Nicholson Baker

Life

Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 in New York City.

He studied briefly at the Eastman School of Music and received a B.A. in English from Haverford College.

Baker describes himself as an atheist, although he occasionally visits Quaker meetings. Baker says he has "always had pacifist leanings."

Baker met his wife, Margaret Brentano, in college; they live in Maine and have two grown children.

Career

Baker established a name for himself with the novels The Mezzanine (1988) and Room Temperature (1990). Both novels have for the most part a very limited time span. The Mezzanine occurs over the course of an escalator journey and Room Temperature happens while a father feeds his baby daughter.

U and I: A True Story (1991) is a non-fiction study of how a reader engages with an author's work. It is partly about Baker's appreciation for the work of John Updike and partly a 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 inaccuracies.

Critics group together Vox, The Fermata and House of Holes since they are all erotic novels. Vox (1992) consists of an episode of phone sex between two young single people on a pay-per-minute chat line. The book was Baker's first New York Times bestseller and Monica Lewinsky gave a copy to President Bill Clinton when they were having an affair. In Vox, Baker coined the word femalia. The Fermata (1994) also addresses erotic life and fantasy. The protagonist Arno Strine likes to stop time and take off women's clothes. The work proved controversial with critics. It was also a bestseller. House of Holes (2011) is about a fantastical place where all sexual perversions and fetishes are permitted.

Baker is 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, eliminating card catalogs, and destroying 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: Libraries and the Assault on Paper 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.

The 2004 novel 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.

Human Smoke: 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 actions. It consists largely of official government transcripts and other documents from the time. He suggests that the pacifists were correct in their views.

In March 2008, Baker reviewed John Broughton's Wikipedia: 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 Anthologist (2009) is narrated by Paul Chowder, a poet, who is attempting to write an introduction to a poetry anthology. Distracted by problems in his life, he is unable to begin writing, and instead ruminates on poets and poetry throughout history. Also in 2009, Baker reviewed Ken Auletta's Googled: The End of the World as We Know It in the New York Times. Auletta responded by sending a letter to the editor bemoaning what he perceived as the inaccuracy of Baker's review. Here is Baker's rebuttal:

Ken Auletta wrote a thought-provoking book, and I recorded several thoughts provoked. It's a book review, not a bouillon cube. I don't “imply” or “suggest” that the author agrees with the people he quotes. There is indeed an absence of warmth in this chronicle of Google as “dreaded disruptor,” but it's an impartial chilliness, extending in all directions.

In 2014, Baker spent 28 days as a substitute teacher in some Maine public schools as research for his 2016 book Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids. Baker tried to find out "what life in the classroom is really like." He also wrote about the experience for The New York Times Magazine.

Baker wrote a cover story for New York Magazine in January 2021 investigating the COVID-19 lab leak theory and expressing his belief in the theory’s plausibility.

Works

Fiction

• The Mezzanine (1988, Weidenfeld & Nicolson; / 1990, Vintage; )
• Room Temperature (1990, Grove Weidenfeld; / 1990, Vintage; / 1990, Granta; / 1991, Granta; )
• Vox: A Novel (1992, Random House; / 1992, Vintage; / 1992, Granta; )
• The Fermata (1994, Vintage; )
• The Everlasting Story of Nory (1998, Random House; / 1998, Vintage; )
• A Box of Matches (2003, Random House; / 2003, Chatto & Windus; )
• Vintage Baker (2004, Vintage; )
• Checkpoint (2004, Random House; )
• The Anthologist (2009, Simon & Schuster; )
• House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011, Simon & Schuster; )
• Traveling Sprinkler (2013, Blue Rider Press; )

Non-fiction

• U and I: A True Story (1991, Random House; / 1991 Penguin/Granta; (hard) / 1992, Penguin/Granta; (paper) /1995, Vintage; / 1998, Granta; )
• The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber (1996, Random House, / 1996, Vintage; (paper) / 1996, Chatto & Windus; (hard) / 1997, Vintage; (paper))
• Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (2001, Random House; / 2001, Vintage; / 2002, Vintage; )
• With Margaret Brentano (his wife). The World on Sunday: Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer's Newspaper (1898– 1911) (2005, Bulfinch; )
• Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (2008, Simon & Schuster; )
• The Way the World Works: Essays (2012, Simon & Schuster; )
• Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids (2016, Blue Rider Press; )
• Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act (2020, Penguin Press; )Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act, amazon.com. Retrieved 2020-10-11.
• Finding a Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better at Art (2024, Penguin Press )

