The Anthologist: A Novel

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• ISBN13: 9781416572442
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Description

The Anthologist is narrated by Paul Chowder -- a once-in-a-while-published kind of poet who is writing the introduction to a new anthology of poetry. He's having a hard time getting started because his career is floundering, his girlfriend Roz has recently left him, and he is thinking about the great poets throughout history who have suffered far worse and deserve to feel sorry for themselves. He has also promised to reveal many wonderful secrets and tips and tricks about poetry, and it looks like the introduction will be a little longer than he'd thought.

What unfolds is a wholly entertaining and beguiling love story about poetry: from Tennyson, Swinburne, and Yeats to the moderns (Roethke, Bogan, Merwin) to the staff of The New Yorker, what Paul reveals is astonishing and makes one realize how incredibly important poetry is to our lives. At the same time, Paul barely manages to realize all of this himself, and the result is a tenderly romantic, hilarious, and inspired novel.

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Customer Reviews

Before I was finished my first read through, I went out and bought my own copy
It's the voice of The Anthologist that hooked me by page two. Here is a voice that let's the reader relax, sit down, and meander through the images Baker creates as Paul Chowder (the main character) shares his knowledge of poetry and his world view. In the first chapter, we are invited up into Chowder's writing space, the second floor of his barn. We are greeted by one of the mainstays of poetic imagery, a shaft of light. But the image does not feel trite, it feels like our own shaft of light, the one we may have been looking for, the one we are hoping to place our own white plastic chair (Chowder's chair of choice)into for comfort and inspiration. We listen as Chowder shares his secrets, his self doubts, and his fear that it's the secrets below the surface which are both true and unreachable. Buy this book if you want to meet a writer you can trust.

2010-02-28 | (Lee) (NewJersey) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Novel?
Baker's narrator is a writer with what might be called a "block," who has lost his lover, and who comes across as something more than an anti-hero because of his erudition and gentle personality, but who is without doubt someone who is less than effectual. If this is a novel (as the cover tells the reader it is), then it's one with not a lot of novelistic things going on. What is going on is some of the best poetic criticism and analysis you're likely ever to get outside an Ivy League classroom. For that, it probably deserves more stars. If you're even a little bit interested in poetry, you need to read this book.

2010-02-10 | JLC (North Carolina) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Nicholson Baker is put under the microscope in the latest STFTV
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R13M56Z1Q1JYYU A nonfiction master returns to the world of fiction with his latest work...

2010-01-29 (Houston, TX) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 3

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Pro-crastination
Semi-successful poet Paul Chowder is stuck on writing the introduction to an anthology of poems he has put together. Paul procrastinates like nobody's business as he ponders his questionable future, his neighbors, his break-up and the nature of poetry. The funny thing is, it works. Through first person narration Paul's character is knowable and lovable. His problems are ordinary yet his observations are absorbing and funny. His insights into poetry and various poets are completely accessible and thought provoking. This was a very enjoyable read.

2010-01-04 (Fl, USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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He must have several 5 star friends
It is unbelievable that this book got published, filled as it is with many sections of drivel. I can only attribute the 5 star ratings to his having a lot of friends.

What this really is is a treatise on poetry interspersed with meaningless diary entries. For example, he has a short chapter on buying a tablecloth. - I don't care about his tablecloth! - You won't either.

Later in the book he discusses Thursdays providing the insight that there are only fifty two of them in the year, that the R in Thursday is frightening and the S is appalling. I'll spare you more examples.

In summary, a gift book for someone you dislike.

2010-01-02 (Maine) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 1

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The Fermata

Description

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.

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The Fermata is the most risky of Nicholson Baker's emotional histories. His narrator, Arno Strine, is a 35-year-old office temp who is writing his autobiography. "It's harder than I thought!" he admits. His "Fold-powers" are easier; he can stop the world and use it as his own pleasure ground. Arno uses this gift not for evil or material gain (he would feel guilty about stealing), though he does undress a good number of women and momentarily place them in compromising positions--always, in his view, with respect and love. Anyone who can stop time and refer in self-delight to his "chronanisms" can't be all bad! Like Baker's other books, The Fermata gains little from synopsis. The pleasure is literally in the text. What's memorable is less the sex and the sex toys (including the "Monasticon," in the shape of a monk holding a vibrating manuscript) than Arno's wistful recollections of intimacy: the noise, for instance, of his ex-girlfriend's nail clipper, "which I listened to in bed as some listen to real birdsong."

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Customer Reviews

Erotic delight
Hidden in this wonderful book are some of the best erotic scenes Ive ever read and I both read and write erotica. Great book. Great pacing and plot.

