Nicholson Baker

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Nicholson Baker (2013)

Nicholson Baker (born January 7, 1957 in New York ) is an American writer. He is known both as a novelist and an essayist . His books are available in German translation, mainly from Rowohlt. On the occasion of the 2014 award ceremony, the jury of the Calwer Hermann Hesse Prize described Baker as a "great descriptive and naming artist of contemporary US literature".

Life

Nicholson Baker grew up in Rochester , first studying music at the Eastman School of Music there , then from 1975 to 1979 English literature at Haverford College . He has been married to his wife Margaret since 1985 and has a daughter and a son. He lives with his family in South Berwick , Maine .

plant

Baker writes for The New Yorker , The Atlantic Monthly , The New York Review of Books and Esquire , among others .

In 1991 he published the essay U and I: A True Story , a tribute to his literary role model John Updike . Further essays appeared in 1996 under the title The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber ; In the German publication of 1998, both titles are combined in one volume, although "Lumber", the most extensive essay from "The Size of Thoughts" with over 130 pages, has been omitted.

His first novel Escalator or The Origin of Things already set the standards for Baker's later work: Here an employee reflects primarily on ordinary objects during a working day. Two shoelaces broke within a day and an avalanche of thought starts rolling that stops at nothing. Plastic drinking straws, ice bowls, the art of throwing a napkin into a garbage can without having to touch the lid with your own skin: The protagonist Howie and probably his author are particularly impressed by the superficially unimportant things. Apart from the daily routine, Baker almost completely dispenses with plot and narrative threads, instead he interrupts the flow with sometimes ludicrous footnotes; Baker apparently lets things run smoothly, but with great artistry and humor, which Eike Schönfeld saved into German. This debut is exemplary because Baker has already proven here that he can write “wonderful books about escalators, baby noses, phone sex, matches and, yes, warmongers” that are wonderfully mad about their objects and at the same time crazy with their obsession.

In his novel Vox (1992) he describes phone sex between a man and a woman. The book consists of a single long dialogue and is about erotic fantasies that are verbally lived out with an unknown partner. The book played a role in the Lewinsky affair because Lewinsky allegedly gave it to Bill Clinton . The special investigator Kenneth Starr therefore tried to obtain an injunction against two bookstores that were supposed to release their customer data. This was publicly criticized by Baker.

“ Die Fermate ” (1994) tells of the academic and temporary worker Arno Strine, who has the gift of stopping the flow of time whenever he wants. In the time gaps that arise, he delights work colleagues, complete strangers in the subway, but above all himself with mostly erotic escapades, which, however, always arise from a friendly intention.

His non-fiction book Double Fold (2001, German: Der Eckenknick ), a pamphlet against the destruction of originals microfilmed collections by libraries in the USA , received a lot of attention . The title alludes to the rule of thumb that if a book is only folded twice, its state of preservation can be recognized. To save newspapers from being spoiled, he founded the non-profit American Newspaper Repository , and since 1999 has been buying up extensive stocks and storing them in a warehouse. The collection was transferred to the Duke University Library in Spring 2004 .

In his novel Checkpoint (2004) he describes a planned assassination attempt on the incumbent President of the United States , George W. Bush, during the election campaign, which sparked an ethical debate in the United States. In the book, Baker turns to political issues such as the Iraq war for the first time .

His book Human Smoke (2008) about the Second World War caused a sensation in the USA and England, as it suggests anti-Semitic tendencies and complicity in the development and course of the Second World War among the leaders of the Western Allies ( Winston Churchill , Franklin D. Roosevelt ) or seeks to prove it through contemporary sources ( revisionism , war guilt question ).

In his essay The Charms of Wikipedia , Baker explained how he transformed himself from an avid user into a temporarily addicted Wikipedia author: " What finally drew me into it was trying to save articles from deletion ." Quotations and research Baker fought at times to preserve what was supposed to be marginal knowledge in Wikipedia.

In the novel The Anthologist (2009), a no longer very young but almost unknown author, whose writing and love career is flopping in his own judgment, reflects on poetic and personal problems while writing a poetry anthology.

The book House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011), German: "House of Holes", deals in a humorous, playful way with "pornography", with all conceivable varieties of adult sexual practices and fantasies. The work is less of a novel, but rather a collection of thematically related, intertwined individual stories or novellas .

In September 2013 there was a sequel to The Anthologist under the title Traveling Sprinkler (German: “Das Regenmobil”, 2016) about the weird main character Paul Chowder. Baker describes, among other things, how Paul rediscovered music for himself and the role of his instrument, the bassoon and musical structural elements in classical music. Instead of poems, he decides to write pop and protest songs in the future and equips himself with the appropriate digital software and hardware for his own production of danceable pieces. Experiments with tobacco as a neurostimulant, reflections on the US drone war, visits to the sports studio and the Quaker devotion, music meditations in the car and the caring longing for the bygone Rosslyn complete the musical all-round blow. The eponymous collection of historical and movable lawn sprinklers barely survived the collapse of its literary creative barn.

