U and I: A True Story: Nicholson Baker: 9780679735755: Books - Amazon.ca. 'U & I' essentially comes across as an internal conversation between Nicholson Baker and Nicholson Baker - where the subject happens to be John Updike. t's hard not to like a writer who can lace his curious, albeit in many ways quite remarkable, self-investigative book with The fruit of Mr. Baker's labor is "U and I," which he first adapted for The Atlantic and has now expanded into its a particular writer over at least ten years of spotty perusal," the novelist Nicholson Baker ("The Mezzanine," "Room Temperature") becomes deeply disturbed by the death of Donald Barthelme and determines He lives in Maine with his wife, Margaret Brentano; both his children went to Maine public schools. Books | Nicholson Baker is an American novelist and essayist. We are experiencing technical difficulties. By Nicholson Baker. has in fact read less than half of what Mr. Updike has written. Early on, despite his obsession with Mr. Updike ("Hardly a day has passed over the last thirteen years in which Updike has not occupied at least a thought or two"), Mr. Baker reveals, surprisingly enough, that he has haunted, inspired and influenced him beyond any other. Technology | "touch-me-anywhere-and-I'll-secrete-a-mot-juste kind of thing. Classifieds | Baker's ambition is a naked thing shivering with sensitivity, like a snail bereft of its … In this highly original and intelligent meditation, which the author suggests could be called "memory criticism, understood as a form of commentary that relies entirely on what has survived in a reader's mind from Page One Plus | Not since Salieri in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus has one man's genius so publicly tormented another. ", In another attempt to keep Mr. Updike in critical balance, Mr. Baker takes the writer to task for being mean-spirited when he calls Phaedra, the small press that published Nabokov's novel "The Eye," a "miserable The book is a study of how a reader engages with an author's work: partly an appreciation of John Updike, and partly a kind of self-exploration. For Mr. Baker, this is heady stuff, and the attending And he dislikes Mr. Updike's insensitivity when Sports | His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization. A major new work, a hybrid of history, journalism, and memoir, about the modern Freedom of Information Act – FOIA – and the horrifying, decades-old government misdeeds that it is unable to demystify, from one of America's… If you enjoy introspective novels and an insight into the working practices of a living author, or are already a fan of Baker… on a fascinating if unsteady journey of literary analysis and self-discovery, shuttling back and forth between soaring, manic moments of unabashed hero-worship and sober, even critical appraisals of the man who, he says, U and I: A True Story by Baker, Nicholson and a great selection of related books, art and collectibles available now at AbeBooks.com. ", Home | Site Search | Real Estate | Diversions | $18. | Amongst others, Baker has published articles in Harper's Magazine, the L Job Market | Editorial | Forums | Skip to main content. says, "Updike's real, nonfictional wife reading that paragraph and not being made very unhappy.". circumstances and brief interactions between the author and his hero are described with enormous charm and humor. admitted "inkhorners" like "florilegia," "prelapsarian" and "sesquipedalian," and then step back honestly and freely to discuss his self-consciousness about using such words and his Op-Ed | Business | "I couldn't imagine," Mr. Baker Mr. Baker boldly asks his future wife if she thinks he is a better writer than Mr. Updike. International | Out of a total of ten fiction books, he also wrote three erotic novels: Vox, The Fermata and House of Holes. Mr. Baker upbraids Mr. Updike as a "Jansonist Knopfer who thinks he is canny about bookmaking because he once worked a linotype machine." It's hard not to like a writer who can lace his curious, albeit in many ways quite remarkable, self-investigative book with admitted "inkhorners" like "florilegia," "prelapsarian" and "sesquipedalian," New York: Random House. Weather | Archives | U and I: A True Story is a non-fiction book by Nicholson Baker that was published in 1991. and then step back honestly and freely to discuss his self-consciousness about using such words and his fear that people (specifically his literary idol, John Updike) will think he's pretending his vocabulary is a present form. Arts | At one point, after provocatively criticizing Mr. Updike for his habit of using words like "shivering," "skittering" and "slithering" as "too cutely anthropomorphizing for their contexts," Site Index | Nicholson Baker : "I wanted my first novel to be a veritable infarct of narrative cloggers; the trick being to feel your way through each clog by blowing it up until its obstructiveness finally revealed not blank mass but unlooked-for seepage-points of passage." Copyright 1991 The New York Times Company, April 14, 1991, Sunday Late Edition - Final Section: 7 Page: 12 Column: 1 Desk: Book Review Desk Length: 620 words Type: Review, Lewis Burke Frumkes is the author of "How to Raise Your I.Q. Editor's Picks: Science Fiction & Fantasy. He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Hermann Hesse Prize, and a Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. New York Today, Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company. Science | Nicholson Baker is most famous for Vox, the phone-sex novel Monica Lewinsky gave President Clinton, but the vastly superior U and I contains Baker's own dirty little secret: an obsession with John Updike. Books Sure to Be on Everyone’s Holiday List, Read the Book Behind the Showtime Limited Series, Ina Garten's Latest Cozy and Delicious Recipes, Audiobooks Read By Your Favorite Celebrities, Chilling Audiobooks for a Haunting Halloween. a party at the Harvard Lampoon offices, when Mr. Updike remembers reading one of Mr. Baker's short stories and graciously pronounces it "a lovely thing." Nicholson Baker is the author of ten novels and numerous works of nonfiction, including The Anthologist, The Mezzanine, and Human Smoke. Baseless. Nicholson Baker is the author of ten novels and numerous works of nonfiction, including The Anthologist, The Mezzanine, and Human Smoke.He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Hermann Hesse Prize, and a Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Nevertheless, using remembered (sometimes erroneously) snippets from Mr. Updike's books and quotations that he keeps on index cards, Mr. Baker sets out In the final analysis, Nicholson Baker has exquisitely rendered a rich and sensitive portrait of one writer's search for artistic integrity. Services | Marketplace, Quick News | By clicking Sign Up, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Penguin Random House's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. by Eating Gifted Children" and "Manhattan Cocktail.". Travel, Help/Feedback | U AND I A True Story. For Mr. Baker, this is heady stuff, and the attending circumstances and brief interactions between the author and his hero are described with enormous charm and humor. Mr. Baker actually does meet Mr. Updike, twice -- once at an unceremonious book signing when Mr. Baker stands on line with his mother and presents his copy of "Rabbit Is Rich" for the author to sign, and again during "I think you're smarter than he is," she replies, "but that he's a better writer than you are. 179 pp. to embark on an essay about John Updike, while that writer is still alive and productive. In the final analysis, Nicholson Baker has exquisitely rendered a rich and sensitive portrait of one writer's search for artistic integrity. Please try again later. National/N.Y. little bindery." Automobiles | fear that people (specifically his literary idol, John Updike) will think he's pretending his vocabulary is a "touch-me-anywhere-and-I'll-secrete-a-mot-juste kind of thing.". His early novels such as The Mezzanine and Room Temperature were distinguished by their minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness. Try Prime EN Hello, Sign in Account & Lists Sign in Account & Lists Orders Try Prime Cart. The book will delight other writers. Sign up for news about books, authors, and more from Penguin Random House, Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network. he writes in a short story called "Pigeon Feathers" that the narrator's wife is "ugly," that the skin between her breasts is "a sad yellow."