2009-03-22 | Movie Nut (Knoxville USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Excellent!
Everything was smooth and perfect! Condition is excellent, just like new, but about 99% off a regular price! Couldn't have asked for anything better! Shipping was very expedient! I would recommend the seller to everyone!

2009-01-24 | bargain shopper (Chatham, NY USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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One of my all time faves
Combine part juvenile eroticism with a near genius style of narrative and insight into human nature and you have The Fermata. This is one I have re-read many times and each time another concept seems to leap out at me. If the mature themes of "Vox" or "The Fermata" are a put off, try "The Mezzanine" or "U and I". In every book, Baker's ability to create tangential meanderings through many everyday situations that we often pay too little attention to and as a result never gain the the threads of connection that runs though our thoughts and deeds never ceases to leave me awestruck and left to ponder a million thoughts all at once.

2008-12-26 | Puckle (Denver CO United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A Great Idea Wasted, Forget About It
The other 1-star reviewers are right: this book is a HUGE disappointment. I got both so bored and disgusted, I couldn't even finish it. The idea of being able to stop time is wonderful and exciting, but this author does absolutely nothing with it but masturbate. On top of it, it's very sexist, even though he tries to argue that he really isn't all that bad. He is. What a sick mind! The protagonist and author show zero respect for women and try to make you believe that everyone would act exactly as he does. This world would be a lousy place if he were right. I really loved The Mezzanine, though, what a pity.

2008-12-03 (USA/Germany) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 1

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Adolescent it its sexuality, mature in its view
This book is interesting just from the responses people have toward it. Just read the other reviews and you get a flavor. I have given this book to guys and they mostly enjoy it. However, the women who I have given it to have largely disliked it and even been offended. However, I did pass this book onto a woman who worked in a patient care profession in a hospital. She passed it along to her coworkers, all women, who read it and just loved it. I got my very worn copy back several months later.

2008-08-05 | Tom Scott (Baltimore, Maryland, USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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The Mezzanine

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• Proviso: NEW
• Notes: Characterize New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• ISBN13: 9780679725763

Description

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.

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Customer Reviews

details
If your into details of your surroundings and things that happen around you, this book is for you. Laughing out loud, alot! Excellent.

2010-02-10 (Wisconsin) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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A torturous failure in experimental fiction
It's really painful for me to read the fawning praise by other Amazon reviewers lionizing this book for its originality. The entire work could serve as a cliché for artistic pretentiousness at its worst, an exercise in trivial and transparently post-modern intellectual narcissism. Often when you hear an artist's work described as `experimental', it's code for `original but not very good.' This book effectively epitomizes the notion of experimentalism gone awry. Since there is basically no story, we are left with the writing - unremarkable at best - and the ideas, which basically catalogue frivolous lines of thought in which the narrator marvels at the breaking of his shoelaces two days apart, the evolution from milk delivery to cartons, the pleasures of refilling a stapler, and other nonsense. In effect, the author thought it would be clever to hit the reader over the head for 150 pages with life's absurdity. How could this be entertaining? I wondered too and made the mistake of finding out.

I read another reviewer, doubtless agitated by some reference to the book's vapidity, declare that people focus too much on the big questions, when it is really the minutiae that make the difference in our quality of life. I disagree. The reason people differentiate between minutiae and the important is precisely because one is far more relevant to our existence than the other. Maybe there is some nihilistic wisdom in cultivating a jubilant reaction to menial tasks and minor feats of engineering, giving exaggerated meaning and joy to people whose lives are otherwise ordinary and mediocre in every facet, but it's boring as hell to read about.

2008-06-09 (Ottawa) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 1

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Seinfeld on Crack
Imagine describing 3 minutes of minutaie for an entire book. That's Mezzanine. One of my favorites though. A real brain screw.

2008-04-17 (Trumbull, CT) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 4

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Unreadable
I enjoyed baker's previous books, VOX and Fermata, but found this book to be completely unreadable and boring.

2008-04-06 | meilichios (Houston, Texas United States) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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Just Pleasure in Reading
There is very little to take away from this book. And that is praiseworthy.

If you feel you must find some kind of meaning, you could make a case that our life is lived in the minutiae that we ignore and not in the grand moments we choose to remember.

Follow a man on his common trip out of a building and across the square. Use this book to fill some idle minutes reading rather than on a sitcom.

2007-07-26 (Columbus, OH USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 4

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Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

Product Details

• Acclimatize: NEW
• Notes: Kind New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• ISBN13: 9781416572466

Description

Bestselling author Nicholson Baker, recognized as one of the most dexterous and talented writers in America today, has created a compelling work of nonfiction bound to provoke discussion and controversy -- a wide-ranging, astonishingly fresh perspective on the political and social landscape that gave rise to World War II.

Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources -- including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries -- the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy. Vivid glimpses of political leaders and their dissenters illuminate and examine the gradual, horrifying advance toward overt global war and Holocaust.

Praised by critics and readers alike for his exquisitely observant eye and deft, inimitable prose, Baker has assembled a narrative within Human Smoke that unfolds gracefully, tragically, and persuasively. This is an unforgettable book that makes a profound impact on our perceptions of historical events and mourns the unthinkable loss humanity has borne at its own hand.

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Bestselling author Nicholson Baker, recognized as one of the most dexterous and talented writers in America today, has created a compelling work of nonfiction bound to provoke discussion and controversy -- a wide-ranging, astonishingly fresh perspective on the political and social landscape that gave rise to World War II.

Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources -- including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries -- the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy. Vivid glimpses of political leaders and their dissenters illuminate and examine the gradual, horrifying advance toward overt global war and Holocaust.

Praised by critics and readers alike for his exquisitely observant eye and deft, inimitable prose, Baker has assembled a narrative within Human Smoke that unfolds gracefully, tragically, and persuasively. This is an unforgettable book that makes a profound impact on our perceptions of historical events and mourns the unthinkable loss humanity has borne at its own hand.

Questions for Nicholson Baker

Amazon.com: This is obviously a big departure for you, in both style and subject. How did the project come about, and how did it find this form?

Baker: I was writing a different book, on a smaller historical subject, when I stopped and asked: Do I understand World War Two? And of course I didn't. Also I'd been reading newspapers from the thirties and forties, and I knew that there were startling things in them.

In earlier books, I've looked closely at moments to see why they matter, and I've tried to rescue things, people, ideas from overfamiliarity. So in a way a book like this--which moves a loupe over some incidents along the way to a much-chronicled war--was a natural topic.

But yes, the style is a departure: it's very simple here out of respect for the hellishness of the story that I'm trying to assemble, piece by piece.

Amazon.com: Why World War Two in particular?

Baker: Politicians constantly fondle a small, clean, paperweight version of this war, as if it provides them with moral clarity. We know that it was the most destructive five year period in history. It was destructive of human lives, and also of shelter, sleep, warmth, gentleness, mercy, political refuge, rational discussion, legal process, civil tradition, and public truth. Millions of people were gassed, shot, starved, and worked to death by a paranoid fanatic. The war's victims felt as if they'd come to the end of civilization.

But then we also say that because it turned out so badly, it was the one just, necessary war. We acknowledge that it was the worst catastrophe in the history of humanity--and yet it was "the good war." The Greatest Generation fought it, and a generation of people was wiped out.

If we don't try to understand this one war better--understand it not in the sense of coming up with elaborate mechanistic theories of causation, but understand it in the humbler sense of feeling our way through its enormity--then cartoon versions of what happened will continue to distort debates about the merits of all future wars.

Amazon.com: You largely kept your own opinions out of the text, except for the choices you made in what to include and a few editorial comments here and there, as well as your short Afterword at the end. It makes for a real tension between the neutral tone and the sense, at least on the part of this reader, that there are some passionate opinions behind it. What authorial role did you want to establish?

Baker: I found that my own cries of grief, amazement, or outrage--or of admiration at some quiet heroism--took away from the chaos of individual decisions that move events forward.

It helps sometimes to look at an action--compassionate, murderous, confessional, obfuscatory--out of context: as something that somebody did one day. The one-day-ness of history is often lost in traditional histories, because paragraphs and sections are organized by theme: attack, counterattack, argument, counterargument. That's a reasonable way to proceed, but I rejected it here for several reasons. First, because it fails to convey the hugeness and confusion of the time as it was experienced by people who lived through it. And, second, because I wanted the reader to have to form, and then jettison, and then re-form, explanations and mini-narratives along the way--as I did, and as did a newspaper reader in, say, New York City in September, 1941.

I think the pared-down, episodic style allowed me to offer some moments of truth that I wouldn't have been able to offer had I had uppermost in my mind the necessity of making transitions and smoothing out inconsistencies and sounding like me. I offer no organized argument: I want above all to fill the readers mind with an anguished sense of what happened.

Amazon.com: I was telling someone about your book and how it failed to convince me of what I took to be its thesis, and his response was, "Wow, you really made me want to read it." And that's my response too: if your point was to convince me that we shouldn't have fought World War II, then the book didn't work, but I'm still very glad I read it. But maybe that wasn't your point at all.

