Nicholson Baker Books

From the author of the acclaimed Human Smoke comes a brilliantly funny and skillfully crafted new novel.

With original and controversial insights brought about by meticulous research, 'Human Smoke' re-evaluates the political turning points that led up to the Second World War, and in so doing challenges some of the treasured myths we hold about how war came about and how atrocities like the Holocaust were able to happen.

Our supreme fabulist of the ordinary now turns his attention on a 9-year-old American girl and produces a novel as enchantingly idiosyncratic as any he has written. Nory Winslow wants to be a dentist or a designer of pop-up books. She likes telling stories and inventing dolls. She has nightmares about teeth, which may explain her career choice. She is going to school in England, where she is mocked for her accent and her friendship with an unpopular girl, and she has made it through the year without crying.Nicholson Baker follows Nory as she interacts with her parents and peers, thinks about God and death-watch beetles, and dreams of cows with pointed teeth. In this precocious child he gives us a heroine as canny and as whimsical as Lewis Carroll's Alice and evokes childhood in all its luminous weirdness.

Delving into the often-overlooked realms of punctuation and the lexicography of adult content, the author combines sharp wit with a rich, elaborate writing style. This exploration serves as both a provocative and humorous tribute to the intricacies of language, highlighting how these neglected elements shape our communication and experiences. The book promises a unique perspective that intertwines curiosity with a celebration of linguistic quirks.

Exploring the craft of painting, the author embarks on a personal journey during the COVID-19 pandemic, learning through books, workshops, and tutorials. Along the way, he reflects on the influences of past artists he admires, intertwining his artistic growth with insightful observations about the creative process.

Ten years into researching the potential use of biological weapons by the United States during the Korean War, Nicholson Baker faced frustration and disillusionment, particularly with the FOIA process. He encountered long waits for responses, often receiving documents heavily redacted to the point of being illegible. Rather than remain stagnant, Baker decided to keep a personal journal of his obstructed research, documenting his correspondence with government officials who hindered his requests. This led to a unique and compelling narrative that delves into some of the darkest secrets of the CIA and US government, which are often concealed despite the Freedom of Information Act. In his clear and unpretentious style, Baker reveals disturbing stories of CIA programs involving weaponized insects and the intentional spread of Lyme disease, as well as dangerous military experiments on unsuspecting citizens and harmful chemical munitions used against innocent civilians abroad. Alongside these revelations, he shares poignant moments from his life in Maine, such as feeding his dogs and watching the dawn. The result is a powerful exploration of waiting, bureaucracy, the horrors of war, and the lethal secrets that the US government keeps hidden from its people.

Turns an ordinary ride up an office escalator into a meditation on our relations with familiar objects--shoelaces, straws, and more. Baker's debut novel, and a favorite amongst many of us here.

Paul Chowder is a poet, but he's fallen out of love with writing poems. He hasn't fallen out of love with his ex-girlfriend Roz, though. In fact he misses her desperately. As he struggles to come to terms with Roz's new relationship with a doctor, Paul turns to his acoustic guitar for comfort and inspiration, and fills his days writing protest songs, going to Quaker meetings, struggling through Planet Fitness workouts, wondering if he could become a techno DJ, and experimenting with becoming a cigar smoker.

Nicholson Baker's novels, The Mezzanine and Room Temperature, have been highly praised for their sparkling originality, deadpan humor, and eccentric style. Now, with U and I, Baker has written the most idiosyncratic and deftly illuminating essay on literary influence in recent memory, as he reveals his preoccupation with the work of John Updike.

Having turned phone sex into the subject of an astonishing national bestseller in Vox, Baker now outdoes himself with an outrageously arousing, acrobatically stylish "X-rated sci-fi fantasy that leaves Vox seeming more like mere fiber-optic foreplay" (Seattle Times). "Sparkling."--San Francisco Chronicle.

Emmett wants to know what life is about. Every day he gets up before dawn, makes a cup of coffee, lights a fire with one wooden match, and thinks. What Emmett thinks about is the subject of this wise and closely observed novel, which covers vast distances while moving no farther than Emmett's hearth and home.

In his second novel, Baker turns a young father's feeding-time reverie into a catalog of the minutiae of domestic love.

This is the story of two voices, his and hers: two strangers who, having met on a telephone chat-line, switch to a private, one-on-one connection - and find it impossible to hang up.

