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The Anthologist: A Novel Paperback – Bargain Price, July 6, 2010

by Nicholson Baker (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 170 ratings
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Paul Chowder is trying to write the introduction to a new anthology of rhyming verse, but he’s having a hard time getting started. The result of his fitful struggles is The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker’s brilliantly funny and exquisite love story about poetry.

* * *

A New York Times Notable Book, 2009

Favorite Fiction of 2009–Los Angeles Times

Best Books of 2009–The Christian Science Monitor

Best of 2009–Slate.com

"A Year’s Reading" Favorites, 2009–The New Yorker

Best Books of 2009–Seattle Times

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  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Simon & Schuster
  4. Publication date
    July 6, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.6 x 8.44 inches
  6. See all details
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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
170 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book humorous and entertaining, providing an informative tutorial on poetry. They describe it as a great read that is charming from start to finish. Readers appreciate the insightful content and consider the book unique. However, opinions differ on the narrative quality, with some finding it engaging and witty while others feel it lacks tension or climax.

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Select to learn more
HumorPoetry contentReadabilityInsightUniquenessNarrative quality
19 customers mention "Humor"19 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's humor. They find the narrative witty and entertaining, with some laugh-out-loud moments. The story is described as informative and engaging, saying life is but a dream.

"...The real strong suit is the humorous take on the literary life...." Read more

"...the fact that through it all, Paul takes the reader on quite an entertaining and informative tour and reviews his thoughts on poets and poetry, on..." Read more

"Nicholson Baker is by far one of the most eclectic and interesting writers out there today...." Read more

"...Chowder is a wonderful narrator, confused, but in an endearing way, about his relationship to real people, his own poetry and the poetry of others...." Read more

18 customers mention "Poetry content"18 positive0 negative

Customers find the book's poetry content accessible and enjoyable. They appreciate the informative content about poetry and modern poets. Readers describe the author as a talented writer who uses humor in his narration.

"...Really though, it is a stream of conscious narration of a very funny man's observations on life: the love of his dog, the loss of a girlfriend, the..." Read more

"...He tells us of his admiration for the great rhyming poets, and about his disillusionment when his fourth-grade teacher encourages the class to write..." Read more

"...What makes this novel so wonderful is the information it provides about poetry and poets...." Read more

"...The poetry discussions are delightful and amusing, told with a deadpan humor that makes the narrative so entertaining...." Read more

15 customers mention "Readability"15 positive0 negative

Customers find the book readable and enjoyable. They find it charming from start to finish, teaching poetry with rhyme and meter thoroughly.

"...reviews his thoughts on poets and poetry, on rhyme and meter, thoroughly enough to allow him at long last to spill out his anthology introduction in..." Read more

"...Regardless of what it is, it is a great read that I heartily recommend." Read more

"Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist is an utterly delightful novel, one that will appeal to poetry fans and English majors all over...." Read more

"...Hated to say goodbye to Paul Chowder. Good read. Time well spent." Read more

8 customers mention "Insight"8 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's insights. They find it informative and engaging, with humorous stories and discussions about poetry. The author's writing style is described as eclectic and unique.

"...it all, Paul takes the reader on quite an entertaining and informative tour and reviews his thoughts on poets and poetry, on rhyme and meter,..." Read more

"Nicholson Baker is by far one of the most eclectic and interesting writers out there today...." Read more

"...The discussions are so engaging, you'll have a strong urge to seek out poetry...." Read more

"This book was a delight for the most part with a lot of self absorbed insight...." Read more

4 customers mention "Uniqueness"4 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's uniqueness. They find it compelling and interesting. Readers listen to and download many selections of the author's work.

"Nicholson Baker is by far one of the most eclectic and interesting writers out there today...." Read more

"...It is a treasure trove of delight, compelling in its uniqueness. Enjoy!" Read more

"...As such, it is unique, or almost so...." Read more

"...to find them to be non-fictional performers, listened to numerous selections of their work, and even downloaded some of them...." Read more

8 customers mention "Narrative quality"5 positive3 negative

Customers have different views on the narrative quality. Some find it entertaining with witty humor and insightful commentary on poetry. They describe it as an engaging novel for literature lovers, brilliant in its ideas, and minimal plot. Others feel the storyline lacks tension and there's little build-up to action or climaxes, making the predictable ending seem disappointing.

"...delightful and amusing, told with a deadpan humor that makes the narrative so entertaining...." Read more

"...There's not much narrative tension here, not much in the way of building action, climax, resolution and denouement. "Oh plot developments...." Read more

"...Yet set it down he does. This witty, self-deprecating narrative contains more insight about poetry than most textbooks...." Read more

"The plot of The Anthologist is minimal...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • rugger
    5.0 out of 5 stars Catch 22 for the Poetry Set; Laugh Out Loud Funny
    Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2009
    Verified Purchase
    Funny book. Really funny.

    If you:

    (a) purchased two or more books of poetry in the last 10 years,
    (b) regularly read The New Yorker, or
    (c) ever attempted to write a book,

    this one is for you.