Baker: I'm really pleased that you responded that way. I didn't want to convince, but only to add enriching complication. Long ago I wrote an essay called "Changes of Mind" in which I tried to talk about how gradual and complicated a shift of conviction can be. I left overt opinionizing out of this book so that a reader can draw his or her own conclusions, folding in other knowledge.

There are many books about the war that I value highly even though I don't agree with the world-outlook of the people who wrote them. To take a major example: Churchill's own memoir-history is completely fascinating and revealing--and a great pleasure to read--although I happen to think that Churchill was himself a bad war leader.

There's no point in trying to use a book to replace one simple set of beliefs about World War Two with another simple set of beliefs. The war years are alive with contradictions and puzzles and shake-your-head-in-wonder moments. You're going to look at it in different ways on different days because you're going to have different moments uppermost in your mind.

On the other hand, I don't want to hide what I think. Here's what I am, more or less: I'm a non-religious pacifist who is sympathetic to Quaker notions of nonviolent resistance and of refuge and aid for those who need help. I find appealing what Christopher Isherwood called "the plain moral stand against killing." I don't expect people to look at things this way, necessarily--after all, it took me a while to get there myself. But I do hope that my book will offer some thought-provocations that anyone, of any ideological persuasion, will want to mull over.

Amazon.com: It's hard to believe there's something new to say about what may be the most written-about event in human history. What did you feel about approaching such a well-chronicled subject? What were you most surprised to find? What responses have you gotten from historians and other readers?

Baker: There were many surprises. For instance, I didn't expect Herbert Hoover, who argued for the lifting of the British blockade in order to get food to Jews in Polish ghettoes and French concentration camps, to be a voice of reason and compassion. I didn't know that German propagandists used the phrase "iron curtain" before Churchill did. I didn't know that in 1940 the Royal Air Force tried to set fire to the forests of Germany. I didn't know how interested the United States government was in arming China. I didn't know how public was Japan's unhappiness with the American oil embargo. I didn't know that many of the people who worked hardest to help Jews escape Hitler were pacifists, not interventionists.

I've had interesting reactions from historians, who seem to understand (for the most part) that I'm not trying to write a comprehensive history of the beginnings of the war. I've had some very good reviews and some very bad ones. The bad ones seem to follow the teeter-totter school: that if a dictator and the nation he controls is evil, then the leader of the nation who opposes the evil dictator must be good. Life isn't that way, of course. There is in fact no "moral equivalence" created by examining coterminous violent and repulsive acts. The notion of moral equivalence is a mistake, because it undermines our notions of personal responsibility and law. Each act of killing is its own act, not something to be heaped like produce on a balancing scale. One person, as Roosevelt said, must not be punished for the deed of another--though he didn't follow his own precept.

Gandhi comes up sometimes. It was said in a review that I "adore" Gandhi. That's not quite right. Gandhi is in many ways an admirable and perceptive man. He spoke gently even while thousands of his supporters were in jail and his country was being bombed by an occupying power. But the years told on him, and he sometimes came to sound, as Nehru once observed in a memoir, cold--indifferent to suffering. He is one voice, and a voice worth listening to.

My real heroes, though, are people like Victor Klemperer, who responded to Hitlerian terror not with counterviolence, but with beautiful nonresistance: by writing a masterpiece of a diary. He and Romanian diarist Mihael Sebastian have the last word for that reason. And I've dedicated the book to British and American pacifists--I want this book to rescue the memory of their loving, troubled efforts to help.

The most interesting and helpful set of responses to the book so far has been at www.edrants.com, where a group of participants discussed Human Smoke for a week, adding all kinds of thoughts, analogies, comparisons, and criticisms. I've never been through anything like it before, and I'm the better for it.

Amazon.com: Your recent celebration of Wikipedia in the New York Review of Books has gotten a lot of attention (deservedly so). Did the style and philosophy of Wikipedia influence the way you wrote Human Smoke? Have you made any Wikipedia updates based on what you found in your research.

Baker: I used Wikipedia during the writing of the book, especially to check facts about subtypes of airplanes and ships--e.g., the Bristol Beaufighter I cited in the first paragraph of the review. Wikipedia is amazingly strong and precise on military hardware. (And on when a British Lord became a Viscount, and on a million other things.) But I've been writing movies, and the model I often had in my mind while working on Human Smoke was the movie documentary--in which short scenes and clips follow each other with a minimum of narration.

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Customer Reviews

Interesting approach
While Mr. Baker has a particular point of view, he documents his facts well and supports his beliefs. The book is easy to read because of its short paragraphs framework, which also maintains a certain continuity of the pre-war developments. Certainly makes one think about all the "what ifs."

