Nicholson Baker discusses the public trials of writing about sex and the private joy of writing on rubber spatulas with a ballpoint pen.

By LAURA MILLER

Illustration by
Zach Trenholm

Nicholson Baker gained notoriety and numerous fans with his inventive erotic novels "Vox" -- transcribing a deliriously imaginative phone sex marathon -- and "The Fermata" -- the tale of an office worker who can stop time and uses his powers to undress women. Baker's most fervent literary admirers, however, swear by his first novel, "The Mezzanine," which takes place on an escalator, and "U and I," a book-length essay detailing the author's obsessive admiration for John Updike. His new book of essays, "The Size of Thoughts," collects pieces written for The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker and an original, 150-page examination of the history of the word "lumber" in English poetry. On topics ranging from toenail clippers, to the death of the library card catalog, to the the literal size of thoughts ("most are about three feet tall, with the level of complexity of a lawnmower engine, or a cigarette lighter, or those tubes of toothpaste that, by mingling several hidden pastes and gels, create a pleasantly striped product"), these writings showcase Baker's signature style: dazzling descriptive powers married to a passionate enthusiasm for the neglected flotsam and jetsam of everyday life.

The lanky, bespectacled author spoke with SALON in his Berkeley, California office, where he happily pursues whatever thoughts happen to cross his mind amid photos of his wife and two children, and (despite his disclaimers) conditions of only moderate disorder.

Have you always been drawn to minutiae?

Oh, yes. I have that problem. When I was working on perspective in art class, the drawings that I would do would be of the wall socket, but vast and worked out right from wall's eye view, and diminishing. And it is kind of hard to draw the little holes in the plug in perspective, if you're at a very rakish angle. I've always liked to inspect lichens at close range. I don't know what caused that cast of thought.

At the same time, I would write in my notebooks about all these ambitions of writing enormous books, huge subjects for novels, but the only time I actually felt pleasure writing was when I had turned the lens a little bit and was focusing on something carefully and was able to revolve it in my mind. It's not automatic, I don't feel as if I'm a description machine cranking myself slowly in one direction, fixing on something, spitting out a description of it, and then moving on to the next thing. What it feels like is that, instead, I have some pressing point I want to make about the coils of a toaster.