When you're reading a book, you're in a state of enforced solitude. I always liked reading books about solitary people because I like witnessing their thinking. So I guess I write books about solitary people for the same reason. I don't think that any of my heroes are kind of Hero Isolates. They're not solitary in the French sense, of really being 'alone,' and filled with ennui, and oppressed by objects. They just happen to be solitary at the moment.
Baker, Nicholson.
These papery swishes, the “negative spaces” between scribble units, contributed far more to the emotional soothingness of [my wife’s] diary-keeping than the word noise did—just as, when you listen to someone drawing your likeness, what is nicest are the occasional big hisses you hear as the eraser grit is swept from the page.
Baker, Nicholson.
...everything in my life seemed to enjamb splicelessly into everything else...
Baker, Nicholson.
I'm often called obsessive. I don't think I am ... but I agree that when I decide to go in one direction I really go in that direction.
Baker, Nicholson.
As [my wife] once told me years later...in repairing [an] object you really ended up loving it more, because you now knew its eagerness to be reassembled, and in running a fingertip over its surface you alone could feel its many cracks—a bond stronger than mere possession.
Baker, Nicholson.
Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It is fact-encirclingly huge, and it is idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking and full of simmering controversies - and it is free, and it is fast.
Baker, Nicholson. "How I Fell in Love with Wikipedia." in: The Guardian. April 10, 2008.
More people use Wikipedia than Amazon or eBay - in fact, it is up there in the top-10 rankings with MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. Why? Because it has 2.2m articles, and because it is very often the first hit in a Google search, and because it just feels good to find something there - even, or especially, when the article you find is a little clumsily written. Any inelegance, or typo, or relic of vandalism reminds you that this gigantic encyclopedia is not a commercial product.
Baker, Nicholson. "How I Fell in Love with Wikipedia." in: The Guardian. April 10, 2008.
And when people did help they were given a flattering name. They were "editors". It was like a giant community leaf-raking project in which everyone was called a groundsman. Some brought very fancy professional metal rakes, or even back-mounted leaf-blowing systems, and some were just kids thrashing away with the sides of their feet or stuffing handfuls in the pockets of their sweatshirts, but all the leaves they brought to the pile were appreciated.
Baker, Nicholson. "How I Fell in Love with Wikipedia." in: The Guardian. April 10, 2008.
Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism.
Baker, Nicholson. "How I Fell in Love with Wikipedia." in: The Guardian. April 10, 2008.
But the sources and the altruism do not fully explain why Wikipedia became such a boom town. The real reason it grew so fast was noticed by co-founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales in its first year of life. "The main thing about Wikipedia is that it is fun and addictive," Wales wrote.
Baker, Nicholson. "How I Fell in Love with Wikipedia." in: The Guardian. April 10, 2008.
So how do you become one of Wikipedia's upper crust, one of the several thousand whose words will live on for a little while, before later verbal fumarolings erode what you wrote? It is not easy. You have to have a cool head, so that you do not get drawn into soul-destroying disputes, and you need some practical writing ability, and a quick eye, and a knack for synthesis. And you need lots of free time.
Baker, Nicholson. "How I Fell in Love with Wikipedia." in: The Guardian. April 10, 2008.
I think I am done with Wikipedia for the time being. But I have a secret hope. Someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue - a bin of broken dreams where all rejects could still be read, as long as they weren't libellous or otherwise illegal. Like other middens, it would have much to tell us over time. We could call it the Deletopedia.
Baker, Nicholson. "How I Fell in Love with Wikipedia." in: The Guardian. April 10, 2008.
My goal was to get up at 4:30 in the morning, so I got up and I made a fire and everything in the dark. The idea was not to let incandescent light intrude on my consciousness — and I found that it did change the way I thought.
Baker Nicholson and Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr (Author). "Nicholson Baker: a Life in Detail." Nicholson Baker Audio Profile in: NPR. January 15, 2003.
Dickens was able to change the world and affect reforms by writing a fictional account of something that was wrong in the world, but as soon as I start writing about things that I think have gone wrong, I get so upset that I think I seem to have to be so earnestly truthful.
Baker Nicholson and Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr (Author). "Nicholson Baker: a Life in Detail." Nicholson Baker Audio Profile in: NPR. January 15, 2003.
The point about keeping the newspapers is that if libraries keep the old things and keep a copy or two of those things, then we all are free to ball them up and make fires with them. What is the best way to make a fire? One of the good ways is to start with the newspaper from four or five days ago.
Baker Nicholson and Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr (Author). "Nicholson Baker: a Life in Detail." Nicholson Baker Audio Profile in: NPR. January 15, 2003.
Maybe my job, my little county that I am the Sheriff of, is these things that are not so huge and dramatic and painful, but still interesting.
Baker Nicholson and Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr (Author). "Nicholson Baker: a Life in Detail." Nicholson Baker Audio Profile in: NPR. January 15, 2003.
I want the books to be about things that you don't notice when you're noticing them. You kind of notice things in passing and never put a frame around them. And then somebody like me comes along and writes a book about them and then the book itself becomes the frame.
