Nicholson Baker was born on January 7, 1957. He is an American writer who writes novels and essays. His stories often focus less on telling a clear story and more on describing details and showing characters' thoughts and feelings. His early books, such as The Mezzanine and Room Temperature, are known for closely examining the inner thoughts of their characters. Out of ten novels he has written, three are classified as erotica: Vox, The Fermata, and House of Holes.

Baker also writes non-fiction books. His 1991 book U and I: A True Story describes his relationship with the writer John Updike. In 2001, he wrote Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, which discusses the American library system. This book won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Calw Hermann Hesse Prize for its German translation. Baker is a pacifist, meaning he believes in peace and avoids violence. He wrote Human Smoke (2008), a book about the events leading up to World War II.

Baker has written articles for magazines such as Harper's Magazine, the London Review of Books, and The New Yorker. In 1999, he created the American Newspaper Repository. He has also written about and edited Wikipedia.

Life

Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 in New York City. He studied at the Eastman School of Music for a short time and earned a bachelor's degree in English from Haverford College. Baker identifies as an atheist, though he sometimes attends Quaker meetings. He has stated that he has always believed in peace and non-violence. He met his wife, Margaret Brentano, while in college. They currently live in Maine and have two adult children.

Career

David Foster Wallace established his reputation with the novels The Mezzanine (1988) and Room Temperature (1990). Both books take place over short periods of time. The Mezzanine happens during a ride on an escalator, and Room Temperature takes place while a father feeds his baby daughter.

In U and I: A True Story (1991), Wallace wrote a non-fiction book about how readers connect with an author’s work. It includes his thoughts on the writing of John Updike and his own reflections. Instead of analyzing Updike’s work in a traditional way, Wallace said he would not read more of Updike’s writing than he had already read. Many of the quotes from Updike in the book are incorrect, and Wallace later explains these mistakes.

Wallace’s books Vox (1992), The Fermata (1994), and House of Holes (2011) are often grouped together because they explore themes of desire and fantasy. Vox describes a phone conversation between two strangers on a pay-per-minute chat line. This book was Wallace’s first New York Times bestseller. Monica Lewinsky gave a copy of Vox to President Bill Clinton during their relationship. In Vox, Wallace created the word femalia.

The Fermata follows a man named Arno Strine, who can stop time and remove women’s clothing. The book caused controversy among critics but was also a bestseller. House of Holes is a collection of stories set in a fantasy place where unusual sexual behaviors are allowed. The stories are connected and inspired by the works of Giovanni Boccaccio, such as The Decameron. The setting, called the House of Holes, is a place where people engage in strange sexual activities, like transferring body parts or having sex with trees. The book is similar to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as characters enter the House of Holes through unusual methods, such as falling through a clothes dryer or a straw.

Wallace strongly opposed the destruction of paper-based materials by libraries. He wrote articles in The New Yorker criticizing the San Francisco Public Library for throwing away thousands of books, removing card catalogs, and replacing old books with microfilm. In 1997, he received the James Madison Freedom of Information Award for his work. In 1999, he founded the American Newspaper Repository, a nonprofit group that saves old newspapers from being destroyed. In 2001, he published Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, a detailed book about the destruction of books and newspapers during the microfilming movement of the 1980s and 1990s.

The 2004 novel Checkpoint features a conversation between two old friends, Jay and Ben, who discuss Jay’s plan to assassinate President George W. Bush.

In Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (2008), Wallace wrote a history of World War II that challenges the common belief that the Allies wanted to avoid war. The book includes official government documents and suggests that pacifists were correct in their views.

In March 2008, Wallace reviewed John Broughton’s Wikipedia – The Missing Manual in the New York Review of Books. He described Wikipedia’s origins, its culture, and his own editing work under the name "Wageless." His article "How I Fell in Love with Wikipedia" was published in The Guardian in April 2008.

The Anthologist (2009) is told from the perspective of Paul Chowder, a poet who struggles to write an introduction to a poetry collection. Distractions in his life prevent him from starting, so he reflects on poetry and poets throughout history. In 2009, Wallace also reviewed Ken Auletta’s Googled: The End of the World as We Know It in The New York Times. Auletta responded with a letter criticizing Wallace’s review, and Wallace provided a rebuttal.

