The Way the World Works, Nicholson Baker's ranges over the map of life to examine what ails us, what eases our pain, and what gives us joy. Baker-recently hailed as "one of the most consistently enticing writers of our time" by The New York Times-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. In one essay, Baker surveys our fascination with video games while attempting to beat his teenage son at Modern Warfare 2; in a celebrated essay on Wikipedia, he describes his efforts to stem the tide of encyclopedic deletionism. Through all these pieces 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.
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Review
Baker produces reveries and daydreams that are totally under the control of their author - Financial Times
[Baker] writes subtly and eloquently... The style is warm, technical and attractively lucid - Daily Telegraph
Baker looks for the world in a grain of sand and the more you read him, the better a place that seems to start looking - Observer
In this collection, as much as in his novels, Baker proves himself one of the great miniaturists working today - Independent on Sunday
Nicholson Baker is rare among writers in that you are happy to read whatever he writes irrespective of the subject - The Glasgow Herald
Nicholson Baker has caused outrage and sensation with much of his work -Metro
The equivalent of a magnum opus by most other American writers…Baker gets it from the opening and never flags --Guardian
This is a book that can t, obviously, deliver on the promise of its title. But the spirit of its title is in keeping with its author: a writer who, for all the fantastical leaps of his fiction, is inexhaustibly curious about the fabric of day-to-day life. Baker looks for the world in a grain of sand and the more you read him, the better a place that seems to start looking... If the inessential is where we live, everything is essential. --The Observer
Nicholson Baker is rare among writers in that you are happy to read whatever he writes irrespective of the subject. He is concerned not so much with big issues...but with seemingly insignificant irritations which make everyday existence that little bit harder to bear...The Way the World Works, his second collection, is a perfect introduction to Baker s bailiwick. It begins with an essay called Strings, which is, by and large, about kite string and its tendency to break and run out, and ends with one called Mowing, in which he says he wants to write a book with the title he has given this one. "I want it to be a book for children and adults, that explains everything about history, beauty, wickedness, invention, the meaning of life. The whole unseemly, bulging ball of wax." [W]hat can we do about it but thank our lucky starts it has the likes of Nicholson Baker on the case --The Glasgow Herald
[Baker] writes subtly and eloquently... The style is warm, technical and attractively lucid - Daily Telegraph
Baker looks for the world in a grain of sand and the more you read him, the better a place that seems to start looking - Observer
In this collection, as much as in his novels, Baker proves himself one of the great miniaturists working today - Independent on Sunday
Nicholson Baker is rare among writers in that you are happy to read whatever he writes irrespective of the subject - The Glasgow Herald
Nicholson Baker has caused outrage and sensation with much of his work -Metro
The equivalent of a magnum opus by most other American writers…Baker gets it from the opening and never flags --Guardian
This is a book that can t, obviously, deliver on the promise of its title. But the spirit of its title is in keeping with its author: a writer who, for all the fantastical leaps of his fiction, is inexhaustibly curious about the fabric of day-to-day life. Baker looks for the world in a grain of sand and the more you read him, the better a place that seems to start looking... If the inessential is where we live, everything is essential. --The Observer
Nicholson Baker is rare among writers in that you are happy to read whatever he writes irrespective of the subject. He is concerned not so much with big issues...but with seemingly insignificant irritations which make everyday existence that little bit harder to bear...The Way the World Works, his second collection, is a perfect introduction to Baker s bailiwick. It begins with an essay called Strings, which is, by and large, about kite string and its tendency to break and run out, and ends with one called Mowing, in which he says he wants to write a book with the title he has given this one. "I want it to be a book for children and adults, that explains everything about history, beauty, wickedness, invention, the meaning of life. The whole unseemly, bulging ball of wax." [W]hat can we do about it but thank our lucky starts it has the likes of Nicholson Baker on the case --The Glasgow Herald
About the Author
Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 and attended the Eastman School of Music and Haverford College. He is the author of several novels, including The Mezzanine, Vox and The Fermata, and House of Holes; and four works of non fiction, U and I, The Size of Thoughts, Double Fold (winner of the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award), and Human Smoke. He lives in Maine.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Noel
TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
This is a collection of Nicholson Baker's essays from the 90s to 2011, taking in subjects as far ranging as libraries and their stock, bits of string, learning to play "Modern Warfare" on Xbox, reviewing the Kindle, as well as providing short bios of Steve Jobs and David Remnick. As you would expect, the essays vary in quality but for the most part they are entertaining, informative, and compulsively readable.
