Notes from a talk given by Nicholson Baker, February 2011

I wrote these notes earlier this year, when Nicholson Baker came to speak at Columbia—a great talk by an early member of the EP pantheon. (My former student Andrew Eisenman gave the wonderful introduction.) The words are in black ink on both sides of a yellow bank receipt. The handwriting is messy, at times nearly indecipherable; the chronology is unknown, as entries are written horizontally, vertically, every which way. There are some arrows, brackets, and lines of demarcation. (Mostly I am posting this so I can throw away this piece of paper, which has been taunting me for most of this year, daring me to transcribe.)

Dizzies challenge: What book (or what anything) does "DWYDWTD" refer to?

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[Reverse side of receipt]

GGM [ = Gabriel García Márquez]

DWYDWTD [ = ?]

bassoon}

early NB compos[itions]}

I love chronology

Heap of self

_____

I forget whole books

[Reminds me of passage in U&I about how little we retain from even the books we like.]

carpet remnants

pillowsize

_____

keep it short)

Copy out good stuff)

Geo. Saintsbury

This American

stiffness,

kind of

Lego [?]

mov[eme]nt

What it's like

to be sitting

in a room

thinking

Churchill [?] magpie/maniac

____

speak-typing

____

DB [= Donald Barthelme] — @50,

starting to count

_____

You gotta face down yr demons! —————> 400 pp. ———> down [???]

—beard [?]

———> There's something fake about a long book.

sign language [There was a woman to his left, relaying the talk in sign language.]

Simp[le?]/complet[ist?] [?]

[Or more likely: "Simple/complexity"]

_____

I thought it was my friend, then remembered my friend was dead. [I have a feeling this could be a note to myself about some story I was working on, or else a line wanted to use in a story.]

Korean actress story [This was definitely a note to myself, to get back to a story I had started/was working on.]

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[Front side of receipt]

bassoon: some ridiculous novelty item

Strav[insky], Bartok, Brahms

______

Rubbing brow—

Schumann var. #9

"I wanted it not to be modern."

("Jeez, Eddie Money's not bad.")

_____

Beat your brains (ASL mimic head morts[?]) ["American Sign Language signer mimics head mortifications"?]

Dick Francis is a great comfort to me. First person. Horses. Every single book.

_____

[The] M[e]z[zanine]: The book was aiming at the list

Panasonic 3 wheel vacuum cleaner, greatness of

What a brutal thing to say—& I was probably wrong [? about what?]

If I can surround

it w/words to make it OK. (vid) [??]

____

Every day that I)

write is a new file)

[NB starts a new computer file for each day—title is the date]

____

Boringness is really

an interesting thing

____

[On the editing process:]

The places where I fell

asleep I took out

______

The most modern I

ever got, I think,

was Geo. Eliot

_____

Maeve Brennan [what he was reading lately]

The actual sequence

I. Sam Tanenhaus on Daniel Bell:

In this sense Bell was heir to the vanishing tradition of systematizers or master builders — Hegel and Marx, Durkheim and Weber, Freud and Nietzsche, Dewey and Veblen. All were required reading for the mid-20th-­century intellectual. But Bell seemed to regard them as rivals. He had digested even their most obscure writings and was not afraid to anatomize and correct them, fussily at times. His footnotes betray a hint of George Eliot’s pedant Casaubon: “Quotations have been transposed to compress and strengthen Schumpeter’s description. The actual sequence of quotations is: pp. 137, 147, 151, 147, 145, 154.” —NYT Book Review

II. This hair-raising story had a primo "Dizzies" moment:

The breakthrough occurred about 8:30 a.m., when two witnesses reported seeing Mr. Gelman on a southbound No. 1 train between 137th and 96th Streets in Manhattan. One called 911. The other, a woman, was reading a newspaper when a man, apparently Mr. Gelman, moved close.

Mr. Kelly related, “He knocks the paper out of her hand and says, ‘Do you believe what they’re writing about me?’ ” —NYT

III. I went to hear Nicholson Baker speak at Columbia last Thursday; among the many gems was this bit, on Dick Francis, which I then related to Jenny (the only Franciscan I know).

IV. At Desert Island in Brooklyn: a window display by Jing Wei:

Brown paper bag

“[W]hen I go to a poetry reading, they tell a little story before they read the poem: I went out for a walk and I got lost, and then somebody gave me this brown paper bag, and in it was … And I’m really interested in the story, because it’s spoken. So I knew this book had to be spoken—everything had to read as if it were actual speech. I wanted to see how the sentences would come out. Of course, actual speech is very sloppy, and this book is sloppy, very loose.”
—Nicholson Baker, in New York

Disambiguations™ for September 17, 2009

I. At the Poetry Foundation, Jesse Nathan talks to Nicholson Baker about The Anthologist, which I want Ed-clone to read for me (after he finishes Inherent Vice).

