Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker (born January 7, 1957) is a contemporary American novelist.

Nicholson Baker's books (partial)

• ' (1988) is 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.
• ' (1990) continues in the same spirit as The Mezzanine, 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.
• ' (1991) 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.
• ' (1992) covers an episode of phone sex between two young single people. The book created a mild sensation 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.
• The Fermata (1994) 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."
• ' (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 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 (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 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.