books review

Nicholson Baker

Edinburgh International Book Festival/Meet The Audience

This was an event for the literary snobs: I heard them all complaining when they came in about how embarrassing the small turn-out was. Well, Nicholson Baker didn’t seem bothered, and if he was he shouldn’t be. As a man who writes in the same way that painters ‘paint with a brush with one hair’ his work will always be niche. His reading, however, was incredible, like someone talking their thoughts aloud. It was clear in the reading that he had indeed “learned to write prose by realising [he] was a failure a poetry”. If I’m honest I went to the talk because I had read his 1988 work, ‘The Mezzanine’ and hated it; I now want to give Nicholson another try.

24 Aug, 11.30am, £9.00 (£7.00)

published: Sep-2009

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