Selected essays and reporting

• {{Cite journal |date=4 January 2021 |title=The Lab-Leak Hypothesis
• {{Cite news |date=7 September 2016 |title=Fortress of Tedium: What I Learned as a Substitute Teacher

Music

• While working on Traveling Sprinkler, Nicholson Baker posted some songs made in the style of protagonist Paul Chowder on YouTube. The ballads combined dance music with protest songs and dealt with foreign policy agenda. Twelve songs were available in a deluxe e-book version of the novel and later on Bandcamp.

Awards

• 1997: James Madison Freedom of Information Award.
• 2001: National Book Critics Circle Award for Double Fold.
• 2014: Baker and his German translator Eike Schönfeld won the Calw Hermann Hesse Prize for the German translation of Double Fold.
• 2018: Baker was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

References

References

1. (2011-08-04). "Nicholson Baker's Dirty Mind". The New York Times.
2. (6 November 2013). "It's a Mixed Life: An Interview with Nicholson Baker".
3. McGrath, Charles (2008-03-04) [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/books/04bake.html A Debunker on the Road to World War II], ''[[New York Times]]''
4. McGrath, Charles (2011-08-04) [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/magazine/nicholson-bakers-dirty-mind.html Nicholson Baker: The Mad Scientist of Smut], ''[[New York Times]]''
5. (8 August 2011). "Book review: "House of Holes," by Nicholson Baker". Washington Post.
6. (14 April 1991). "Mr. Updike, I'm Your Biggest Fan". New York Times.
7. (2 September 2011). "House of Holes, By Nicholson Baker". The Independent.
8. Bissell, Tom. (2011). "Oh, the Places You'll Come". [[GQ]].
9. (4 August 2011). "Nicholson Baker's Dirty Mind". The New York Times.
10. (24 March 1994). "Larceny". London Review of Books.
11. Blair, Elaine. (September 29, 2011). "Coming attractions". [[The New York Review of Books.
12. [http://home.gwi.net/~dnb/former_newsrep.html American Newspaper Repository] {{webarchive. link. (2007-12-25)
13. (17 July 2000). "Deadline". New Yorker.
14. (8 August 2004). "The Extremities of Nicholson Baker".
15. "Nicholson Baker - The European Graduate School".
16. Baker, Nicholson;[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131 "The Charms of Wikipedia"], ''[[The New York Review of Books]]''; Volume 55, Number 4 March 20, 2008.
17. [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia.internet ''How I fell in love with Wikipedia'']
18. (15 September 2009). "The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker".
19. (27 November 2009). "Google's Earth". The New York Times.
20. (11 December 2009). "'Googled'". The New York Times.
21. (11 December 2009). "'Googled'". The New York Times.
22. (20 September 2016). "Nicholson Baker Goes Back to School as a Substitute Teacher". WNYC radio.
23. (9 September 2016). "Nicholson Baker goes back to school in 'substitute'". Buffalo News.
24. Wallace-Wells, Benjamin. (27 May 2021). "The Sudden Rise of the Coronavirus Lab-Leak Theory".
25. Ling, Justin. (15 June 2021). "The Lab Leak Theory Doesn't Hold Up".
26. Henderson, Jane. (Aug 18, 2012). "Nicholson Baker on the way of the world". [[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]].
27. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhryGfK7Rbw "Jeju Island"], 2012 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYVHQlZ_h9s/ "Terrormaker"], 2012; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zegtdFNxyU/ "When you intervene"], 2014; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksevg5NoHUU/ "Nine Women Gathering Firewood"] and a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JVXUMkev-A"Whistleblower song"], 2014
28. (16 October 2015). "The Writer's Hot Seat: Nicholson Baker".
29. (2018). "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation: Nicholson Baker". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.