Baker Nicholson and Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr (Author). "Nicholson Baker: a Life in Detail." Nicholson Baker Audio Profile in: NPR. January 15, 2003.
You notice something, some particular quality of the slush on the side of the road, or something, anything. You notice that a few times down in the lizard brain area, and then it's only the third or fourth time that you notice it that it feels as if you're noticing it. Seeing something again and again is essential to noticing something for the first time, in a strange way.
Baker Nicholson and Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr (Author). "Nicholson Baker: a Life in Detail." Nicholson Baker Audio Profile in: NPR. January 15, 2003.
We're at a bizarre moment in history when you can have the real thing for considerably less than it would cost to buy a set of crummy black and white snapshots of it which you can't read without the help of machine."
Baker, Nicholson. Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. Vintage. 2002. Paperback, 370 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0375726217.
Don't you think most writers are secretly worried that they're not really writers? That it's all been happenstance, something came together randomly, the letters came together, and they and won't coalesce ever again?
Baker, Nicholson and Dave Weich (Interviewer). "Nicholson Baker Stops Time, But Can He Save Jiffy Pop?" in: Powell's Books. April 28, 1999
Some people just have an urge to confess things, some kind of misplaced truthfulness. You want to say the things that people haven't said. And people have said a lot of things.
Baker, Nicholson and Dave Weich (Interviewer). "Nicholson Baker Stops Time, But Can He Save Jiffy Pop?" in: Powell's Books. April 28, 1999
The idea was to have one character fizzle out with a story and yet have someone else there who'd take it up, turn it, and maybe even twist it away from the intention of the person who started. It becomes antiphonal. The characters were competing with each other in a way, showing off. And of course they're both really me.
Baker, Nicholson and Dave Weich (Interviewer). "Nicholson Baker Stops Time, But Can He Save Jiffy Pop?" in: Powell's Books. April 28, 1999
The riskiest thing now isn't to do something evil, or graphically sexual. The riskiest thing now is something that edges on sentimentality. That's the taboo. But that's also what gives it the excitement. Can you be true to a person whose life isn't damaged? Who isn't illuminating bad things about adults? Who's just having a fairly normal kid's life - can you treat that complexity in a way that's interesting? I tried to, and I guess I think I did.
Baker, Nicholson and Dave Weich (Interviewer). "Nicholson Baker Stops Time, But Can He Save Jiffy Pop?" in: Powell's Books. April 28, 1999
It makes me unhappy when certain things change or things are superceded. Her personality...there's no way you can be nine forever. There's a sense of mortality in that each phase of a personality involves a huge loss of an earlier phase. Her vocabulary will change completely. She won't have the same words.
Baker, Nicholson and Dave Weich (Interviewer). "Nicholson Baker Stops Time, But Can He Save Jiffy Pop?" in: Powell's Books. April 28, 1999
The only way you can write about someone who's nine is by listening to the way they think.
Baker, Nicholson and Dave Weich (Interviewer). "Nicholson Baker Stops Time, But Can He Save Jiffy Pop?" in: Powell's Books. April 28, 1999
Jiffy Pop right now feels imperiled. I always think, Thank God it's still hanging there, even though people don't really buy it for the popcorn anymore - maybe they never did - but now it's a nostalgia item. It was like a Pullman car when people rode the train. Now people only ride the train on special occasions. So I'm sad about Jiffy Pop.
Baker, Nicholson and Dave Weich (Interviewer). "Nicholson Baker Stops Time, But Can He Save Jiffy Pop?" in: Powell's Books. April 28, 1999
When you're an aspiring writer you have a certain view of the literary universe, and if you write a few more books that view is completely gone. There's no way to resurrect it. The only way to write about that accurately is when it's happening. So there is a feeling of things passing that worries me a lot.
Baker, Nicholson and Dave Weich (Interviewer). "Nicholson Baker Stops Time, But Can He Save Jiffy Pop?" in: Powell's Books. April 28, 1999
... is it a male thing to focus on one thing and include all the world in your tight focus, then just check that thing off, be done with it, and focus on something else? You try to include everything else in the world by implication, staying true to your focus. Then you check that subject off. I don't know if it's a good thing or not.
Baker, Nicholson and Dave Weich (Interviewer). "Nicholson Baker Stops Time, But Can He Save Jiffy Pop?" in: Powell's Books. April 28, 1999
Don't you think most writers are secretly worried that they're not really writers?
Baker, Nicholson and Dave Weich (Interviewer). "Nicholson Baker Stops Time, But Can He Save Jiffy Pop?" in: Powell's Books. April 28, 1999
Because you know they're lying. You have to sample the writers around you. Even if you do it like me, kind of dilettantishly. I'm still taking pH readings here and there. I'm always aware of this Milky Way of book-reviewable people that are out there. Then of course all writers have their heroes, like Samuel Johnson, but those are easy to cite. You're not confessing a secret.
Baker, Nicholson and Dave Weich (Interviewer). "Nicholson Baker Stops Time, But Can He Save Jiffy Pop?" in: Powell's Books. April 28, 1999
Much of the ill-feeling between the city and the gondoliers is a result of the rampancy of moto ondoso.