I actually read his article on Kindle 2 a couple of years ago in the New Yorker and still found it interesting to re-read even if his arguments are moot as a lot of the problems he identifies - screen transitions and resolution, placement of buttons - have been fixed in newer versions of the device. But after Baker's effusive recommendation of Michael Connelly's novel "The Lincoln Lawyer", I ended up reading it, loving it, and reading and loving more of Connelly's books - and to you reading this, I as effusively recommend "The Lincoln Lawyer".
Baker writes fascinating and funny articles on Wikipedia, Google, Daniel DeFoe and his book "A Journal of the Plague Year", and David Remnick. He's also able to take mundane objects like string and turn them into hypnotic essays, while I thought the structure of his essay of events that happened one summer to be an inspired and riveting approach to memory and recollection, as well as some vivid and poetic observations.
Not that the whole book was brilliant, I did have some problems with a few essays. The book is divided up into categories like "Life", "Reading", "Technology", "War" and so on. His numerous articles on libraries and archiving went on a bit too long. The first few were interesting to read but by the end of the section "Libraries and Newspapers" I didn't want to read any more essays critiquing libraries sending thousands of stack books to the dump. I get it, you like old stuff, move on!
I abandoned his essay on gondolas as it was too boring - Baker has a habit, oftentimes good, of over-describing things and while I usually enjoy this approach, the extensive descriptions of gondolas and their history overwhelmed me with boredom. The same could be said of his description of a protest march in DC against the wars in the Middle East, while his essay on computer games was strangely humourless and uninteresting. It read like exactly what it was: an old man doing something he hadn't done before because he knew he wouldn't enjoy it and proving that he was right while misunderstanding why people younger than him enjoy them. Disappointing.
While it's not a perfect collection, when I read an essay I liked, it was always brilliant and enlightening and I can away feeling wiser and happier, and that's a rare gift for any writer to possess. Also having read a number of Baker's novels it's interesting to see the passing interests he mentions being the root of certain books. Like he mentions studying how to write erotic novels in 2006 and, sure enough, in 2011 he published an erotic novel called "House of Holes" while his essays on libraries led to his book "Double Fold" and his discovery of newspaper articles from the 1930s would lead to his controversial revisionist history book "Human Smoke". Altogether "The Way The World Works" is an oftentimes brilliant collection of essays from a superb writer which is well worth a look even if you end up skipping a few articles along the way.
I actually read his article on Kindle 2 a couple of years ago in the New Yorker and still found it interesting to re-read even if his arguments are moot as a lot of the problems he identifies - screen transitions and resolution, placement of buttons - have been fixed in newer versions of the device. But after Baker's effusive recommendation of Michael Connelly's novel "The Lincoln Lawyer", I ended up reading it, loving it, and reading and loving more of Connelly's books - and to you reading this, I as effusively recommend "The Lincoln Lawyer".
Baker writes fascinating and funny articles on Wikipedia, Google, Daniel DeFoe and his book "A Journal of the Plague Year", and David Remnick. He's also able to take mundane objects like string and turn them into hypnotic essays, while I thought the structure of his essay of events that happened one summer to be an inspired and riveting approach to memory and recollection, as well as some vivid and poetic observations.
Not that the whole book was brilliant, I did have some problems with a few essays. The book is divided up into categories like "Life", "Reading", "Technology", "War" and so on. His numerous articles on libraries and archiving went on a bit too long. The first few were interesting to read but by the end of the section "Libraries and Newspapers" I didn't want to read any more essays critiquing libraries sending thousands of stack books to the dump. I get it, you like old stuff, move on!
I abandoned his essay on gondolas as it was too boring - Baker has a habit, oftentimes good, of over-describing things and while I usually enjoy this approach, the extensive descriptions of gondolas and their history overwhelmed me with boredom. The same could be said of his description of a protest march in DC against the wars in the Middle East, while his essay on computer games was strangely humourless and uninteresting. It read like exactly what it was: an old man doing something he hadn't done before because he knew he wouldn't enjoy it and proving that he was right while misunderstanding why people younger than him enjoy them. Disappointing.