2009-12-12 (Cathedral City, CA USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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human smoke
an amazing and unique way to draw the full and personalized picture of impending doom as the second worldwar and the doctrine horrors approach and are prosecuted...told via extracts from diaries and notes etc of participants on all sides..I could not put the book down..read it in 2 days.

2009-11-11 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Misguided Smokescreen
People who are not professional historians may assume that if an author intends to distort history to serve some partisan or personal agenda, he will invent or falsify documents. A more common and effective method, of which this book is a prime example, is to distort by selection.
From a vast body of documentation, Baker plucks a narrow selection of provocative quotes that seem to support his biases to the effect that Churchill was a bloodthirsty warmonger and that Franklin Roosevelt maneuvered the US into war, probably by using the Pacific fleet as bait. The quotes, which are selected largely for shock value, are yanked out of context, with no effort to provide context, as a responsible historian would do. Churchill, for example, was a notoriously loquacious individual, probably the more so after a few drinks. Out of his immense collection of writings and remarks, it is easy enough to find some that put him in a bad light.
The problem is not so much that these quotes are not "true" in the sense that they can be documented (altho a serious historian would question the circumstances and motivations) but the way they are strung together. In order to pursue his agenda, Baker deals with many important episodes with only one or two quotes, while others that might prove instructive, such as the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the German moves into the Rhineland and Austria, the Italian invasion of Albania, the Spanish Civil War, are ignored.
This book might be considered amusing as an example of what can be done with selective distortion, but it is ultimately pernicious because it will be read by many who lack the historical background to see what is going on. By seeking to provoke, rather than inform, Baker takes a fundamentally irresponsible approach to history and encourages all sorts of flawed positions. The Nazi sympathizer Charles A. Lindbergh is elevated above Roosevelt and Churchill. US actions may have hindered the Japanese military, but why was Japan invading China, a larger and more populous country but also one with a much lower standard of living? How did remote and backward Ethiopia provoke Italy into attacking it? Hitler was, indeed, probably eager to make peace with Britain in 1941, but on what terms? The Germans might have evacuated part of France, but what about Alsace-Lorraine and all the smaller countries the Germans had overrun by then? The list of these deliberate gaps and oversights could go on indefinitely.
Another of these distortions by overemphasis is to inflate the size and importance of the feeble peace movement. Preferring peace to war is admirable, tho some of the advocates were so self-righteous as to become insufferable. The critical question, which Baker evades, is how realistic were these principles. Paradoxically, and probably unintentionally, the abundant selection of Gandhi quotes ends up demonstrating the absurdity and futility of the pacifist position in that era. Gandhi succeeded to a degree because the British Empire, at some essential level, was committed to the rule of law. Under regimes like Hitler's and Stalin's, the only recourse would have been to cause the collapse of oppressive regimes by clogging the system with dead bodies. During the remaining years of the war, beyond the period covered by this book, the Nazis demonstrated that they were fully able to dispose of millions of corpses.

2009-09-22 (Temperate Zone) | Helpful Votes: 10 | Rating: 1

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the complete story
One of the very best books I have read. Tells the real story in a compelling way using news items, diaries, and other primary sources.

2009-09-01 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Gorgeously written, but intellectually shameful and historically dishonest
I picked up this book and was excited by its format of dramatizing WWII through paragraph-long anecdotes. I was excited to read a few of them and see the writer's skill with language. Unfortunately, once I got into it I was disheartened to find it a biased work of revisionist history.

Readers coming to this book with little knowledge of WWII may be "shocked" to learn that Roosevelt and Churchill were the real warmongers, going against the heroic stories they've heard all their life. They'll be shocked because it simply isn't true. This embarrassingly slanted book is so determined to make the Allies out as villains that it endlessly quotes from Nazi periodicals as if they were legitimate sources and completely overlooks Japan's decade of aggressive actions in the Pacific to make the war America's fault.

I was going to write a more lengthy rebuttal of the countless inaccuracies in this book, but I was pleased to find that RedRocker has already done so under the title "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." He intelligently and carefully demolishes this intellectually shabby work of historical fiction. While Baker's lengthy endnotes attest to his staggering amount of research, the final book shows that he went into the project determined to make a point and simply cherry-picked facts that would support it.

