Nicholson Baker (born January 7, 1957) is a contemporary American novelist, whose writings focus on minute inspection of the narrator's stream of thought. His unconventional novels deal with topics like voyeurism and planned assassination, but generally de-emphasize traditional aspects of plot. Baker's enthusiasts appreciate his ability to candidly explore the human psyche, while critics feel that his writing wastes time on trivia (Stephen King has notoriously compared Baker's work with fingernail clippings).

Life

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Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 in Rochester, New York. He studied briefly at the Eastman School of Music and received his B.A. from Haverford College. He lives today with his wife and two children in South Berwick, Maine. He received a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2001. Apart from writing novels, Baker has been a fervent critic of what he perceives as librarians' destruction of paper-based media. He wrote several vehement articles in The New Yorker critical of the San Francisco Public Library sending thousands of books to a landfill, the elimination of card catalogs, and the destruction of old books and newspapers in favor of microfilm. In 1997 Baker received the San Francisco-based James Madison Freedom of Information Award in recognition of his efforts.

In 1999, he established a non-profit corporation, the American Newspaper Repository to rescue old newspapers from destruction by librarians. He published a book in 2001 based on his researches in this area, Double Fold, in which he accuses certain librarians of lying about the decay of materials and having an obsession for technological fads, at the expense of both the public and historical preservation.

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