In 2015, essays already published in various journals appeared collected under the title So geht's .

In English, 2016:

Substitute : Going to School with a Thousand Kids (2016)

Baker describes in daily reports his experience of a month's assignment as a substitute teacher at various public schools in the state of Maine, where he lives. He describes in detail the use of worksheets and standard learning templates, digital media, student types, teaching and learning behavior including attention deficits on both sides of the desk, the normal madness of a US school. Baker describes his motives, some reflections on a reformed school and his own experiences in an “alternative” institution in the 1970s in the New York Times article “Fortress of Tedium” (German: “Bulwark of boredom”).

music

In 2012, while working on “Traveling Sprinkler”, the author published his own song entitled Jeju Island in “ The New Yorker ” magazine and on the “youtube” platform. It is a melancholy chant with piano accompaniment in which Baker laments the planned military strategic use of the island of Jeju in the East China Sea by South Korea and the USA as well as the involvement of the Korean media group Samsung. More songs followed. The song A "Whistleblower song" is dedicated to the US Army member Branning. The structure of the songs is similar to the composition recipes that Paul Chowder (the main character in "Anthologist" and "Traveling Sprinkler") developed during his sunken cathedral meditations ( Claude Debussy ) at the Kia Rio and based on his " Logic " software in the tobacco and peanut butter cracker rush E-keyboard for the best.

Baker himself describes his motivation and the creation of the "Four Protest Songs" in the New Yorker.

Awards

Works

German translations:

Amer./engl. Original editions:

  • Subsoil. Fiction. In: The New Yorker. June 27, 1994.
  • Substitutes. Going to School with a Thousand Kids. Blue Rider Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0-399-16098-1 .

interview

literature

  • Arthur Saltzman: Understanding Nicholson Baker . University of South Carolina Press, Columbia 1999, ISBN 1-57003-303-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ International Hermann Hesse Prize 2014 to Nicholson Baker at www.hermann-hesse.de on March 11, 2014.
  2. ↑ Jochen Jung: Nicholson Baker - Love goes through verse. In: Time online. March 18, 2010.
  3. ^ "Novelist Nicholson Baker and booksellers attack Kenneth Starr as a 'Stalker'." ( Memento of December 2, 1999 in the Internet Archive ) Salon.com , April 3, 1998.
  4. ↑ Our Collection Has Moved to Duke University. ( Memento of March 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) March 2004.
  5. ^ Christian Mariotte: In the immediate vicinity. Review at literaturkritik.de
  6. ↑ Nicholson Baker: The Charms of Wikipedia. In: The New York Review of Books . March 4, 2008. Abridged German version: Make indelible. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 5th / 6th April 2008, p. 16.
  7. ^ Elane Blair: Coming Attractions. In: The New York Review of Books . September 2011.
  8. ↑ A visit to the author. In: Deutschlandradio. January 15, 2012.
  9. ↑ The Rain Mobile: Stereo recordings as a revelation. In: Deutschlandradio. 19th December 2015.
  10. ↑ Fortress of Tedium. In: New York Times. September 7, 2016.
  11. ^ "Jeju Island" , 2012 "Terrormaker" , 2012; “When you intervene” , 2014; "Nine Women Gathering Firewood" and "Whistleblower song" , 2014.
  12. ↑ Nicholson Baker: Four protest songs . In: The New Yorker . October 2012 ( newyorker.com [accessed February 14, 2017]).
  13. ↑ Michael Rutschky : Hands off! Nicholson Baker is deeply concerned about the destruction of printed paper. Review of Der Eckenknick. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . October 19, 2005.
  14. ↑ Gustav Seibt : People like war. Review of human smoke. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . March 3, 2009 by
  15. ↑ Volker Sielaff: Speed ​​is not recommended. Review by Anthologist. In: Der Tagesspiegel . February 21, 2010.
  16. ↑ Verena Lueken: There is enough desire for everyone. Review of the House of Holes. In: FAZ . January 13, 2012.
  17. ↑ Jörg Plath: Sensual adventure. Review of the House of Holes. In: Deutschlandradio . February 8, 2012.
  18. ↑ Harvesting flowers in everyday life. In: Deutschlandradio Kultur. 19th December 2014.
  19. ↑ , Meditations Against Disappearance. In: taz. January 24, 2015.
  20. ↑ Nicholson Baker: Subsoil. newyorker.com
personal data
SURNAME Baker, Nicholson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City