Yesterday I started reading Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist, and I think I'm going to enjoy it for its sheer quirkiness. I'm not sure I would have picked it up had it not been for Dorothy's enthusiastic post, though Nicholson Baker is one of those authors I always "mean to read". I'm glad I did as I love the narrator's voice. Paul Chowder is a little on the idiosyncratic side, though since we are treated to a running monologue inside his head it's no wonder. I expect that if someone could follow my own meandering thoughts I would sound pretty idiosyncratic as well. Though I bet my thoughts wouldn't be half as funny as Paul Chowder's.
This is the perfect sort of book for my mood at the moment. I love laugh out loud funny books and I don't read them as often as I like. I thought I'd share a passage that made me crack up a little. I'm not sure if it's going to be as funny taking it out of context, and maybe just being in the flow of the book and being in Paul's mind sets the tone of scene. But let's try it anyway.
Just for a little background, Paul Chowder is a poet and is supposed to be writing an introduction to a poetry anthology, but he just can't seem to do it.
"But every time I actually tried to start writing the introduction, as opposed to just writing notes, I felt straightjacketed. So I went and bought a big presentation easel, and a big pad of presentation paper, and green Sharpie pen, and a red Sharpie pen, and a blue Sharpie pen. What I thought was that I could practice talking through the introduction as if I were teaching a class."
"And in order to be relaxed at the easel, I drank a Newcastle. Also coffee, so that I'd be sharp. And still I wasn't sufficiently relaxed, so I drank some Yukon Gold that I found in the liquor cabinet. No, not Yukon Gold, that's a potato. Yukon Jack, a kind of Canadian liqueur. It was delicious. It added a slight Gaussian blur. And then some more coffee, so I'd still be sharp. Blurred, smeared, but sharp."
Maybe I'm just in the mood to laugh and be entertained, but I love this. I've not really read and certainly not studied poetry since I was in high school, so this has a certain charm in that area as well, as Paul Chowder may not be able to write this introduction, but it's obvious he has a passion for poetry. If all his books are like this, I may have to do more exploring.