"Since the 1950s, our country's libraries have followed a policy of "destroying to preserve": They have methodically dismantled their collections of original bound newspapers, cut up hundreds of thousands of so-called brittle books, and replaced them with microfilmed copies - copies that are difficult to read, lack all the color and quality of the original paper and illustrations, and deteriorate with age. Half a century on, the results on this policy are jarringly apparent: There are no longer any complete editions remaining of most of America's great newspapers. The loss to historians and future generations in inestimable." "In this book, writer Nicholson Baker explains the marketing of the brittle-paper crisis and the real motives behind it. Pleading the case for saving our newspapers and books so that they can continue to be read in their original forms, he tells how and why our greatest research libraries betrayed the public's trust by selling off or pulping irreplaceable collections. The players include the Library of Congress, the CIA, NASA, microfilm lobbyists, newspaper dealers, and a colorful array of librarians and digital futurists, as well as Baker himself, who discovers that the only way to save one important newspaper archive is to cash in his retirement savings and buy it - all twenty tons of it."--Jacket

Presents an explicit new tale of carnal improprieties and comic raunchiness set in a surreal but familiar world of fantasy sex. A fuse-blowing, sex-positive escapade. Baker returns to erotic territory with a gleefully over-the-top novel set in a pleasure resort where normal rules don't apply. In charge of day-to-day operations is Lila, a former hospital administrator whose breast milk has unusual regenerative properties.

From Nicholson Baker, best-selling author of Vox and the most original writer of his generation, his most controversial novel yet.

Fünfzehn Jahre nach seinem Essayband «U & I – Wie groß sind die Gedanken?» wendet sich Nicholson Baker ein weiteres Mal diversen Problemen der Welterklärung zu und erzeugt bei ihrer Lösung eine funkensprühende, lachmuskelstrapazierende und zugleich stark informationshaltige Kunst. Die hier versammelten Perlen seiner Essayistik beschäftigen sich unter anderem mit der spezifischen Plattheit von Murmeltierschwänzen, der richtigen Technik des Abschreibens, dem Drachensteigenlassen, dem Gondelverkehr in Venedig, mit «Sex and the City» um 1840, mit dem kometenhaften Aufstieg der Lesegeräte sowie dem Rasenmähen. Klug, unterhaltsam und voller überraschender Entdeckungen.

Es begann mit einem Artikel von Nicholson Baker in «The New Yorker», der die Computerisierung von Bibliothekskatalogen kritisierte und deren Einfluss auf den Charme und die Effizienz eines Bibliotheksbesuchs beleuchtete. Daraufhin erfuhr er von der San Francisco Public Library, die aufgrund von Platzmangel hunderte von Büchern auf eine Müllkippe brachte. Seine Recherchen führten ihn zu den großen amerikanischen und englischen Bibliotheken, die wertvolle Zeitungsbestände nach der Mikroverfilmung auflösten. Baker entdeckte eine Lobby von Bibliothekaren, die von Fortschrittswahn und Raumnot getrieben sind und die Behauptung aufstellen, dass gedrucktes Material auf säurehaltigem Papier «zu Staub verfallen» werde. Diese Gruppe produziert fehlerhafte und benutzerunfreundliche Mikroverfilmungen und digitalisiert Bücher, obwohl die technische Infrastruktur unzureichend ist. Sie ignorieren die Warnungen von Kollegen, die sich für den Erhalt des Bestehenden einsetzen. Der Text informiert und argumentiert, während er die Kraft eines ironischen Manifests entfaltet, das in Amerika zu lebhaften Diskussionen geführt hat. Es wird beschrieben, wie Bibliothekare, oft unbemerkt, über das Schicksal von Büchern entscheiden, indem sie lediglich eine Seite umknicken und deren Zustand beurteilen.

I supplenti hanno vita difficile. L'ha sperimentato anche Nicholson Baker, saggista e romanziere americano che nel 2014 diventa supplente a chiamata in un distretto scolastico del Maine. Lo aspettano ventotto giorni di insegnamento e quasi mille bambini e ragazzi di tutte le età, dall'asilo alla scuola superiore. Baker sceglie di raccontare la sua esperienza non nella forma di un libro di teoria pedagogica né di cupa diagnosi sullo stato di salute del sistema scolastico, ma con un resoconto dettagliato della vita reale delle classi e di chi le popola. Baker restituisce così il senso vissuto di quanto possa essere indaffarato, complicato, strano e lungo un giorno di scuola, di quanti alti e bassi ci siano e di quanto la scuola possa essere estenuante - e talvolta divertente - tanto per gli insegnanti quanto per gli studenti.

Een jongeman die het vermogen heeft de buitenwereld tijdelijk stil te zetten, besteedt de gewonnen tijd aan het uitleven van seksuele fantasieën.

Unabh. Forts. v. "Der Anthologist". - Der Protagonist, der amerikanische Lyriker Paul, erzielt einen beruflichen Achtungserfolg, träumt von Musik und Tabaksorten, jagt seiner Ex-Freundin hinterher und liebt das Leben mit allen Kompromissen

Having turned phone sex into the subject of the bestseller, Vox, Baker now outdoes himself with an outrageously arousing, acrobatically stylish "X-rated sci-fi fantasy that leaves Vox seeming more like mere fiber-optic foreplay.

Der Band versammelt zehn der stärksten Kurzgeschichten des 'King of the Hard-Mouth-Poet', darunter 'Die große Zen-Hochzeit' und 'Hundekuchen in der Suppe'.