both experiential and physical–and an interest in arcane information. And of course the footnotes. Glorious footnotes. The footnote about footnotes, toward the end, was particularly fun. Anyone know of any stated fondness on DFW’s part for this or any other of Baker’s books?
I just finished The Mezzanine and while reading, I kept thinking DFW must surely have taken inspiration from Baker. The circular, self-referential, hyper-self-conscious sentences mixed with a finely observed attention to detail–both experiential and physical–and an interest in arcane information. And of course the footnotes. Glorious footnotes. The footnote about footnotes, toward the end, was particularly fun. Anyone know of any stated fondness on DFW’s part for this or any other of Baker’s books?
That beard is so sweet it makes me doubt its authenticity
That beard is so sweet it makes me doubt its authenticity
The Fermata.
P.S. I bought Uncle Nic his copy of Scorch Atlas.
The Fermata.
P.S. I bought Uncle Nic his copy of Scorch Atlas.
Alec, start with this one. The Anthologist is brilliant, and it has a serviceable overview of the history of poetry tucked into it, for nothing extra. I’m a little less taken with his early work than a lot of the crowd here, it seems, but for my money he’s still among the best things going. Human Smoke is a marvel- 500 pages to make an argument that in a civilized society would be so obvious as to hardly bare explication, but in this amnesiac imperium is the height of “controversy.” It’s a very, very important book.
Alec, start with this one. The Anthologist is brilliant, and it has a serviceable overview of the history of poetry tucked into it, for nothing extra. I’m a little less taken with his early work than a lot of the crowd here, it seems, but for my money he’s still among the best things going. Human Smoke is a marvel- 500 pages to make an argument that in a civilized society would be so obvious as to hardly bare explication, but in this amnesiac imperium is the height of “controversy.” It’s a very, very important book.
I love me some Nicholson Baker. I’m going to try to buy The Anthologist this weekend. I think The Mezzanine is good to start with for his fiction, though I read four or five of his other books first. I actually read U and I first, because I used to be semi-obsessed with Updike myself.
I love me some Nicholson Baker. I’m going to try to buy The Anthologist this weekend. I think The Mezzanine is good to start with for his fiction, though I read four or five of his other books first. I actually read U and I first, because I used to be semi-obsessed with Updike myself.
Dig Mr. Baker, definitely. To add–he is also a mighty fine reader, one of the finest deliverers of his own work I’ve ever seen. Not surprising given how vocal and rhythmic the writing is, as well as the technique Blake mentioned of recording into mics during the writing process. One other thing to say is that even more than most writers, to read him is to invite contagion, to spawn a slew of Bakeresque (Nicholsonian?) observations…it’s like your vision is slightly sharper, your fascination threshold lowered, almost in the manner of being under the influence of a hallucinatory drug except without relinquishing the critical faculties. Something liberatory about this, the promise that one might never be bored again, that so long as one has one’s own thoughts and a few years of being-in-the-world, you’ve got a lifetime of fodder to mull over, cerebral cud.
Dig Mr. Baker, definitely. To add–he is also a mighty fine reader, one of the finest deliverers of his own work I’ve ever seen. Not surprising given how vocal and rhythmic the writing is, as well as the technique Blake mentioned of recording into mics during the writing process. One other thing to say is that even more than most writers, to read him is to invite contagion, to spawn a slew of Bakeresque (Nicholsonian?) observations…it’s like your vision is slightly sharper, your fascination threshold lowered, almost in the manner of being under the influence of a hallucinatory drug except without relinquishing the critical faculties. Something liberatory about this, the promise that one might never be bored again, that so long as one has one’s own thoughts and a few years of being-in-the-world, you’ve got a lifetime of fodder to mull over, cerebral cud.
i’ll have to disagree with matt and justin, though both of those books are amazing, they don’t seem the best intro to me. the mezzanine is his first book, and the shortest, and intros his logic of writing really well. fermata is my favorite i think, but can seem a little repetitive if you aren’t already into the logic. the anthologist also seems a little more subtle to me in its immediate pleasures, i’d do it second or third.
i’ll have to disagree with matt and justin, though both of those books are amazing, they don’t seem the best intro to me. the mezzanine is his first book, and the shortest, and intros his logic of writing really well. fermata is my favorite i think, but can seem a little repetitive if you aren’t already into the logic. the anthologist also seems a little more subtle to me in its immediate pleasures, i’d do it second or third.
dfw talking about the mezzanine is the reason i first read it. i can’t remember where, it might have even been in his essay on television and fiction, or might have just been in an interview, but he definitely has an affinity and definitely was an admirer
dfw talking about the mezzanine is the reason i first read it. i can’t remember where, it might have even been in his essay on television and fiction, or might have just been in an interview, but he definitely has an affinity and definitely was an admirer
“….the promise that one might never be bored again, that so long as one has one’s own thoughts and a few years of being-in-the-world, you’ve got a lifetime of fodder to mull over….”
Very nice.
“….the promise that one might never be bored again, that so long as one has one’s own thoughts and a few years of being-in-the-world, you’ve got a lifetime of fodder to mull over….”
Very nice.
I absolutely loved Human Smoke. Holy shit that blew my mind, and I read a lot of history. I always love Baker, and this delighted me especially because he seemed to be sticking his neck out a little more than usual, a little less contained and introspective…if only more people wrote about history like he does.
I absolutely loved Human Smoke. Holy shit that blew my mind, and I read a lot of history. I always love Baker, and this delighted me especially because he seemed to be sticking his neck out a little more than usual, a little less contained and introspective…if only more people wrote about history like he does.
I agree with Blake. The Mezzanine first. Then U and I.
I agree with Blake. The Mezzanine first. Then U and I.
There’s a really great Bookworm interview with Nicholson Baker talking about the Anthologist.
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw091105nicholson_baker
There’s a really great Bookworm interview with Nicholson Baker talking about the Anthologist.
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw091105nicholson_baker
I agree with Blake. Start with The Mezzanine. The Fermata is my favorite as well, but I can see reading it, and just thinking Baker is obsessed with sex. The Mezzanine, Box of Matches, and then The Fermata is how I’d go.
I agree with Blake. Start with The Mezzanine. The Fermata is my favorite as well, but I can see reading it, and just thinking Baker is obsessed with sex. The Mezzanine, Box of Matches, and then The Fermata is how I’d go.
I would also second “Box of Matches” as an incredibly sweet, weird, and heartbreaking work that’s underrated and deserves to be read in one sitting, breathing only once or twice.
I would also second “Box of Matches” as an incredibly sweet, weird, and heartbreaking work that’s underrated and deserves to be read in one sitting, breathing only once or twice.
[…] The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker [Reawakened my Baker fiction fetish, wrote about this here.] […]