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Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker (born January 7, 1957) is an American novelist and essayist. His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization. His early novels such as The Mezzanine and Room Temperature were distinguished by their minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness. Out of a total of ten novels, three are erotica: Vox, The Fermata and House of Holes.

Nicholson Baker

(1957-01-07) January 7, 1957[1]
New York City, U.S.

English

American

Novels, non-fiction, essays

Baker also writes non-fiction books. U and I: A True Story, about his relationship with John Updike, was published in 1991. He then wrote about the American library system in his 2001 book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, for which he received a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Calw Hermann Hesse Prize for the German translation. A pacifist, he wrote Human Smoke (2008) about the buildup to World War II.


Baker has published articles in Harper's Magazine, the London Review of Books and The New Yorker, among other periodicals.


Baker created the American Newspaper Repository in 1999. He has also written about and edited Wikipedia.

Life[edit]

Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 in New York City.[2]


He studied briefly at the Eastman School of Music and received a B.A. in English from Haverford College.[1]


Baker describes himself as an atheist, although he occasionally visits Quaker meetings.[3] Baker says he has "always had pacifist leanings."[4]


Baker met his wife, Margaret Brentano, in college; they live in Maine and have two grown children.[5]

(1988, Weidenfeld & Nicolson; ISBN 1-55584-258-5 / 1990, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-72576-8)

The Mezzanine

(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)

Room Temperature

(1992, Random House; ISBN 0-394-58995-5 / 1992, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-74211-5 / 1992, Granta; ISBN 0-14-014057-3)

Vox: A Novel

(1994, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-75933-6)

The Fermata

The Everlasting Story of Nory (1998, Random House;  0-679-43933-1 / 1998, Vintage; ISBN 0-679-73440-6)

ISBN

A Box of Matches (2003, Random House;  0-375-50287-4 / 2003, Chatto & Windus; ISBN 0-7011-7402-1)

ISBN

Vintage Baker (2004, Vintage;  9781400078608)

ISBN

(2004, Random House; ISBN 1-4000-4400-6)

Checkpoint

(2009, Simon & Schuster; ISBN 1-84737-635-5)

The Anthologist

(2011, Simon & Schuster; ISBN 1-4391-8951-X)

House of Holes: A Book of Raunch

Traveling Sprinkler (2013, Blue Rider Press;  978-0399160967)

ISBN

1997: .[16]

James Madison Freedom of Information Award

2001: for Double Fold.[30]

National Book Critics Circle Award

2014: Baker and his German translator Eike Schönfeld won the for the German translation of Double Fold.[31]

Calw Hermann Hesse Prize

2018: Baker was awarded a .[31]

Guggenheim Fellowship

Anderson, Sam (2011). . The Paris Review (198). Retrieved 22 July 2020.

"Nicholson Baker, The Art of Fiction No. 212"

Cox, Richard J. Vandals in the Stacks? A Response to Nicholson Baker's Assault on Libraries. Greenwood Press, 2002.  0-313-32344-5

ISBN

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.  1-57003-303-X

ISBN

Shlomo, Elka Tenner (20 January 2009). "Nicholson Baker Wasn't All Wrong". The Acquisitions Librarian. 15 (30): 117–130. :10.1300/J101v15n30_10.

doi

Star, Alexander. "The Paper Pusher." The New Republic. May 28, 2001. 38-41.

on C-SPAN

Appearances

Sam Anderson (Fall 2011). . The Paris Review. Fall 2011 (198).

"Nicholson Baker, The Art of Fiction No. 212"

at Random House, author page

Nicholson Baker

. New York Times, March 4, 2008

Nicholson Baker, "A Debunker on the Road to World War II"

Cox, Richard J. ""

The Great Newspaper Caper: Backlash in the Digital Age

Grimes, William. "" New York Times Book Review

"Say What? It Wasn’t a Just War After All?

". Guardian. April 10, 2008

"How I fell in love with Wikipedia

"" New York Review of Books, volume 55, number 4, March 20, 2008 (subscription required, see also here).

The Charms of Wikipedia

on "BackStory" radio program

Interview about "Human Smoke"

"" New Yorker, August 3, 2009. On the Kindle reading device.

Can the Kindle really improve on the book?

Aired on the Lewis Burke Frumkes Radio Show.

A radio interview with Nicholson Baker

Wroe, Nicholas. "". Guardian, 19 September 2009. An interview.

A Life in Writing

May 4, 2002

KCRW Bookworm Interview

La Clé des langues - 2012

Nicholson Baker on his literary career and how he came to write about sex