Baker, Nicholson
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1957- ) US author whose novels have consistently threatened to push mimetic conventions past the point where they can usefully be applied, beginning with The Mezzanine (1988), whose enormously expanded rendering of a small movement in time and space clearly stretches "realism" into something more interesting. U and I: A True Story (1991) self-revealingly anatomizes John Updike. The protagonist of The Fermata (1994) discovers in childhood that he can stop time at will (see Time Distortion), allowing him as an adult to conduct elaborate exercises in voyeurism. House of Holes (coll of linked stories 2011) presents further exercises in the erotic, some of them fantastic. [JC]
Nicholson Baker
born New York: 7 January 1957
works (selected)
- The Mezzanine (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988) [hb/Dave Calver]
- The Fermata (New York: Random House, 1994) [hb/nonpictorial]
- House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011) [coll of linked stories: hb/Jason J Hever]
nonfiction
- U and I: A True Story (New York: Random House, 1991) [nonfiction: John Updike: hb/Steven Snider]
links
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