Nicholson Baker: Inside the author -- and his alter ego

For a private writer, Nicholson Baker has caused his share of flaps. Wasn't it his novel "Vox" that Monica Lewinsky gave to President Clinton? Didn't his article "Discards" point the finger at librarians who threw away card catalogs and back issues of newspapers? What about his last book, "Human Smoke," which portrayed FDR and Churchill as warmongers? Just this summer, from the Quaker farmhouse here where he lives with his family, he wrote a piece about the Kindle that has had many readers screaming, "Luddite!" Just goes to show: You can take the literary anecdote out of the man, but you can't take the man out of the literary anecdote.

By Susan Salter Reynolds

September 6, 2009