Nicholson Baker on the Unsung Details

“I want to make a fuss with a pencil over some piece of life that has not been drawn, things that live in this between area of noticing, that are part of the background of life.”

Nicholson Baker has written seventeen books, including The Mezzanine, Vox, Human Smoke, The Anthologist, and Baseless—also an art book, The World on Sunday, in collaboration with his wife Margaret Brentano. Several of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, and he has won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a James Madison Freedom of Information Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the Herman Hesse Prize.