II. "A remarkable young woman named September": Why Grognardia is my homepage. (The interview also links to the entry on The Awful Green Things From Outer Space, one of the great Tom Wham's games for TSR.)

III. "The Someday Funnies": Epic article in The Comics Journal (excerpted here), on "How Michel Choquette (Almost) Assembled the Most Stupendous Comic Book In the World."

IV. "Madonna taught me how to do this": Sweeney sends along Abby Elliott's Gwyneth/Goop parody (in response to the Paltrovian bibimbap primer).

Gwyneth Paltrow Makes Chicken Goop.com with Abby Elliott from Abby Elliott

IV.1: Quick -- someone write a think piece about the connection between "embedding" videos and "embedding" journalists!

Pickwick and the Bs

I. Dickens turned out a number of Pickwick every month from March 1836 to November 1837--but November of 1836, Dickens also took on the editorship of Bentley's Miscellany, and in January of 1837 he graced its pages with the first installment of Oliver Twist. From there on, for nearly a full year, Dickens wrote both novels simultaneously, a task which, the Companion rather flatly notes,

he accomplished by devoting the first two weeks of each month to the Miscellany and the latter half of the month to Pickwick.

—I've Been Reading Lately

II. The problem is not Baker himself. The problem is that, as long as Baker lasts, the B’s last, because whenever I am onsite I get caught up in Nicholson’s near neighbors—the Pat Barkers and the Julian Barneses and the John Barths of the stacks. The Bolanos and the Brautigans.

—Theo Schell-Lambert, "The Real Cost of Books, Footnoted" (from Flatmancrooked)

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for May 21, 2008

I. Alice Boone has a lengthy, thoughtful post on Nicholson Baker and the method at work in Human Smoke.

II. Interestingly, AB favors Baker's Double Fold and recent Wikipedia essay (and the weird little story "Subsoil") over his earlier work; I find all aspects of Bakerdom interesting, but in the end I think it's those first three books—The Mezzanine (which I've been trumpeting loudly in interviews for PD), Room Temperature, and U & I—that establish him in the EP pantheon.

A few months ago, I don't know that I would have put RT up there—but a recent re-reading made me think that this was possibly his best book. Incredible! Some of this clearly has to do with my current situation—after all, the entire book takes place during the time it takes for the narrator to give his infant daughter her bottle. It's also, I think, a supremely well-conceived (and breathtakingly–ha!—written) variation on Burton's "Digression of the Air."

III. Spinster Aunt: "I've been reading short stories; I read an Ellery Queen story in which the perp was a man named Harry Potter."

IV. Huge thanks to everyone who came out for the reading/discussion last night at McNally Robinson! That was fun! (Next reading is Chicago, 6/5; next NYC reading is at Happy Ending on 6/11—more details here.)

V. Have said it before—will say it again: I like when Mollie complains! I've had grumblish dealings with the exact same post office she mentions, and reading her post made me want to reopen the case of "Why did you send a mailperson bearing a slip for an Express Mail package two days after I was supposed to get the package instead of just having her deliver the package itself"!

VI. I like that the NYT called me a poet—I'm not! I'm just a poet of...life?! Wha...

Table-talk for March 14, 2008

I.
The Other Ed organized a bloggers' roundtable on Nicholson Baker's latest book, Human Smoke, which ran on his site this week. Lots of interesting dialogue (and a small contribution from this Ed)...and today, Baker himself concludes the discussion!

II.
On Hey Dullblog—which is anything but dull!—Euge finally answers the trivia question that's had Beatlemaniacs stumped for weeks. You remember:

Over the decades, each of the Beatles worked on a musical collaboration that included a member of Black Sabbath (there have been 29). Name at least one such project for each of the four Beatles. Hint: Don't fear the snot running down the reaper's nose.

Eh?!

Click here for the answers.

III.
As soon as we touched down, guy on plane was on his cellphone or rather his Blackberryish device, saying EVERYTHING THREE TIMES: "Brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant." "See you, buddy...See you soon, buddy....see you, buddy." "Great. Great. Great."

IV.
DVDs brought on trip: Rules of the Game, The Power of Nightmares (disc 2), Gilmore Girls Season Four Disc Four.
DVDs watched on trip: Gilmore Girls Season Four Disc Four (first two episodes)

V.
Up at the Poetry Foundation, Dizzyhead Rachel looks at Grace Paley's poetry career:

Paley often spoke of her own indolence (“I laze. I mean really hang out”) and was rarely able to write pieces longer than five or six pages. She blamed it on her temperament: she was fairly happy.