While it's not a perfect collection, when I read an essay I liked, it was always brilliant and enlightening and I can away feeling wiser and happier, and that's a rare gift for any writer to possess. Also having read a number of Baker's novels it's interesting to see the passing interests he mentions being the root of certain books. Like he mentions studying how to write erotic novels in 2006 and, sure enough, in 2011 he published an erotic novel called "House of Holes" while his essays on libraries led to his book "Double Fold" and his discovery of newspaper articles from the 1930s would lead to his controversial revisionist history book "Human Smoke". Altogether "The Way The World Works" is an oftentimes brilliant collection of essays from a superb writer which is well worth a look even if you end up skipping a few articles along the way.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This collection consists of various pieces published mainly over the last ten years, with a few earlier ones dating from the 90s. It is divided into five main sections. The first of these is called `Life' and contains thoughts on a selection of disparate topics with titles including `String', `Coins' and `What Happened on April 29, 1994'. I found it difficult to get interested in any of them. They read like the random thoughts of Twitter contributions, or a rather dull blog. The last piece, `One Summer', a full 14 pages long, was so boring that I even considered given up reading any more of the book. However, I did persevere and I am glad I did, because later sections are much better.
Section two, called `Reading', contains some gems, for example the hilarious piece on the man who read the entire OED, all 21,730 pages, and a delightful essay on Defoe, as well as a weird piece on the warnings painted on aircraft wings. The next section, `Libraries and Newspapers', is more factual and chronicles the insidious trend for new libraries to be build with magnificence facilities, but insufficient space for all the books held in the libraries they replace, leading to the wholesale destruction of hundreds of thousands of books, many out of print and hard-to-find volumes: scholarship surrendering to coffee bars and the cult of `accessible' holdings. He details his crusade against a prime culprit, the San Francisco Public Library.
A section called `Technology' follows. I particularly liked the piece on Wikipedia, which was both informative and witty. But it also has a piece criticising the Kindle-2 e-book reader. Why include this? The Kindle-2 is part of history and its limitations have already been corrected in later editions of the device. The fifth section is entitled `War' and has two pieces arguing the case for pacifism and one on violent video games. The pacifism pieces are argued with passion, but did not convince me. Confidently asserting that a pacifist position in WWII would have saved Jews from the Holocaust ignores a multitude of counter arguments. Wanting something to be so does not mean it is so. The piece on video games was simply boring, and so the book came full circle in terms of its interest for me.
Overall, this book has some excellent pieces, but also some that I found dull, sometimes even pointless. Given the author's published output over the years, I am sure a better selection of contributions could have been made. Incidentally, I don't know how the contents justify the title.
Section two, called `Reading', contains some gems, for example the hilarious piece on the man who read the entire OED, all 21,730 pages, and a delightful essay on Defoe, as well as a weird piece on the warnings painted on aircraft wings. The next section, `Libraries and Newspapers', is more factual and chronicles the insidious trend for new libraries to be build with magnificence facilities, but insufficient space for all the books held in the libraries they replace, leading to the wholesale destruction of hundreds of thousands of books, many out of print and hard-to-find volumes: scholarship surrendering to coffee bars and the cult of `accessible' holdings. He details his crusade against a prime culprit, the San Francisco Public Library.
A section called `Technology' follows. I particularly liked the piece on Wikipedia, which was both informative and witty. But it also has a piece criticising the Kindle-2 e-book reader. Why include this? The Kindle-2 is part of history and its limitations have already been corrected in later editions of the device. The fifth section is entitled `War' and has two pieces arguing the case for pacifism and one on violent video games. The pacifism pieces are argued with passion, but did not convince me. Confidently asserting that a pacifist position in WWII would have saved Jews from the Holocaust ignores a multitude of counter arguments. Wanting something to be so does not mean it is so. The piece on video games was simply boring, and so the book came full circle in terms of its interest for me.
Overall, this book has some excellent pieces, but also some that I found dull, sometimes even pointless. Given the author's published output over the years, I am sure a better selection of contributions could have been made. Incidentally, I don't know how the contents justify the title.
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