Author Guide · Literary Fiction and Nonfiction
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Nicholson Baker’s first novel takes place during a single lunch hour and ends on an escalator. Its narrator, an office worker called Howie, eats a hot dog and popcorn, buys new shoelaces and reads Marcus Aurelius, and most of the book happens in footnotes, some of them several pages long. Nine or ten publishers turned The Mezzanine down, saying it was not a novel. Baker, born in New York City in 1957, has since written ten novels and nine works of nonfiction, about phone sex, John Updike, library microfilm, the run-up to the Second World War, substitute teaching and learning to paint. This guide covers his 14 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 14 key books · 1988–2024 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Nicholson Baker has published ten novels and nine works of nonfiction. His best-known books are The Mezzanine (1988), Vox (1992), The Fermata (1994), Double Fold (2001), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Human Smoke (2008). Start with The Mezzanine: it is short, and everything he does later, the close attention to small things and the long digressions, is already there.
Where to Start with Nicholson Baker
If you want his defining novel
→ The Mezzanine (1988) — one lunch hour, told mostly in footnotes.
If you want his nonfiction at its most combative
→ Double Fold (2001) — libraries, microfilm and the fate of old newspapers.
If you want a book about writing and reading
→ U and I (1991) — a novelist’s obsession with John Updike.
If you want his later, gentler fiction
→ The Anthologist (2009) — a poet failing to finish an introduction.
14 Nicholson Baker Books, in Order
The Mezzanine
Howie, a young office worker, rides the escalator back to his office at the end of his lunch hour. Along the way he thinks about shoelaces, paper towels, milk cartons, straws and staplers, much of it in footnotes, including a long footnote about footnotes. Part of it appeared in The New Yorker before publication, after nine or ten publishers had rejected the book.
Room Temperature
A father gives his baby daughter a bottle, and the novel lasts as long as the feeding: about twenty minutes. In that time his mind moves through memories and the physical details of the room, in the same close, digressive style as The Mezzanine.
U and I
A book-length account of Baker’s fixation on John Updike, the writer he most wanted to measure himself against. He had not read all of Updike’s books, and for many had read only parts, and he writes from what he remembers of them rather than from a critic’s systematic rereading.
Vox
A single episode of phone sex between two young single people on a pay-per-minute chat line, told almost entirely in their dialogue. It was his first New York Times bestseller, and it later became known as the book Monica Lewinsky gave Bill Clinton.
The Fermata
Arno Strine, a socially shy man, can stop time, and he uses the power mainly to undress women while the world is frozen. Critics divided sharply; some called it repellent.
Double Fold
An attack on American libraries for discarding original books and runs of newspapers after copying them onto microfilm. Baker had already criticised the San Francisco Public Library in The New Yorker, and in 1999 he set up the non-profit American Newspaper Repository to rescue old newspapers himself.
A Box of Matches
Emmett gets up before dawn every morning, lights a fire with a single match and thinks while his family sleeps. The book runs for thirty-three mornings, one chapter for each.
Checkpoint
Two old school friends meet in a Washington hotel room in May 2004. Jay, who has lost his family and drifts between jobs, says he is going to assassinate President George W. Bush; Ben, a historian, tries to talk him out of it. The book, about 113 pages, is told entirely as a transcript of their conversation, and it was criticised heavily before most critics had read it.
Human Smoke
Hundreds of short, dated fragments drawn from published sources, many from The New York Times, covering the years before the Second World War and its first twenty-seven months, up to Pearl Harbor. Baker barely comments, but the selection challenges the view that the Allies did everything to avoid war, and his closing note sides with the pacifists of the time.
The Anthologist
Paul Chowder, a minor poet whose girlfriend Roz has just left him, is supposed to be writing the introduction to an anthology of rhyming poems called Only Rhyme. Instead he talks: about rhyme, metre, the poets he loves and why he cannot get started.
House of Holes
A comic sex fantasy set in a resort that visitors enter through holes of different kinds, where every sexual perversion and fetish is permitted. With Vox and The Fermata it completes his three explicitly sexual novels.
Substitute
Baker worked twenty-eight days as a substitute teacher in public schools in Maine and wrote down what happened, day by day, in more than 700 pages of near-transcript scenes: worksheets, films, classroom discipline, and the occasional very good teacher.
Baseless
Nearly ten years of Freedom of Information Act requests, many unanswered or returned heavily redacted, in pursuit of one question: did the United States use biological weapons during the Korean War? Baker concludes that it probably did on a small scale, and argues that government documents more than fifty years old should be declassified. Scenes from his life in Maine run through it.
Finding a Likeness
After Baseless, worn out by writing about war and secret programmes, Baker set out in 2019 to learn to paint. The book follows the next years of lessons from local artists, YouTube tutorials and the study of old and modern painters, and reflects on growing up as the son of two painters.
In What Order to Read Nicholson Baker
None of the books depends on another, with one exception: Traveling Sprinkler (2013) brings back Paul Chowder from The Anthologist, so read those two in order. Otherwise you can read by interest. The novels fall into groups: the early close-up books (The Mezzanine, Room Temperature, later A Box of Matches), the three sex novels (Vox, The Fermata, House of Holes), and the two Paul Chowder books.
The nonfiction runs from the personal (U and I, Finding a Likeness) to the polemical (Double Fold, Human Smoke, Baseless). The polemics are long and argue hard; it helps to know his patience for detail from the novels first.
