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Original Essays | September 9, 2013
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More copies of this ISBNThis title in other editionsThe Way the World Works: Essaysby Nicholson Baker
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Nicholson Baker, who “writes like no one else in America” (Newsweek), here assembles his best short pieces from the last fifteen years.
The Way the World Works, Baker’s second nonfiction collection, ranges over the map of life to examine what troubles us, what eases our pain, and what brings us joy. Baker moves from political controversy to the intimacy of his own life, from forgotten heroes of pacifism to airplane wings, telephones, paper mills, David Remnick, Joseph Pulitzer, the OED, and the manufacture of the Venetian gondola. He writes about kite string and about the moment he met his wife, and he surveys our fascination with video games while attempting to beat his teenage son at Modern Warfare 2. In a celebrated essay on Wikipedia, Baker describes his efforts to stem the tide of encyclopedic deletionism; in another, he charts the rise of e-readers; in a third he chronicles his Freedom of Information lawsuit against the San Francisco Public Library. Through all these pieces, many written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The American Scholar, Baker shines the light of an inexpugnable curiosity. The Way the World Works is a keen-minded, generous-spirited compendium by a modern American master. Review:"Whether it's his two-page reflection on why he likes the telephone, or his heady tome on why he is a pacifist, novelist and essayist Baker (Double Fold, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award) is a delight to read. In this diverse collection of essays, spanning 15 years, Baker offers gorgeous prose and poses important questions about our era of digital readership. As he notes in his essay on the Kindle 2, there is a distinction between a writer's work and its presentation in book form. Many essays staunchly defend the reading of print books and newspapers, including 'Narrow Ruled,' in which he shares how he reads closely — 'when I come across something I really like in a book, I put a little dot in the margin.' A proud defender of libraries and newspapers, Baker acknowledges the perception of him as 'a weirdo cultist, a ringleader' for books. While his musings on video games and the neighborhood trash dump are memorable, the collection's real value lies in its essays on reading. Baker practices what he preaches by collecting his own work, so that somewhere, people will be turning paper pages. Though it would have been wonderful if the collection included a new, unpublished essay, readers of this book will still find themselves agreeing with him: books are still worth getting. Agent: Melanie Jackson." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review:“His prose is so luminescent and so precise it manually recalibrates our brains.” Lev Grossman, Time
Review:“Nicholson Baker is such a swell, smart writer that he rarely — maybe never — tips his hand....In Baker's view, the mundane, closely enough observed, may be the skate key to the sublime.” Carolyn See, The Washington Post
Review:"Baker is one of the most beautiful, original and ingenious prose stylists to have come along in decades...and takes a kind of mad scientist's delight in the way things work and how the world is put together." Charles McGrath, The New York Times Magazine
Review:"[A] winning new book....This singular writer...can mount an argument skillfully and deliver an efficient conclusive kick." The San Francisco Chronicle
Review:"A fundamentally radical author...you can never be sure quite where Baker is going to take you....[He] is an essayist in the tradition of GK Chesterton and Max Beerbohm, writing winning fantasies upon whatever chance thoughts may come into his head." Financial Times (London)
Review:"What these works share is a sense that how we think, our idiosyncratic dance with both experience and memory, defines who we are." The Los Angeles Times
Review:"Baker looks at the world around us in a way that is not only artful and entertaining but instructive." Charleston Post & Courier
Review:"Mr. Baker is a wise and amiable cultural commentator worth listening to....[His] prose is polished, witty...his essays are always provocative and entertaining." Cynthis Crossen, The Wall Street Journal
Review:"Baker's new essay collection, The Way the World Works, is always absorbing, merging his interest in solid, tangible objects with his devotion to the life of the mind...simply dazzling." Seattle Times
Review:"Exhilarating....Eye-opening....Baker continues his project of bringing new dimensions and idiosyncrasies to the personal essay, which he is devoted to reviving and reinventing." The Boston Globe
About the AuthorNicholson Baker is the author of nine novels and four works of nonfiction, including Double Fold, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in Maine with his family.
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