After arguing that the Jews died because we forced Hitler to commit the Holocaust, and that the Rape of Nanking was a result of the Chinese not simply surrendering to the Japanese when they had the chance, he ends the book by asking if the war was worth fighting, and deciding it was not. Thank goodness the world was not ruled by people like Baker at the time, who would have become so lost in their own contemplation that they would have handed it to Hitler and Tojo on a platter. Instead we had admittedly flawed but decisive men like Roosevelt and Churchill, who had to make some terrible choices, but liberated Europe and the Pacific from brutal oppression. Baker seems to think the price was not worth it. I'd like to see him living in a German-occupied London in 1975, arguing the same inane point.

2009-08-27 (Los Angeles, CA) | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 1

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Vox

Product Details

• ISBN13: 9780679742111
• Notes: Type New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Shape: NEW
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Description

Baker has written a novel that remaps the territory of sex--solitary and telephonic, lyrical and profane, comfortable and dangerous. Written in the form of a phone conversation between two strangers, Vox is an erotic classic that places the author in the first rank of America's major writers. Reading tour.

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Customer Reviews

Baker Borrows from Roth
Basically an experimental novel told entirely in dialogue, between a man and a woman speaking exclusively on the phone through a sex chat line service. A borrowed narrative concept from Philip Roth's "Deception," the book succeeds at what it's trying to accomplish (which is essentially to titillate the reader and give them the impression that they're on the other end of the party line, just listening in and imagining what is going on in the privacy of these two people's homes, one on the East Coast, the other on the West Coast). There are no physical descriptions of the characters or their surroundings, so all of that is supplied strictly from the dialogue, which isn't necessarily "the truth" as each or both of them could possibly be "unreliable narrators" -- even though the author doesn't tip his hand in either direction on that. I barrelled through it in a couple of hours, not leaving the book with anything new or learned, but still enjoying the sojourn into these people's evening conversation.

If you've already read this and liked it, I'd suggest picking up Roth's "Deception," which is similar in form and tone, but richer in character and circumstance.

2010-01-24 | book-y (Los Angeles) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 3

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Phone Sex for the Literary Inclined
I read this title in a matter of hours, not only because of the simplistic writing technique, but because I could barely find it in myself to put it down. Written without chapter breaking points, the book is a novella-length dialogue between two lonely strangers who call a dating hotline. There are a few "he said" "she said" moments, but very few and far between, with everything gathered through their conversation alone. Though in the wrong hands this technique could drive away readers, Baker uses it to captivate and draw the reader into the conversation. To say that the text doesn't excite, in more ways than one, would be a disservice to the author as up to the very last page, when the two strangers reach a culmination in their dialogue and meander into the awkward downtime that follows, I wanted little more than to read the book over.

Keep in mind, however, that this book isn't for everyone: the dialogue-only technique can be strangling for some readers, and in no way should this be considered "light reading" for anyone younger than their teenage years. Of course, when teenagers do read this, I wouldn't be surprised if the urge to explore beyond the normal reaches of their room reaches a breaking crescendo.

[...]

2008-12-01 (Bridgeport, CT USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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The Joy of Anonymous Indecency...
This is a naughty little book with a scalding reputation. Many know that Monica Lewinsky gave a copy of the salacious "Vox" to then President Bill Clinton. A very quick read reveals the implications behind such an offering. It's about as direct and unambiguous as a gift gets. In the nuclear political fallout, author Nicholson Baker catapulted into the mainstream. The hubbub around "Vox" arguably solidified his literary career.

Put as bluntly as possible, this book deals with the anonymous and faceless pleasures that many find in phone sex. Though new and ridiculously interactive technology has since surfaced that makes a mere conversation seem tame in comparison, "Vox" nonetheless maintains some of its shock value some sixteen years later. One reason is that the written word perfectly captures the purely syntactical eroticism of a dirty telephone conversation. No faces. No direct physical interaction between parties. All words and imagination to stimulation. Nothing else.

The conversation that ensues within remains nameless to the end. Plus, the paradoxical human condition tends to allow more intimacy in anonymous situations. People can shamelessly reveal themselves to those they will likely never meet. In "Vox," a west coast man and an east coast woman do just that. Their explicit and intimate conversation belies the stark impersonal nature of their medium of choice: "2VOX," a phone bank advertised in adult magazines. They filter out the overstimulated rabble and enter a "private" phone line. They never address the concern that someone may be listening in. In any case, the reader, in full voyeur mode, does listen in to every word and guttural noise. Some might feel guilty after finishing this book, complete with its literary and, um, "other" forms of climax.