Table-talk of Parkus Grammaticus for February 25

I. ARG: With the passing of Robbe-Grillet, it's time to re-read Dizzyhead Bill's review of AR-G's Repetition, from the PTSNBN:

Repetition is the high concept that made Robbe-Grillet's reputation. In his first novel, The Erasers (1953), he devoted many paragraphs to a pointlessly repetitious description of the configuration of seeds in a slice of tomato. The equally redundant description of the rows of banana trees in 1957's Jealousy was such an outrage to conservative critics that it was read for laughs on French radio. These notorious passages have given Robbe-Grillet a reputation as a difficult author; in America, he is more known of than read. The actual effect of the repetitious passages is playfully hypnotic, roughly the way that Morton Feldman's music is. Long before the Internet, Robbe-Grillet recognized that we all live in a world of senseless and irrelevant information, one lacking grand narratives.

II. And speaking of bananas...

III. Realized this weekend that the books in my reading queue form a spinal narrative!
The Explosionist (J. Davidson)
The Flash Press (eds. Cohen, Gilfoyle, Horowitz)
Human Smoke (N. Baker)

U & I for the third time

Dizzyhead Jason—our Canadian correspondent!—asks: What's the best thing you've read all year? It's like j'aime/pas without the pesky pas!

Any takers? E-mail: thedizzies at gmail dot com.

Jason's list: "I think it was probably Ooga Booga but also...Michael Tolkin’s Return of the Player (which I found weirdly delightful) and U & I (for the third time). And the latest Derek McCormack, of course, The Show that Smells—coming to a bookstore near you in fall ‘08..."

(Derek is Jason's roommate...read this rave of The Haunted Hillbilly!)

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Can't get enough of Dizzies Team Member Matt? Listen to his commentary for the new DVD of Gymkata.

Big as the size of thoughts

Part two of my Astral Weeks column exploring Endless Things, the final book in John Crowley's Aegypt tetralogy, is now up at the L.A. Times. (Here is part one.)

Endless Things reminded me of the closing line in...either Nicholson Baker's The Size of Thoughts, or Maureen Howard's Big as Life (part of her ongoing tetralogy)—half my books are still in boxes so I can't look it up: "Books open, then they close."

Red actions

But Ms. Wilson and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, contend that much of the censored information is in the public domain — and that the suppression of information is itself part of Ms. Wilson’s story. So “Fair Game” has been published with the censor’s marks visible as blacked-out words, lines, paragraphs or pages. The publisher amplifies the book with an 80-page afterword by Laura Rozen, a reporter, who uses matters of public record to fill in some of the gaps. —NYT

Most of the work I’m doing on the book [An Ordinary Spy] right now isn’t exactly writing, though, it’s measuring. In addition to material in the novel that the PRB redacted (blacked out because it was classified), I redacted a lot of material myself for various reasons. That means the book is full of black redaction bars. By the time the manuscript went from my word processor to the typesetter’s computers to the printed page, the formatting on the bars had gotten messed up. Since each bar has to precisely cover the information it’s blacking out, I’ve spent the last several months bent over the book with a tape measure, comparing the length of the bars to the length of what was supposed to be under them. —Joseph Weisberg, in the NYT's Paper Cuts

Those black bars, those black bars... —Nicholson Baker, U & I

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for September 5

New Believer is out!...Mediabistro has an article ("Scoring an Article at Your Dream Pub") about an article in this issue (Jason Boog's excellent "Skinning the Americans"), which I can't read, as it's behind a subscription wall; it possibly contains some quotes from me...who knows?!...Really cool piece on Borges by Gustavo Turner...Some Psychic activity...Alter-Ed has news of Nicholson Baker's upcoming book...(I guess you can't say he never does the same book twice—A Box of Matches and Room Temperature were perhaps variations on the strategy of The Mezzanine—but his range is impressive and I'm thinking about Perec these days and Baker might be one of the more Perecqian writers working today, in terms of appetite, range? This new book is "an 800-page opus"!...vs. the superslim Checkpoint, which really would work as a playlet)...("writers working today" = FormulaWatch™ would not be pleased!)...Want to inaugurate a new meme/contest via Jenny D but will do so next week...Sure, it's preaching to the converted, but this might be the hottest Atkinson blog post yet..."smirking Barbary ape"..."every limb-scattered intervention"..."teeters on the cliff-edge of nonsense"...This Poetry Foundation podcast is pretty great (listening to New Yorkers read aloud from those "Poetry in Motion" things on the subway)...