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UC Traveling Sprinkler--CANCELED: A Novel (2014)

by Nicholson Baker(Favorite Author)

3.67 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0399160973 (ISBN13: 9780399160974)

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

Plume

review 1: What a charmer! The narrator of Baker's The Anthologist, Paul Chowder, doesn’t want to be a poet anymore. He wants to write protest songs, or love songs, or protest-love songs. He's a bit unsettled in every sense. With songs on his mind, he’s forever talking about music and how music is made and the motivations to do so, the artifice of translating music onto paper (much like stories into text). There are asides about cigars, Obama’s drone war, Quakerism – a Blll Bryson-ful of accessible facts wittily told. Baker constantly references songs and videos, even including a cumbersome YouTube address for a Stephen Fearing video that is well worth stopping what you're doing to peck out. And I kept doing so -- interrupting my reading to jot down titles or call up music, a... mores if these were audio footnotes to the text. Then I remembered that Baker has employed extensive footnotes in the past, so, AHA!, I see what you’re up to, you scamp! Seemingly scattered, this is no collection of random facts. They are pieces of loveable, flawed Paul Chowder, a man trying to get back on track. Not a difficult book by any means but a playful pleasure.
review 2: I've never read anything like this. It's fiction but a lot of it is really non-fiction. It's hilarious in places – LOL funny. But...the whole thing is more or less stream of consciousness from the main character, a published poet who wants to get into music, and win back his estranged girlfriend. On the one hand, I could give this 3 stars, because as much as I enjoyed it, it was really quite weird, and I'm not sure I could ever recommend it to someone else. On the other hand, if this is "the new novel," it's pretty neat. less

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