Room Temperature [Paperback]

Nicholson Baker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 2010

A story in which the author examines the little details of home life. The action takes place in the moments before, during and after the feeding of Bug, the baby. The author's previous novel was called "The Mezzanine".

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Nicholson Baker writes in 360-degree Sensurround--his descriptions of the seemingly banal awakening the most jaded of senses into recognition, admiration, and amusement. In Room Temperature, his self-deprecating, endlessly curious narrator is at home giving his baby girl a bottle and allowing his mind to wander. Uppermost in his thoughts are his wife and daughter, but there is also that obsession with commas and some concern with tiny taboos like nose-picking and stealing change from his parents. Truth-telling is the operative mode; at one point he tries to get his wife to explain a doodle by quoting a review of early Yeats: "Always true is always new." Room Temperature is a rare novel of domestic pleasure and stability, with a twist. "Was there ever a limit between us? Would disgust ever outweigh love?" Baker's alter ego asks, and seems determined to find out. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Baker's first novel, The Mezzanine , was hailed for its minimalist conceit--the story of a lunch-hour sortie to buy shoelaces--and its exhaustive cataloging of objects encountered and thoughts entertained. For readers impressed with the precision of Baker's descriptive powers but chilled by its clinical rigor, this second novel will deliver a welcome warmth. Occasioned by a 20-minute bottle-feeding of his infant daughter "Bug," narrator Michael Beal, a young house-hus- band, transforms the sounds and textures of an autumn afternoon into an absorbed--and absorbing--reverie: "The Bug's nostril had the innocent perfection of a cheerio a tiny dry clean salty ring, with the odd but functional smallness . . . of the smooth rim around the pistil of the brass pump head that you fitted over a tire's nipple to inflate it." In a refreshing bit of candor, the narrator baldly states the author's goals: "I certainly believed, rocking my daughter on this Wednesday afternoon, that with a little concentration one's whole life could be reconstructed." In a classic pairing of form and content, meditations on the images of infancy develop into mature, if somewhat ingenuous, reflections on the transit to adulthood. This is a small masterpiece by an extraordinarily gifted young writer.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; Reprint edition (October 12, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802144918
• ISBN-13: 978-0802144911
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.4 x 8.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,437,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've written thirteen books, plus an art book that I published with my wife, Margaret Brentano. The most recent one is a comic sex novel called House of Holes, which came out in August 2011. Before that, in 2009, there was The Anthologist, about a poet trying to write an introduction to an anthology of rhyming verse, and before that was Human Smoke, a book of nonfiction about the beginning of World War II. My first novel, The Mezzanine, about a man riding an escalator at the end of his lunch hour, came out in 1988. I'm a pacifist. Occasionally I write for magazines. I grew up in Rochester, New York and went to Haverford College, where I majored in English. I live in Maine with my family.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Tender, engrossing October 29, 1997

By Andrew S. Cruse

Format:Paperback

Probably the most undeservedly overlooked of Nicholson Baker's novels, Room Temperature is a delightful, heartwarming tome.

Any attempt at synopsis would only serve to make the book sound dreadfully boring. After all, during the entire 116 pages the narrator is feeding his small child. No car chases or steamy love scenes. Just a father feeding his baby.

Rather than relying on typical, often stale plot devices, Baker relies on his considerable talent at description to maintain the reader's interest, and he succeeds in a big way. Room Temperature is touching in a way that none of his other books are. The father-child bond is explored in such breathtaking detail that one finds the book impossible to put down, despite the lack of a discernable plot.

Nicholson Baker is not for everyone. His quirky prose and lack of traditional plot lines are sure to put off many readers, but fans of Updike are sure to find a great read in Room Temperature

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars praise for attention to details in "whatever" world November 10, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I have read all of Mr.Bakers books, and with the exception of "The Everlasting Story..." (which indeed did seem to be everlasting) have read them with delight. Although he's often compared to Updike, I think he surpasses him due to his wit and his more creative sense of the strangeness of life. In "Room Temperature" we find the antidote, along with his other novels, to a modern world obsessed with speed, impersonal technology and the summational catchphrase "whatever". How wonderful it is to see an author bend his mind and spirit to the details of life with so much talent and fervor. And how wonderful to see that his books, plotless and demanding of full attention as they are, sell so well. It gives me hope for our civilization; it really does. On a sidenote - I am tired of critics and readers thinking he is cheapening his prose by writing on sexual topics. Sex is one of the most universal and fascinating and character-revealing subjects around; a great writer can make anything cerebral and holy, and a writer needs to go where his passions lie. Besides, do we really want every novel to be about rubber bands and bathroom hot air dryers?

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How far does your mind wander in 20 blissful minutes? November 8, 2010

By Oedipa Hex

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

A quiet meditation on the life of a brand new father, and how the infant a couple brings into the world somehow encapsulates every memory, every thought, every ounce of love of the husband for the wife. The sound of bacon crackling = the sound of the narrator's wife smiling in bed. How happy would we all be if our moments in thought were spent deeply ruminating over the magical details that make living worthwhile? Why shouldn't feeding your infant from a bottle in a rocking chair be at once everything and nothing?

4.0 out of 5 stars Rooting for Gems June 13, 2013

By Chance Lee

Format:Paperback

Room Temperature is a 98% stream-of-consciousness novel, a la The Mezzanine. The plot of Room Temperature: The narrator holds a baby in his lap. The end.

But Baker books are never about plot. They're about the way the brain hops from one topic to another. The ability to effortlessly transition from the esoteric to the mundane. Highlights include: the choppy elegance of the writing on frozen vegetable packages, airplane air nozzles and tray tables, squirt guns, the private sex lives of voice-over actresses (a glimmer of Baker's spectacular erotic writing) and an entire chapter about the comma. Chapter 9, the treatise to the comma, should be read by all writers.

The great thing about Baker's soc books are that each chapter works as its own short story. Chapters 1, 3, and 4 actually appeared in the New Yorker in some form. I find Chapter 2, about the rubber cables in the road that track traffic patterns, to be particularly striking. And if he goes off on a topic that you don't care about -- the French Horn, in my case -- then you can skip it. You might miss a profound quote or two, but there are more than enough of those elsewhere, in topics you are interested in. Like boogers.

4.0 out of 5 stars "One's whole life could be reconstructed from any single twenty - minute period." January 18, 2013

By Amelia Gremelspacher TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The twenty minute period is, enchantingly, the time it takes for this daddy to feed his daughter Bug a bottle. As anyone who has sat rocking a child and watching her eat can tell you, you the world can trace through your mind. This little book traces that run of thought, "always true, always new", in the mind of a newish father. His rapture and mindfulness make this a wonderful observation of his world.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Breath April 11, 2003

By Brian Egras

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Room Temperature is certainly about a father and his child, but there is so much more. In typical Baker style, he examines minutia with elucidating commentary. This, in itself, is worth reading the novel; however, the quality that makes it transcend happens to be his ability to unite the entire book with its central theme: Breath. From the comma, to the mobile in his child's room, to tuba lessons, breath pervades - breath as its metaphor to remember to cherish every moment.

I have never seen a novel so effortlessly and imperceptibly weave a central idea throughout a book. Read this novel for both it compelling insight but also for the extraordinary literary technique.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not what I thought it would be. November 30, 2009

By Shelley C. Grossman

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I do like this author's style, but despite finishing the book I felt it might have been handled differently, the subject matter. He does have keen insights into human nature, but not all of us can relate to them.