"Vox" remains a fun, if somewhat superficial, read. Baker's penchant for capturing conversation shines at full prominence here. The stories and fantasies shared range from the hilarious to the outright pornographic. The woman fantasizes about being stuck in a hole in the wall surrounded by strapping painters. Of course they paint. The man tells his tale about convincing Emily, a woman with seductively long arms, to his apartment to watch a dubbed European "blue movie." They ask each other what they're doing, how they're dressed, about their deepest secrets, and most significant conquests. The woman once used olive oil and a shower head in creative ways. She shares this ditty with the man, who brings the entire conversation to a satisfying conclusion by utilizing his "Mmmm-Detector." The question arises whether they will talk again, and the book ends with Baker's signature "unresolved resolution."

Evaluating this book remains problematic. Of course it's a titillating page-turner. It's dang fun. But does it rise above literary smut? At the very least, it represents highly creative, intriguing, well-written and engaging smut. At best, it explores the vastness of human sexuality interfacing with anonymous technology. Though the characters seem to reveal their deepest secrets, they remain strangely unknown in the conduits of telecommunications. That they nonetheless manage to have a meaningful and satisfying encounter despite distance and intangibility, remains one of the book's most poignant tensions. Some may be put off by the explicitness of certain passages. Many would doubtless give "Vox" an "X" rating. But many will find the exploration a liberating and enticing read, regardless of how one rates its literary qualities. Baker further explored these themes in a later book, the even dirtier "Fermata." Though a little tamer, "Vox," given the political controversy that surrounded it and subsequent attention it received, will stand as Baker's breakout novel.

2008-11-11 | ewomack (MN USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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a complicated mind
This is a quick little read-just over 40,000 words-about a man and a woman having phone sex. I've always borne the prejudice that nothing could be less interesting than phone sex, particularly somebody else's phone sex. And yet, here we have two people who stray from the topic at hand (so to speak)and from behind the cloak of anonymity, let fly some marvelously revealing fragments of everyday life.
Baker has the man say at one point 'an orgasm in a complicated mind is always more interesting than one in a simple mind'. Aside from the acknowledgment that orgasms happen in the mind, this is a wonderful moment. It's one of the many points in this little book when two people take quiet note of each other's humanity. Read this alongside Philip Roth's Deception-a book that's structurally identical and worlds away in spirit.

Lynn Hoffman, author of the novel bang BANG

2008-07-03 (Philadelphia) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Great Read
I was constantly asking myself if I was more blown over by the characters or the genius of the author's creativity. Imagine a man that indiscriminately worships the idea of women masturbating. That's hott! Or who considers himself a spokesperson for women freely expressing their sexuality. Still hott. This is a one chapter book about phone sex, but phone sex with debth. The characters and plot are great, but to witness the author's creativity, is even better. Enjoy.

2006-11-29 (Little Rock, AR United States) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Checkpoint: A Novel

Product Details

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• Notes: Disgrace New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• ISBN13: 9781400079858
• Adapt: NEW

Description

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

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Customer Reviews

Double Checkpoint
I loved it! It reads almost like a radio script - and just as fast. I finished it in 3 hours because I couldn't put it down. I'm now reading all the Baker I can find.

2009-11-20 (Los Angeles, Calif.) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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This position is unmanned
When reading all the praise of Nicholson Baker's prose, on the dust jacket, and his ability to use the English language to create a satirical edge, I expected something more substantial. Apparently, this is case of reputation leading the book. There is nothing funny (except the Bush seeking Bullets), nor ironic in the text, and satire is checked in at another hotel. One cannot feel any emotional impact the ravings of Jay, as he plots to kill the bush baby in the White House. (Although, I suspect that if Shrub could read, the book just might make him catatonic.) This really is not a novel, but a one-act play.

2009-07-19 | Bartonmaru (Dover, Delaware United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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Excellent!
Everything was smooth and perfect! Condition is excellent, just like new, but about 99% off a regular price! Couldn't have asked for anything better! Shipping was as expedient and it only has a library lamination, and property sticker, but it keeps the book in better condition. I would recommend the seller to everyone!

2009-01-24 | bargain shopper (Chatham, NY USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Checkpoint: vindicated by history.
Upon publication, Checkpoint was given a near-universal thumbs down by the mainstream press. I venture that it's worth re-visiting as a period piece from the absolute darkest days of the quasi-fascist Bush administration and its imperialist war.

Checkpoint is staged as a conversation between two old friends, one on the verge of insanity, the other trying to calm him down. The conversation centers around one man's desire to kill President George W. Bush. Again, the mainstream press - as shamefully guilty as Bush himself regarding getting the United States into Iraq - panned this book as a "screed". I'd say it's guilty-as-charged, but Checkpoint is a worthy, justified, and fairly nuanced screed. It's not really a "novel", and it barely qualifies as "fiction", but it does approach a sort of fiery Truth in its righteous anger. It is, over all, a thought experiment in the philosophical sense. Checkpoint asks: When the State becomes fascistic, undemocratic, and violent, are the people justified to use violence in return? Or, since we get to vote every now and then (an absolute minimum standard for our celebrated "democracy"), have the people eternally surrendered our recourse to such violence?

