FICTION
Released: Feb. 14, 1992
"First Harold Brodkey as the Mahler, the Liszt, of the hand-job, now Nicholson Baker as its David Letterman."
On a private adult phone-sex line, Jim, a West Coaster in his late 20s, connects with East Coast Abby.
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FICTION
Released: Feb. 1, 1994
"But drama is drama and porn porn, this among the most literary-respectable of the latter that money can buy."
The talented Baker returns with sex for sophisticates, making Vox (1992) seem like a warmup exercise.
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FICTION
Released: May 1, 1998
"It rings wrong, totally. (Author tour)"
The author of The Fermata (1994), among others, offers an extended dramatic monologue by a nine-year-old American girl living in England, a plotless series of riffs exploring the curiosities of a life among English-speaking foreigners.
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NONFICTION
Released: April 13, 2001
"If even half of what Baker alleges is true, some of America's most honored librarians have a lot of explaining to do."
In a passionate cri de coeur sure to raise controversy and alarm, novelist Baker (
The Everlasting Story of Nory, 1998, etc.) accuses America's librarians of betraying the public trust as they rush to microfilm and digitize.
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FICTION
Released: Jan. 14, 2003
"Skilled. Often charming. Minor."
Baker (
The Everlasting Story of Nory, 1998, etc.) applies his fine-tooth comb--or magnifying glass--to a short and tightly controlled meander through the hyper-dailiness of domestic life--in a kind of extended prose haiku.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 10, 2004
"An absolute treasure for anti-Bushists, the purest sin-and-snake-venom deceit and villainy to pro-Bushists. Let the reader-voter call it."
From Baker (
A Box of Matches, 2003, etc.), a tiny little slip of a thing about--about
what? About assassinating George W.
Bush?
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NONFICTION
Released: March 1, 2008
"Similar to but less noisy than John Dos Passos's U.S.A.: Selective, well-chosen fragments add up to a living history."
A catalog of primary sources creatively fashioned by novelist and National Book Critics Circle Award–winner Baker (
Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, 2001, etc.) tells the grim story of the making of two world wars.
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FICTION
Released: Sept. 1, 2009
"The author's characteristic obsessiveness and attention to minutiae will appeal mainly to those who know and care as much about poetry as Paul."
Novelist/polemicist Baker (
Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, 2008, etc.) takes a nullity as a protagonist.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 9, 2011
"Baker explores a fine line between eroticism and pornography here, and were it not for his wit and verbal play, the latter would win out."
Baker returns to the eroticism of his earlier
Vox (1995) and
The Fermata (1994) but kicks it up about a dozen notches.
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NONFICTION
Released: Aug. 7, 2012
"Not a major work, but a thoughtful collection from a writer who, to quote his own description of Daniel Defoe, has "an enormous appetite for truth and life and bloody specificity.""
The erudite novelist and essayist ponders obsessions both old (newspapers and rare books) and new (Kindle 2, Wikipedia, video games).
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