    Nominally the book is a first person account of a poet-author attempting to write an introduction to an anthology of poetry. Really though, it is a stream of conscious narration of a very funny man's observations on life: the love of his dog, the loss of a girlfriend, the sadistic design of computer cables, worries over money and health insurance (or lack of), and more, each tertiary topic commuting his self-imposed sentence to complete the book introduction. For example, dropping egg salad into the silverware drawer, then softly cursing only to drop more in while in the process of sorting out whether to clean out the first dollop is all part of the day's meandering syllabus.

    Throughout the book there are references to poets and to the rhythm of poetry, but having an interest in or understanding of poetry is not a prerequisite to enjoying the book. On the other hand, the writing reflects the attention to detail of a poet in fitting just the right word in just the right place. Almost every paragraph includes an unexpected word or simile that enhance the writing.

    The real strong suit is the humorous take on the literary life. Catch 22 did this for the military; reading Heller's classic novel, forever changes one's view of the strident codes of the armed services. The Anthologist will similarly change the outsider's view of the lives of authors, particularly poets who we often look up to like rare birds migrating past us at high altitudes, when in truth they live normal lives here on the ground with the rest of us.

    Normally I don't write recommendations on books as taste is subjective or criticizing another's labor seems unfair. However, where a book stands out, it is worth taking the time to give it some praise. Also, to be fair five stars does not mean it rates up there with a literary classic such as Faulkner's Flags in the Dust, but the Great Ones can really only be ranked against themselves.

    This book will really appeal to a particular audience: anyone that answers yes to a, b, or c above. And on that score it rates a five.

    Hope this review helps you.
    9 people found this helpful
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  • Paul McMahon
    4.0 out of 5 stars You have to read the unchosen poems to understand the chosen ones.
    Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    "You can start anywhere," as narrator Paul Chowder says in this delightful little book. (He was talking about writing poetry, or mowing the lawn.) So I'll just start right here, and write a little bit about some of the things that I really liked about this novel.

    Firstly, I like Paul Chowder himself. His semi-stream of consciousness monologue about poems and plums (poems that don't rhyme - like the ones Paul writes), his feelings of ambivalence about modern poetry and the poetry culture, his sadness and hurt over the loss of Roz, his live-in girlfriend for the past nine years, and his ironic, self-effacing and (what seems genuinely) honest views of himself. He's not self-absorbed, as one reviewer I read suggested; he's just alone and lonely and fumbling around, trying to plan his next move at an emotional crossroads.

    He's about my age (early 50's), I guess, and a somewhat successful poet (three published collections, past winner of a Guggenheim), but nevertheless struggling financially. He can't teach to sustain himself, because teaching makes him a professional liar - telling all those young students that their attempts at poetry are worth reading is simply lying. But he has a lot to teach, and he does so charmingly from start to finish as he rehearses in his mind the themes of the introduction to a new anthology of rhyming poems he has compiled called "Only Rhyme". He starts by saying he's going to tell us everything he knows about poetry, and though I doubt that he really does accomplish that, he does tell us a lot.

    He tells us of his admiration for the great rhyming poets, and about his disillusionment when his fourth-grade teacher encourages the class to write in free verse: "It doesn't have to rhyme!" He tells us that the controversy over the importance of rhyming in poetry goes back 500 years. He acknowledges that free verse has given many more people the freedom to try their hand at poetry (natural rhymers are rare) and that his own career started with that schoolteacher - his own poems don't rhyme, they're plums. He tells us his strongly held views on meter: the natural English language meter is the four-beat line, the ballad stanza, root of great poetry and pop music. He declaims against the lauded status of the (imported from French) iambic pentameter: it's not five beats to a line he insists, it's six when you include the all important end-of-line rest; the rhythm is really a three-beat count, not six beats, like a waltz; the word iamb is itself not iambic. ("The real rhythm of poetry is a strolling rhythm. Or a dancing rhythm. A gavotte, a minuet, a waltz.") As if to emphasize the importance of rhythm, Paul is always setting famous verse to his own tunes. He warns of the dangers of "enjambment", especially in its "ultra-extreme" form. And he tells us countless anecdotes and bits of gossip about the whole population of nineteenth and twentieth century poets.

    I like the fact that through it all, Paul takes the reader on quite an entertaining and informative tour and reviews his thoughts on poets and poetry, on rhyme and meter, thoroughly enough to allow him at long last to spill out his anthology introduction in a whirlwind three days - but instead of the targeted forty pages, the introduction weighs in at two hundred thirty-nine (four pages short of the length of this book!). It will need some cutting, but this book doesn't - I like all two hundred and forty-three pages.

