U AND I
A True Story
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Granta Books
Published:7th Jul '11
Should be back in stock very soon
Baker's startlingly honest, very funny account of his obsession with John Updike, part of a stunning redesign of Baker's Granta backlist.
When Nicholson Baker, one of the most linguistically talented writers in America, set out to write a book about John Updike, the result was no ordinary biography. Instead Baker's account of his relationship with his hero is a hilarious story of ambition, obsession, talent and neurosis, alternately self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing. More memoir than literary criticism, Baker is excruciatingly honest, and U & I reveals at least as much about Baker himself as it does about his idol. Written twenty years before Updike's death in 2009, U & I is a very smart and extremely funny exploration of the debts we owe our heroes.
Nicholson Baker is a canny modern writer. He is building a sharp and singular library of the interior life and U and I is a decisive and welcome addition -- Robert Winder * Independent *
An intense, touchy, rivalrous extended essay on his obsession with John Updike ... neither Updike nor anyone else could write a book quite like this * Observer *
A subtle, funny and, in its way, profoundly serious study of the means by which art and artists are made -- John Banville * Irish Times *
One of the most entertaining and penetrating studies of literary admiration since Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire * San Francisco Chronicle *
A meditation on how we remember, and how we celebrate, writers and writing. * Harper's *
Ridiculously talented * Craig Raine *
An offbeat homage and confession of authorial anxiety * Sunday Herald *
ISBN: 9781847083517
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 12mm
Weight: 142g
192 pages