Product Description

The story of one man's lunch hour, tackling the important issues of life, such as "Why does one shoe-lace wear out before the other?" and "Who invented the spout on the paper milk carton?". The author has written stories for "The Atlantic" and "The New Yorker". This is his first novel.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #195729 in Books
• Published on: 1990-04-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

Highly original, perceptive, funny and thought provoking
Every so often, one comes across a book that is truly unique. As far as I am concerned, this, for me, is it. The life and times of a lunch hour set out in a highly descriptive and annoyingly accurate tale of life. The book is divided into sections outlining the various thoughts of one man going to lunch, who has more in common with us than we may care to realise. We are told of the subject's inner most thoughts, such as office etiquette, the transition from paper to plastic straws, and the 'obvious' trials encountered when your shoelace decides to die. The true genius of this book can be realised when one reads a section on the life expectancy of a shoelace. I admit, one may find it difficult not to skip to the next chapter in the hands of an ordinary author, yet one becomes fascinated with the depth of thought that has gone into this (and every other) section, which has been brought together through an amazing eye for wit and detail.

Not only is this book a pleasant change from the normal "paint-by-numbers" approach to story formulation, one is surprised at the simple humour that can be found in the apparently simple acts that our subject performs during his day.

an obsessive synthesis through nightsight binoculars under
Ever wondered how things work,the everyday little things we use and do? Do you like footnotes and digressions?Baker is on acid,but superbly controlled -I don't know how he did it. He grabs approaches from early Beckett,Georges Perec,Paul Auster and even self improvement like Pirsig's Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance.It is probably at the end a lament for childhood memories or a rite of passage through minutiae to what?I read it in alcohohol recovery and it showed me the small picture can be the big one.Unfortunately all the shared references are USA it would be good to have a GB cultural edition.At the end a work of possible genius.

Minutiae matters
There are a million and one tiny thoughts that flit unbidden through the human mind every day, and most slip through the fingers before they are even acknowledged. Baker has a gift for retaining these wraith-like filaments of imagination and making them concrete. In what is ostensibly a collection of the thoughts of a man on his lunch hour, Baker takes us through a wildly diverting tour of the minutiae of everyday life, from the coincidental but strangely logical patterns of shoelace wear and tear, to the merits and aesthetics of Soviet-esque stapler arms. Brilliant and jaw-droppingly intuitive, Baker serves up a lunchbox treat of hyper-stylish trivia liberally seasoned with backhanded jokes and a supreme understanding of the human mind.