If we can learn anything from the Bush administration, it's that we should at least be pondering these questions. We should at least be able to write books about them without being labeled "unpatriotic" or "irresponsible".

If this book WERE a traditional novel about the same subject, with narrative and lots of chapters and a complicated plot, it would not be worthy of one star. But Checkpoint is a conversation that should have been going on at the level of public discourse, while instead we only had cowardice and fear and patriotism that, in retrospect, was obviously false.

2008-12-24 (Washington, DC) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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An emotional outburst embedded in its time...
Probably the least controversial thing one can say about Nicholson Baker's "Checkpoint" is that it's controversial. Released at a time when the highly polarized American public was awaiting the charged 2004 election, the book's main character spews invective against the incumbent president, George W. Bush. Some four years later the public remains equally divided as yet another tense presidential election approaches. Some things never change. 2004 also saw the release of Micheal Moore's "Fahrenheit 911," a film which seemed to unify the left by showcasing President Bush and his administration at their absolute worst. Its phenomenal success prompted a catharsis of anti-Bush material. Doubtless Baker, or at least his publisher, saw an opportunity with "Checkpoint." In August, 2004 it appeared to near universal disdain (at least in the mainstream American press). Though the book isn't necessarily political, its timing, subject matter and tone probably made it difficult for many to read it otherwise. Its incendiary topic: the assassination of President Bush.

The cover of "Checkpoint" says "a novel," but it reads like a play. It could easily be performed as one (for the controversy hungry, at least). Every page contains nothing but dialogue and the occasional bracketed stage direction or sound (such as "[Click... click, click]"). Perhaps the cover should instead read "Checkpoint a dialogue." The text involves a tape recorded discussion between two main characters, Jay and Ben ("Room Service" has a few lines later on). Ben has rushed to the "Adele Hotel and Suites" in Washington, D.C. at Jay's behest. Jay soon says "I'm going to assassinate the president." Ben's initial reaction seems a bit far-fetched, but as the book continues the reader discovers that Ben has a history with Jay. Jay isn't well. He hasn't been well for a while, it seems. Plus, he's a little loopy. His assassin's weapons include a large boulder, remote controlled flying saws, and "special bullets" programmed by marinating them with a picture of the intended victim. Jay also reads blogs. From these he's collected information on what he sees as the crimes of the Bush administration. The Iraq war plays heavily here, in particular an episode at a checkpoint in which a mother witnesses her daughters killing by US forces. Jay works himself to a frenzy. Ben tries to dissuade him and threats begin (when Ben threatens to contact the authorities, Jay promises to carry out his act immediately; the story's crucible seems a little contrived, but it suffices). Ben tries to calm Jay with some of the usual palliatives: killing just leads to more killing, all presidents have been bad (he lists them since Truman; only Carter gets a "meant well"). He then has Jay pound on a picture of Bush with a hammer ("[Flump!]"). Whether this provides adequate therapy remains somewhat ambiguous. The book ends with a "[Click.]"

Following publication, a plethora of interpretations spewed from the press and public. Some excused it merely as a diatribe against President Bush a la "Fahrenheit 911." Others saw it as a critique of liberalism, likely building on the seeming "nothing-we-can-do" passivity of Ben in the face of Jay's violent outburst and Jay's iconoclastic views on abortion. A much smaller number questioned the legality of the book. Still others saw its "therapeutic" value in providing a warning to not destroy oneself by raging against the machine. The literary minded tended to dismiss the politics altogether and focus instead on the character's personalities and interactions. Baker himself insisted that the book is "not political," though he also said it was inspired by the events of the recent Iraq war. The book does read like an emotional outburst. It feels rushed and uneven in many places. But it also contains hilarious, disturbing, and moving passages; a few of which seem like harbingers of Baker's 2008 non-fiction follow-up "Human Smoke." Ultimately, the question remains: will this book continue to inspire readers situated outside the political volcano it appeared in? It seems to have disappeared, swallowed up by the 2004 election results, though criticism of the Bush administration continues unabated. Nonetheless, the book contains enough intriguing elements that in a few year's time people may read it with a new perspective. In some ways the book was too close to the historical events that surrounded it. Time may provide enough distance to judge the book by other merits. Or perhaps it will remain a product of its fervent and frenzied time, when the United States saw a degree of polarization unseen since the Civil War.

2008-09-13 | ewomack (MN USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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