(originally posted on September 6, 2009)
Why do I love this novel so? Well it's Nicholson Baker, so that's kind of a given; it beautifully portrays the casual delusions one Paul Chowder has about meeting certain deadlines and not succumbing to permanent distraction from work (not to mention a personal life that, in the mind, is increasingly complex); and it reminded me of the joys, too often forgotten, of poetry, meter and rhyme. But mostly I love THE ANTHOLOGIST because Baker drops in musical notation here and there, setting poems to Chowder's imagined music and activating my sight-reading and vocally-minded brain. I wish more novels did that.
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