In 2014, Wallace spent 28 days as a substitute teacher in Maine public schools to research his 2016 book Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids. He wanted to learn about classroom life and wrote about the experience for The New York Times Magazine.

In January 2021, Wallace wrote a cover story for New York Magazine about the lab leak theory related to the origin of the COVID-19 virus. He expressed his belief that the theory was possible.

Works

• The Mezzanine (Published in 1988 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (ISBN 1-55584-258-5) and in 1990 by Vintage (ISBN 0-679-72576-8))
• Room Temperature (Published in 1990 by Grove Weidenfeld (ISBN 0-8021-1224-2), Vintage (ISBN 0-679-73440-6), Granta (ISBN 0-14-014212-6), and Granta again in 1991 (ISBN 0-14-014021-2))
• Vox: A Novel (Published in 1992 by Random House (ISBN 0-394-58995-5), Vintage (ISBN 0-679-74211-5), and Granta (ISBN 0-14-014057-3))
• The Fermata (Published in 1994 by Vintage (ISBN 0-679-75933-6))
• The Everlasting Story of Nory (Published in 1998 by Random House (ISBN 0-679-43933-1) and Vintage (ISBN 0-679-73440-6))
• A Box of Matches (Published in 2003 by Random House (ISBN 0-375-50287-4) and Chatto & Windus (ISBN 0-7011-7402-1))
• Vintage Baker (Published in 2004 by Vintage (ISBN 9781400078608))
• Checkpoint (Published in 2004 by Random House (ISBN 1-4000-4400-6))
• The Anthologist (Published in 2009 by Simon & Schuster (ISBN 1-84737-635-5))
• House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (Published in 2011 by Simon & Schuster (ISBN 1-4391-8951-X))
• Traveling Sprinkler (Published in 2013 by Blue Rider Press (ISBN 978-0399160967))

• U and I: A True Story (Published in 1991 by Random House (ISBN 0-394-58994-7), Penguin/Granta (hardcover ISBN 0-14-014226-6 and paperback ISBN 0-14-014040-9), Vintage (ISBN 0-679-73575-5), and Granta (ISBN 1-86207-097-0))
• The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber (Published in 1996 by Random House (ISBN 0-679-43932-3), Vintage (paperback ISBN 0-679-77624-9), Chatto & Windus (hardcover ISBN 0-7011-6301-1), and Vintage again in 1997 (paperback ISBN 0-09-957971-5))
• Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (Published in 2001 by Random House (ISBN 0-375-50444-3), Vintage (ISBN 0-375-72621-7), and Vintage again in 2002 (ISBN 0-09-942903-9))
• With Margaret Brentano (his wife). The World on Sunday: Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer's Newspaper (1898–1911) (Published in 2005 by Bulfinch (ISBN 0-8212-6193-2))
• Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (Published in 2008 by Simon & Schuster (ISBN 978-1-4165-6784-4))
• The Way the World Works: Essays (Published in 2012 by Simon & Schuster (ISBN 978-1-4165-7247-3))
• Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids (Published in 2016 by Blue Rider Press (ISBN 978-0-399-16098-1))
• Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act (Published in 2020 by Penguin Press (ISBN 978-0735215757))
• Finding a Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better at Art (Published in 2024 by Penguin Press (ISBN 978-1984881397))

• "The Lab-Leak Hypothesis" (Published in New York Magazine on January 4, 2021)
• "Fortress of Tedium: What I Learned as a Substitute Teacher" (Published in New York Times on September 7, 2016)
• "Wrong Answer: The Case Against Algebra II" (Published in Harper's Magazine in September 2013)
• "A Fourth State of Matter" (Published in The New Yorker, Vol. 89, no. 20, July 8, 2013, pages 64–73)
• "Four Protest Songs" (Published in The New Yorker on October 8, 2012, archived on February 14, 2017, retrieved February 15, 2017)
• "Can the Kindle Really

Awards

• In 1997, Baker received the James Madison Freedom of Information Award, which honors efforts to make government information available to the public.
• In 2001, Baker was honored with the National Book Critics Circle Award for his book Double Fold.
• In 2014, Baker and his German translator, Eike Schönfeld, received the Calw Hermann Hesse Prize for translating Double Fold into German.
• In 2018, Baker was given a Guggenheim Fellowship, which supports research and creative work.