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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
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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm going to keep this short:
if you have any interest in poetry at all, this is a beautiful book.
I teach poetry to GCSE students on a daily basis, and this book made me think more deeply about poetic technique than any number of academic tracts. As thinly-disguised poetry lectures go, it's a beaut, and I'll certainly never trot out my own 'certainties' about iambic pentameter with quite such naive abandon again!
if you have any interest in poetry at all, this is a beautiful book.
I teach poetry to GCSE students on a daily basis, and this book made me think more deeply about poetic technique than any number of academic tracts. As thinly-disguised poetry lectures go, it's a beaut, and I'll certainly never trot out my own 'certainties' about iambic pentameter with quite such naive abandon again!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Both my husband and I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I wasn't sure whether it was 'for me' for the first two or three pages (my husband loved it from the start) but soon found myself hooked. The narrator is an endearing mix of the erudite and mundane. His description of avoiding settling down actually to write those first lines is very funny and will ring true with anyone who has ever had to write anything, even a simple school essay. It is one of the few books which I wish to read again and it has rekindled my passion for poetry.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Shadow college textbook
Paul Chowder (PC) is a poet and poetry addict with an early Guggenheim and 3 books to his name, plus piles of unanswered fan letters, unpaid bills and a messy home. Read more
Published 3 months ago by P. A. Doornbos
The Anthologist - Nicholson Baker
"Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill. We think so then, we thought so still". I think that was the very first poem I heard, "The Pelican Chorus" by Edward Lear. My mum read it to me. Read more
Published 4 months ago by PL
Climbing the molehill
Paul Chowder is a published poet but not famous in his chosen field. He's putting together an anthology of poetry that rhymes - "Only Rhymes" - is the title and he's having trouble... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Sam Quixote
A highly entertaining take on poetry and poets
Paul Chowder is in love with poetry and is determined to show us why. In a delightfully rambling story we're taken through a challenging period of his life. Read more
Published 5 months ago by David Briddock
A novel about poetry
Half way through this book I was already looking forward to re-reading it, something I very rarely do. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Ms Hilary Wakeman
Good in parts
This inoffensive book grabbed me strangely as I went further into it.
I learned some things about poetry,
The love story is in the style of Mr. Read more
I learned some things about poetry,
The love story is in the style of Mr. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Ransen Owen
Why does this novel irritate me so much?
Since I've given it three stars, I don't think it's that bad: it's amusing, thought-provoking, and it's about poetry. But it's so smug. Read more
Published 19 months ago by M. READ
A funny and surprisingly insightful read
Last week, Nicholson Baker's new book The Anthologist came my way and has managed to get me interested in poetry again - and one or two poetry books are back on my bedside table. Read more
Published 20 months ago by A Common Reader
Not just a young man's job.
I was interested that another reviewer discovered Nicholson Baker through this book and that she was encouraged to seek out more. Read more
Published on 16 Jan 2010 by RI
Educational and enjoyable
Nicholson Baker has an admirable ability to take complex ideas and universal themes and present them in a very simple and honest manner, so that as a reader you acknowledge them,... Read more
Published on 9 Jan 2010 by Victor Ward
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