if you haven't heard of nicholson baker at all, you can be forgiven. and about baker you may know that his first book of literary pornography was the but that monica lewinsky gifted to bill clinton. given what played out as the result of that affair, it may be safe to say that vox is one of the more influential books in history. so i get to play around with that. he was perfect for that because what those folks are really about was this reading as intimacy metaphor. once i started reading him for that, they were everywhere. that became some connected explorer in the context of a book that was not just a novel but with a book -- his story a kind of criticism in which i could tell a story in employed the same metaphors. last baker once said something that i thought was really fascinating. he said in his paris review interview, even after i started this project he gave his paris review interview. they asserted the interview of record. for the paris review decides to interview you. in his paris review interview he says that he tries to write unfilmable book

nicholson baker is fair.s one of the things recognized, they're not in no way we can put batch into this. no nicholson baker book has been turned into a film. a really bad british romantic comedy that borrow ideas, for the most part no one has even tried to because he can because they can't and they can't because baker was more or less trying to prevent them from being able to do that. saying i want to write a book that absolutely must be a book. can't be anything but a boat and that is the way we defend books as an object as an important cultural artifacts. that brings me back to why this book isn't really about nicholson baker. it is about beating his work. he becomes a kind of representative of all writers. i may be using him as a symbol in my book saying we are all living through this digital era we're all living in the time when books seem to need to compete with lots of different kinds of media baker turns out by accident to be the perfect writer to look at, to ask what is the writer's job these days? w

or would you say was nicholson baker. where would you star who would you pick quiet >> no, i think he turned out to be the perfect choice. the experience of the book you know paul once wrote in a literary relationship essay about his relationships with joseph conrad, he wrote that we read to discover what we already know. his thought is not really done there but i had that as an amped up when he was writing the book. the truth is i found so much of myself in baker. everywhere i looked. every time i turned around, there is some new connection between him and me and i felt indicted by him. i thought included within. so he was the perfect writer for me. which is not to say he would necessarily be the perfect writer for you or anyone else. i say towards the end of the book that the purpose is not to find and to suggest that you read nicholson baker about the writer that will be nicholson baker for you. that is the point of departure. you read to find out what you already know. we read to explore the streams of arab cause. we