A reading path
1. The Mezzanine (1988)
2. U and I (1991)
3. Double Fold (2001)
4. The Anthologist (2009)
5. Human Smoke (2008)
Everything Else Nicholson Baker Published
Beyond the 14 key books: 6 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other novels
2
2 books · 1998–2013
- 1998The Everlasting Story of Norya nine-year-old American girl at school in England
- 2013Traveling SprinklerPaul Chowder of The Anthologist returns, now trying to write songs
Essays and other nonfiction
3
3 books · 1996–2012
- 1996The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumberessays on everyday objects and on library catalogues
- 2005The World on Sundaygraphic art in Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper, 1898–1911, with Margaret Brentano
- 2012The Way the World Worksessays
Selections
1
1 book · 2004
- 2004Vintage Bakera short sampler of his work
The years · 1957–2024
Quick facts about Nicholson Baker
- Known for
- Nicholson Baker is known for fiction that slows ordinary moments down to the smallest physical detail, and for long nonfiction campaigns against what he sees as institutional destruction and secrecy.
- 1957
- Born in New York City
- 1988
- The Mezzanine
- 2001
- National Book Critics Circle Award for Double Fold
- 2008
- Human Smoke
- 2024
- Finding a Likeness
- Born
- 7 January 1957, New York City; grew up in Rochester, New York
- Education
- Eastman School of Music (1974–75); B.A. in English, Haverford College (1980)
- Before writing
- Oil analyst, word processor and technical writer, 1980–1987
- Married
- Margaret Brentano, in 1985; they live in Maine
- Honours
- National Book Critics Circle Award (2001); Guggenheim Fellowship (2018)
- Activism
- Founded the American Newspaper Repository in 1999 to save old newspapers
The red mark is 1988: The Mezzanine, the lunch-hour novel that set the pattern for his fiction.
How Nicholson Baker Writes: Slowing Everything Down
Baker’s novels cover very little time. The Mezzanine is a lunch hour, Room Temperature a twenty-minute bottle feed, A Box of Matches a series of early mornings. What fills them is attention: how a shoelace wears through, how a straw floats in a carton, how a thought branches off another thought. In The Mezzanine the branches become footnotes; as he told The Paris Review in 2011, “nobody was doing footnotes back then.”
Several books are built almost entirely from voices. Vox and Checkpoint are transcripts of two people talking, The Anthologist and Traveling Sprinkler are one man’s monologue, and Substitute records classroom dialogue nearly verbatim. He writes on a computer, then prints the text out and edits with a pen.
His nonfiction applies the same patience to archives. Human Smoke is assembled from hundreds of dated newspaper fragments with almost no commentary; Double Fold and Baseless pile up documents, letters and refusals until the argument is made. The method is persuasive in detail, and reviewers have questioned whether it can carry his larger conclusions.
Watch
Nicholson Baker at the National Book Festival
Baker speaks at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., in September 2013.
Frequently asked questions about Nicholson Baker’s books
How many books has Nicholson Baker written?
Nineteen: ten novels and nine works of nonfiction, one of them, The World on Sunday (2005), with his wife Margaret Brentano. There is also a short sampler, Vintage Baker (2004). This page covers 14 key books in detail and lists the rest underneath.
What are Nicholson Baker’s books in order?
The key books are The Mezzanine (1988), Room Temperature (1990), U and I (1991), Vox (1992), The Fermata (1994), Double Fold (2001), A Box of Matches (2003), Checkpoint (2004), Human Smoke (2008), The Anthologist (2009), House of Holes (2011), Substitute (2016), Baseless (2020) and Finding a Likeness (2024).
Where should I start with Nicholson Baker?
The Mezzanine. It is short, it was his first novel, and it shows the method behind almost everything he wrote later. If you prefer nonfiction, start with U and I or Double Fold.
What is Nicholson Baker’s most famous book?
The Mezzanine (1988) is the most admired. Vox (1992) sold the most at the time: it was his first New York Times bestseller, and it became widely known as the book Monica Lewinsky gave Bill Clinton.
Did Nicholson Baker win any prizes?
Yes. Double Fold won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction for 2001. He also received the James Madison Freedom of Information Award in 1997, the Calw Hermann Hesse Prize in 2014 (shared with his German translator Eike Schönfeld, for the German translation of Double Fold) and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018.
Why are Human Smoke and Checkpoint controversial?
Checkpoint (2004) is a dialogue in which one man plans to assassinate President George W. Bush; it was criticised heavily before most critics had read it, and sold poorly. Human Smoke (2008) presents the run-up to the Second World War through short documentary fragments and ends by siding with the pacifists of the time; some reviewers said it excused Hitler, while others, such as Columbia Journalism Review, disputed that but found the argument unconvincing. Baker has said he has always had pacifist leanings.
Is The Anthologist part of a series?
Yes, a pair. Traveling Sprinkler (2013) brings back its narrator, the poet Paul Chowder, now in his fifties, trying to write songs and to win back Roz.
What is U and I about?
Baker’s obsession with John Updike, the writer he most measured himself against. He had not read all of Updike’s books and works largely from memory, which makes it as much about how a reader carries a writer around as about Updike.
Is Nicholson Baker still alive?
Yes. He was born on 7 January 1957 in New York City and lives in Maine with his wife, Margaret Brentano. His most recent book, Finding a Likeness, came out in 2024.
Has Nicholson Baker written about libraries?
Yes, at length. Double Fold (2001) argues that libraries destroyed original books and newspapers after microfilming them, and in 1999 he founded the American Newspaper Repository to save old newspapers. The Size of Thoughts (1996) includes his writing on library catalogues.
Footnotes
- Nicholson Baker — Wikipedia
- Nicholson Baker, The Art of Fiction No. 212 — The Paris Review, 2011
- Checkpoint — The Complete Review
- Human Smoke — Columbia Journalism Review
- The Great Germ War Cover-Up (Baseless) — The New Republic, 2020
- Finding a Likeness — Penguin Random House
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I felt I had to be someone who would leap in from outside and do some nutty thing and then run away cackling.”
— Nicholson Baker, interview with Sam Anderson, The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 212 (2011)
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