The Anthologist - Nicholson Baker

This is an extremely clever book, and for the most part it's a good read and a decent dose of what I sometimes like to call The Fun. The Anthologist by Nicolson Baker is a novel about a poet, Paul Chowder (which is a pretty awesome name), who is struggling to write an introduction to a poetry collection about the importance of rhyme. Paul is a little bit famous, and a lot lazy and as a narrator he provides an interesting, discursive history of his thinking about poetry and it's constituent parts. There are some really lovely moments in the book - the parts on baby talk, how iambic pentameter has a built in invisible rest, and the section where they go blueberry picking I really enjoyed and where of course, extremely 'poetic'. Baker has a lovely ambling style of writing as well and it was very pleasant spending time with his novel.

I am a bit worried that I enjoyed it because I’m so often immersed in lit theory as part of my job that I’ve become the sort of person who finds being lectured about the mechanics of poetic feet and rhyme for the length of an entire novel not only commonplace but insanely interesting when a dog or some blueberry-picking is added. This peculiarity in me as a reader aside, I'm sure many people will balk slightly, as I did, at the high-school flashbacks induced by much of the poetry talk. And there was definitely a feeling that oozed through the quieter moments of The Anthologist that the book was really an exercise in showing how clever and witty the writer is. Maybe I’m wrong, I kind of hope so – but intellectual snobbery, even in a book about an intellectual snob of a poet, is never alright with me.

So I know this review has a few mixed messages. It’s to be expected, I’m a Gemini. But it also can’t really be avoided - the book was both entertaining and painful, lyrical and preacherly, poetic and pedestrian. But I learnt stuff, and the writing itself, if you ignore the intellectual baggage, was undeniably well-crafted and engaging. Maybe someone else can make more sense of their feelings about The Anthologist.

***/***** (Three of Five Stars)