Baker, Nicholson. "Grab Me a Gondola" in: The New Yorker. June 1998, 64-68.
I went through that little sex phase, you know. There were lots of big secrets there. And it felt like a big enough subject that there were lots of subsidiary things that, as I was writing them, felt a little under-talked-about. But then again, I don't want anyone else to write about sex. That's how sick I am. I would like to tell these little things and then have it be the final statement. Nobody ever again would write about sex because I'd written these two books. But it doesn't really work that way, does it?
Baker, Nicholson and Laura Miller (Interviewer). "The Salon Interview: Nicholson Baker, Lifting Up the Madonna." in: Salon. March 23, 1996.
I really don't like talking about sex at a dinner party in a yo-ho-ho way ... I want it all to happen in the book, while the reader is in a state of receptive, imaginative sympathy with the character, or maybe horrified fascination, but somehow on his or her own and able to think about it in private.
Baker, Nicholson and Laura Miller (Interviewer). "The Salon Interview: Nicholson Baker, Lifting Up the Madonna." in: Salon. March 23, 1996.
But the only time I actually felt pleasure writing was when I had turned the lens a little bit and was focusing on something carefully and was able to revolve it in my mind.
Baker, Nicholson and Laura Miller (Interviewer). "The Salon Interview: Nicholson Baker, Lifting Up the Madonna." in: Salon. March 23, 1996.
What it feels like is that, instead, I have some pressing point I want to make about the coils of a toaster.
Baker, Nicholson and Laura Miller (Interviewer). "The Salon Interview: Nicholson Baker, Lifting Up the Madonna." in: Salon. March 23, 1996.
With "The Fermata" I also felt I was writing the textbook of my private method. What I was trying to do as a novelist was to cause interruptions in time that were long enough to do justice to whatever piece of the world was before me.
Baker, Nicholson and Laura Miller (Interviewer). "The Salon Interview: Nicholson Baker, Lifting Up the Madonna." in: Salon. March 23, 1996.
There's a lot of sneaking that goes on and has always gone on. Not plagiarism, but just a lot of quiet imitation. Imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery. Imitation is a kind of theft. And any writer who is thoroughly imitated does not feel flattered. It feels as if some hard-won area of one's own style has been devalued by being overused.
Baker, Nicholson and Laura Miller (Interviewer). "The Salon Interview: Nicholson Baker, Lifting Up the Madonna." in: Salon. March 23, 1996.
Writers have always had a serious problem in their ability to thank the people who have helped them. My whole book on Updike was an attempt not to do that.
Baker, Nicholson and Laura Miller (Interviewer). "The Salon Interview: Nicholson Baker, Lifting Up the Madonna." in: Salon. March 23, 1996.
The only plot I find satisfying is: what previous thought let led to a mental climate that would potentially give rise to another minor thought? I don't have another way of proceeding, so it doesn't feel uncomfortable at all. It probably should, but it simply feels like the only way to go.
Baker, Nicholson and Laura Miller (Interviewer). "The Salon Interview: Nicholson Baker, Lifting Up the Madonna." in: Salon. March 23, 1996.
While I was writing that about the madonna I was thinking about one of those magic-trick books that my father had which showed it was possible to lift a person if ten people each put two fingers under a part of the person's anatomy, and exert a gentle upward pressure. It's my feeling that society stops working if our sense of gratitude is overly concentrated in only two or three areas. Lots of good things are going on. Lots of people are lifting up the madonna.
Baker, Nicholson and Laura Miller (Interviewer). "The Salon Interview: Nicholson Baker, Lifting Up the Madonna." in: Salon. March 23, 1996.
I realized that I didn't have the hardware to be a composer. Eventually it became clear that I would have to pick a different art.
Baker, Nicholson and Alexander Laurence, David Strauss (Interviewers). "An Interview with Nicholson Baker." in: AltX Interviews: The Write Stuff. 1994.
I like to have a different texture with each book because it helps me stay entertained as I'm writing. I don't know if the books are about different things or the same thing, or the same texture.
Baker, Nicholson and Alexander Laurence, David Strauss (Interviewers). "An Interview with Nicholson Baker." in: AltX Interviews: The Write Stuff. 1994.
(AL:) Urine is a major theme for you? (NB:) Today it is. That's definitely autobiographical. It's straight from the heart. After a movie, it's hell.
Baker, Nicholson and Alexander Laurence, David Strauss (Interviewers). "An Interview with Nicholson Baker." in: AltX Interviews: The Write Stuff. 1994.
(DS:) Which writers do you hate? (NB:) Name some names, maybe I'll hate them. My hatred doesn't last. I have these little passing irritations, but I tend to be constitutionally too cheerful to harbor any disgust for contemporary writers.
Baker, Nicholson and Alexander Laurence, David Strauss (Interviewers). "An Interview with Nicholson Baker." in: AltX Interviews: The Write Stuff. 1994.
Source: European Graduate School (EGS)
