"The Anthologist" by Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is regarded by many people in literary circles as a quiet genius.  "The Anthologist" might just be the biggest proof of it.  Baker does not stand out outside of literary fiction circles as other massively popular writers; perhaps this is one of those immeasurable gifts to devoted readers of the genre.  I only knew Baker from a non-fiction perspective "The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber", despite having copies of "Vox" and "Fermata" that I have never gotten to.

"The Anthologist" is an intimate story.  Paul Chowder is a poet seemingly obsessed with proving to the world that the basis of all poetry is the four beat count.  He is struggling to write the introduction to an anthology of works that he believes will prove his theory.  Amid the daily ordinariness of his life, Chowder struggles with everything from procrastination to personal relationships, and the reader is taken for an intimate look at the psyche of a very (and I mean very) delicate individual.  Paul Chowder may be obsessed with his four beat theory, but he's one of those fictional characters that make us look at ourselves and the mass of inexplicable factors who make up personality and psychology.  The illustrations of absent-mindedness and never-ending rolling thoughts, the ease with which he branches off into a million different directions of distraction captures procrastination is like nothing I've ever read before.  This is just one of the many charms of this book, along with the numerous examples of poetry Chowder dissects to show his theories of rhythm.

Chowder also injects an incredible amount of information about literature and poetry into just a few passages of the book.  Nicholson Baker is amazing this way.  The intricate details of poetry and any other literary variables come into play in the narrative with powerful displays of what appears on the surface as "useless information."  To the "trained" eye, of course, these passages are the building blocks of making a genius come to life on the page.  Baker fleshes out Paul Chowder in just this way, and the result is simply perfect.  In regards to the popular latin phrase Carpe diem, Chowder explains, "Horace didn't say that. 'Carpe diem' doesn't mean seize the day--it means something gentler and more sensible. 'Carpe diem' means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be 'cape diem,' if my school Latin serves. No R. Very different piece of advice.  What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day's stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things--so that the day's stalk or stem undergoes increasing tension and draws to a thinness, and a tightness, and then snaps softly away at its weakest point, perhaps leaking a little milky sap, and the flower, or the fruit, is released in your hand. Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it, is what Horace meant--pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don't freaking grab the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it. That's not the kind of man that Horace was."  Of course many people would read this passage and complain about the unnecessary splitting of hairs, but there is something deeper here, and Chowder (through Baker) hit the proverbial nail dead-center on the head.  What is represented here is the thought process of genius at work, and the difficulty of getting it down on paper again and again through the novel is just what makes this novel so amazing.

There are numerous passages like this one, and they vary with the ordinary moments of Paul Chowder's life.  The bulk of the narrative feels like a train wreck about to happen, for Chowder is facing a great deal of unknowns with each passing day he does not complete the introduction to his anthology.  His lover leaves him, he is not writing poetry or submitting for publication, and things simply do not look good for Chowder.  The reader, however, is not just rooting for Paul Chowder... the reader becomes (and is) Paul Chowder in many, many ways.

The novel is charming due to its lovable character, but there is an under-current of meaning and literary detail here that goes beyond its 243 pages.  It is the core of its simplicity--the flow of a narrative full of descriptive detail, literary insight and even psychological perspective-- that makes Nicholson Baker a master of the form and a genius of a curious and rare kind.