Product Description

Nicholson Baker's new novel, The Anthologist, is narrated by Paul Chowder, a poet of some little reknown who is sitting in his barn most of the time trying to write the introduction to a new anthology of poetry called Only Rhyme. He's having a hard time getting started because his career is falling apart, his girlfriend Roz has recently left him, and he is thinking about the poets throughout history who have suffered far worse and actually deserve to feel sorry for themselves. He has also promised his readers that he will reveal many wonderful secrets and tips and tricks about poetry, and it looks like the introduction will be a little longer than he'd thought. What unfolds is a wholly entertaining and beguiling love story about poetry, among other things; Paul tells us about all of the great poets, from Tennyson, Swinburne, and Yeats to the moderns (Roethke, Bogan, Merwin) to the contemporary scene as well as the editorial staff of The New Yorker's editorial department. And what he reveals about the rhythm and music of poetry itself is astonishing and makes you realize how incredibly important poetry is to our lives. At the same time, Paul manages just barely to realize all of this himself and what results is a tender, wonderfully romantic, often hilarious, and inspired novel. The Anthologist bears all the beloved hallmarks of Baker's novels: it is witty, erudite, breathtakingly articulate and stylish, and full of the whimsical, compulsive elements that have made its author a worldwide success.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22956 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-20
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Review
'Baker's best novel to date . . . dazzling . . . You'll laugh, you'll howl, you might even recite'

SOURCE2:
The Times --Financial Times

`Baker has created in The Anthologist a poetry workshop in fictional form. It's instructive, quirky, and highly entertaining'
--

`The Anthologist compels us to pay attention to the world, creating a mood of sad attentiveness which is its own reward'
--Guardian

`Baker's language is full of wonder of the detail and sensous surprise . . . funny, moving and utterly captivating'
--Psychologies

`An engaging book, humorous, whimsical'

--Scotsman

About the Author
Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 and attended the Eastman School of Music and Haverford College. He is the author of several novels, including The Mezzanine, Vox and The Fermata, and four works of non fiction, U and I, The Size of Thoughts, Double Fold (winner of the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award), and Human Smoke. He lives in Maine.

Customer Reviews

The Anthologist
This is a mischievous piece of work: a non-fictional discourse that is posing as a novel. To have it described as such would perhaps please its author, because Nicholson Baker is known to be a whimsical, self-indulgent person. The Anthologist has a story line, of sorts. It is about Paul Chowder, a minor American poet, who has been contracted by a publisher to compile an anthology of rhymed verse. But Paul has a couple of problems: One, he is also required to write an introduction of some forty pages and finds he has writer's block; two, his long term girl friend Roz, frustrated with his lack of progress with the assignment, decides to leave him. He believes that only when he completes the job will she return to him. What follows is a poetry workshop in fictional form, in which Baker ruminates on what makes a poem, and a narrative comprised of vignettes of characters around him. These include his editor, a couple of fellow-writers (who may be merely a figment of his imagination) and a neighbour for whom he does odd jobs. The combination of these aspects makes for a fascinating read. Baker's views on the English Romantics and American modernist poets are both informative and entertaining. As the novel draws to its end the reader will realise that Paul Chowder has delivered his introduction, though rather being the intended forty pages it is virtually the length of the novel being read.

An absolute knockout.
I have never come across this author before- but what I have been missing.This is one of the funniest books I have ever read and had me literally howling with laughter. Taught me quite a bit about poetry too. I will seek him out.Margaret Mac.UK.

The Anthologist
All of the reviews I read of Nicholas Baker's novel : The Anthologist, were uniformly positive, encouraging and even intriguing. It was, for me, a "must read", and it didn't disappoint. The copy I bought via Amazon is now circulating among my family, and is currently in the possession of a grand daughte with an interest in poetry.

A love of poetry is not a precondition for enjoying this unusual novel, but it would certainly heighten the reader's pleasure and satisfaction, and there is a strong liklihood that those who begin the book with a sense of indifference to poetry, will finish it with their viewpoint much changed.

I enjoyed the novel enormously, and heartily recommend it to others.