Nicholson Baker Journalist Profile

Articles

Novels in Unusual Forms

May 28, 2024 | countercraft.substack.com | Adam Sachs |Nicholson Baker |Samanta Schweblin |Percival L. Everett

Hi everyone, I’m back from a brief hiatus in which I read some good, weird books. One of them was a galley of the novel Gretel and the Great Warby Adam Ehrlich Sachs—coming out from FSG this summer—that is set in 1919 Austria and composed of letters from a man in a sanatorium to a mute woman he claims is his daughter. I really enjoyed the novel, which feels a bit like Brothers Grimm meets Thomas Bernhard, and especially admired its tricky form.
Bruised by the world, this Maine author turned to painting

May 21, 2024 | newscentermaine.com | Nicholson Baker

PORTLAND, Maine — In 2019, Nicholson Baker was ready for a reset. The author of more than a dozen works of fiction and nonfiction, several of them bestsellers, he had just finished writing a book that dealt with biological weapons in the 1950s. The subject did not leave him filled with gaiety and joy. "I was wiped out," he wrote. "I needed a rehabilitation program. A less bleak way of looking at the world." The answer, for him, would be art.
The Novel as Shaggy Dog Joke

Feb 1, 2024 | countercraft.substack.com | Nicholson Baker |Lincoln Michel

This week I taught an old favorite, The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, which is one of those novels I believe every young writer should read for the “What the hell? You’re allowed to do that??” factor. The Mezzanine—which was Baker’s debut in 1988—serves as rebuttal to all the usual writing advice about the importance of plot, inciting incidents, character arcs, showing instead of telling, and so on and so forth.
No, Aliens Haven’t Visited the Earth

Jan 31, 2024 | newsbreak.com | Nicholson Baker

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How We Lost Our Minds About UFOs

Jan 31, 2024 | msn.com | Nicholson Baker

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FINDING A LIKENESS

Dec 26, 2023 | kirkusreviews.com | Nicholson Baker |Stephanie Johnson |Brandon Stanton |

An amiable journey through an author’s attempts at mastering art. The celebrated novelist tries his hand at visual art. In 2019, after Baker finished Baseless, a nonfiction book about “horrible government programs that happened in secret a long time ago,” he “was wiped out. I needed a rehabilitation program.
Seven Books That Explore the Mystery of Marriage

Aug 16, 2023 | newyorkfolk.com | James White |Anne Carson |Nicholson Baker |Julia Armfield

Everyone wants to get inside of someone else’s marriage. That’s the appeal behind TV shows such as Couples Therapy and the therapist Esther Perel’s podcast Where Should We Begin?—and The New York Times’ recent report on the separation of former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlaine McCray. Matrimony, for all its mundanity, carries a mysterious aura: How might it alter the ways two people love? How might it fundamentally change who they are?