Nonfiction Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is primarily known as a novelist. The Mezzanine, published in 1988, was his first novel, and he's followed it with a bunch of books that pursue a similar "microscopic" approach to fiction (and a few with more conventional plotting and character development). But he's also published some nonfiction--a book-length memoir about his complicated readerly relationship with the fiction of John Updike called U and I, and an astounding reconsideration of the origins of World War II, a compilation of rarely told stories drawn from newspapers and other sources called Human Smoke. And he occasionally appears in periodicals like the New Yorker writing reviews and other commentaries.

As current pastichers of Baker's fictional style, I thought you might enjoy a few examples of Baker's nonfictional work. You'll note how recognizable the voice and sensibility is--it's easy to imagine Howie as the writer of these pieces.

In August 2009, Amazon was just launching the new Kindle 2. The very concept of the "e-reader" was still rather new, and the New Yorker published a quirky and unapologetically subjective "review" of the new product by Nicholson Baker with the clever title "A New Page." You'll recognize Baker in phrases like "an alpenhorn blast of post-Gutenbergian revalorization." Of course, the author is closely attuned to the possibilities for this new product and its impact on human lives and habits. And, of course, he doesn't just review the product itself but spends three full paragraphs giving a detailed account of the packaging as he opens it (can't you imagine Howie loving--or even making himself--those "unboxing" videos on YouTube?). The review is full of great Bakeresque lines, from the underwhelmed ("Yes, you can definitely read things on the Kindle") to the technically detailed (all this stuff about the "DX" versus the "Vizplex").

When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died in October 2011, I was surprised and delighted to see that the New Yorker published Baker's eulogy/tribute to the visionary creator of so much of the stuff that has become part of the fabric of everyday life, nearly all of which has appeared in the years since the publication of The Mezzanine. Jobs is known for his propensity to match aesthetics to technical wizardry--a combination Howie would surely appreciate--and Baker's tribute to Jobs is appropriately attuned to just how profound an impact Steve Jobs has had on life as we know it in the twenty-first century: the iPhone as your generation's perforation! Once again, those familiar with Baker's fiction won't be surprised when his eulogy begins rather unconventionally, with a personal narrative about "ordering a machine from Apple" and being stunned by the announcement of Jobs's death on the web page. This short essay offers both a moving and apt tribute to Steve Jobs and a bunch of oddball observations (like Al Gore "amazingly" chewing gum at the iPad launch). It feels both like a slightly self-indulgent bit of Bakerian whimsy and one of the best, most strongly voiced and clearly conceived tributes to Jobs at a time when every publication in existence was publishing them.

Finally, in a "review" that will be of interest to readers of The Mezzanine, in May 2015 Baker published a comparative and historical analysis of vacuum cleaners for the "Innovators" issue titled, aptly, "Suck It Up." The attentive reader of The Mezzanine will recognize Baker's enthusiastic homage to the "Panasonic three-wheeled bagless vacuum cleaner," which he acknowledges that he "liked so much" that he "had to mention it in [his] first novel" (number 6 on his list of recurring thoughts, just below "L," "Family," "Brushing tongue," "Earplugs," and "Bill-paying"--"Panasonic three-wheeled vacuum cleaner, greatness of," at 52 thoughts per year). We know how much Howie appreciates a freshly swept or vacuumed floor, and we recognize Baker's grounding of observations in "kid-memory" in his account of vacuuming couch pillows as a child that opens the essay. He coins the term "rug rage," and describes another vacuum as "UFO-shaped." His complaints about the Dirt Devil EZ Lite include a disparaging description of its "sandwich-sized filter," which you must pry out manually, "as if you were strumming a zither." The article ends on a positive note, however, as Baker reports his family's great satisfaction with the fifty-dollar Bissell Zing (bagged model): "I vacuumed several rooms before a dinner party last week and found myself singing Irish drinking songs loudly as I worked."