    It's not clear how much of what Paul Chowder tells us reflects Baker's own views - Paul is the narrator of a novel after all. But his nostalgia for rhyming poetry (he "always secretly want[s] it to rhyme" when he comes across a new poem in a magazine, journal or anthology, "don't you?"), sensible as it seems to philistine me, is a bit too heretical: even when lamenting the unfashionableness of rhyming, he takes careful pains to acknowledge the greatness of modern poetry and many (non-rhyming) modern poets, even Ezra Pound and Allen Ginsberg, both of whom he deplores.

    Paul starts by saying that "poetry is prose in slow motion". He notes that in poetry there is no distinction between fiction and non-fiction. And he avers "poetry is a controlled refinement of sobbing." True, true and true. And by these standards, this wonderful book should be thought of prose-poetry. How's this for slow motion prose:

    "Another inchworm fell on my pant leg. They germinate in quantity somewhere up in the box elder. It was still for a moment, recovering from the fall, and then its head went up and it began looping, groping for something to climb onto. It looked comfortably full of metamorphosive juices - full of the short happiness of being alive."

    As mentioned, it is always unclear whether the views on poetry that Paul expresses are "nonfiction" in the sense of revealing the author's own views. And the narrative is nothing if not a controlled sob over Paul's career to-date, his poetry, his future ("Poetry is a young man's job."), and his loss of Roz. Eventually, the sobs burst out as Paul delivers a master class at the "Global Word Congress" (a conclave of "masses" of poets) in Switzerland. He even ironically throws in a bit of iambic pentameter in the first line of a chapter following the one in which he presents his unorthodox disquisition on the classic meter: "A freakish mist lies over the land. [rest]"

    And like a poem, this novel demands to be read a second time - which I did immediately, for a better understanding and for the pleasure.

    There's not much narrative tension here, not much in the way of building action, climax, resolution and denouement. "Oh plot developments. Plot developments, how badly we need you and yet how much we flee from your clanking boxcars. I don't want to ride that train. I just want to sit and sing to myself." But as Paul packs up his collection of books (anthologies) and pines for his lost Roz (whose breasts, like poetry, "don't have to rhyme, but [...] do."), he draws the reader into sympathy with his situation, with his reflections on the past and present of poetry, and (for me at least) with his optimism about its rhyming future:

    "And I'm sure there will be a genuine adept who strides into our midst in five or ten years. The way Frost did. Sat up in the middle of that spring pool, with the weeds and the bugs all over him. He found the water that nobody knew was there. And that will happen again. All the dry rivulets will flow. And everyone will understand that new things were possible all along."

    There's a lot to like here, and it makes me want to know more of Baker's work. But before I do that, there are a lot of poets and a lot of poetry I need to catch up with.

    Paul McMahon
    July 2010
    8 people found this helpful
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  • Bonnie Brody
    5.0 out of 5 stars "The rhyming of rhymes is a powerful form of self-medication."
    Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    The Anthologist is a gem of a novel, one I've had on my shelves for a long while and am so happy to have finally picked it up to read. Paul Chowder, the protagonist of this novel, is a poet, once of some renown, but now making his way by giving readings and sitting on panels. He is supposed to be working on an anthology of rhyming poets but can't seem to get past his procrastination and make any headway. His girlfriend Roz has left him, burnt out by his bumbling ways and apparent lack of ambition. Even his editor is starting to lose hope.

    What makes this novel so wonderful is the information it provides about poetry and poets. Paul Chowder not only provides lesson upon lesson about what makes poetry good, but he also walks hand in hand with the poets who create the poems. We visit with most of the poets who have left their mark on our civilization.

    Paul thinks his own poetry is mediocre and forgettable. He views poetry as a young man's art, much like mathematics. Paul is nearing 60. He once taught college but quit his job in a huff and they will not rehire him. He spends his days in his barn trying to motivate himself to write the introduction to his anthology of rhyming poets. He also tries to come up with reasons to call or visit Roz, attempting to rekindle their relationship.

    This book is different from any other I've read. It is a novel disguised as a text. Or is it a text disguised as a novel? Regardless of what it is, it is a great read that I heartily recommend.
    6 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Thomas Cunliffe
    5.0 out of 5 stars A funny and surprisingly insightful read
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 30, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    Last week, Nicholson Baker's new book The Anthologist came my way and has managed to get me interested in poetry again - and one or two poetry books are back on my bedside table. I'm not alone in finding that The Anthologist has this effect - The Guardian books blog had a similar experience and described this book as "an elegant and surprisingly emotional book; one of the finest of the year"

    Nicholson Baker is a interesting author. He writes slightly quirky novels like The Anthologist, or A Box of Matches, but was also responsible for the substantial pacifist tract against World War II, Human Smoke. He is a keen evangelist for Wikipedia and has recently published just about the most useful article I have read about the Kindle e-reader, in The New Yorker magazine.

    The Anthologist is a strange book. On the one hand its a first person account by the fictional poet Paul Chowder of a period of his life in which he was charged with writing the introduction to a new poetry anthology. Paul describes his approach to poetry and spends quite a bit of time discussing poetic forms, great poets of the past and their lives and why some poems "work" and others don't. But mixed in with this is a personal story of how Paul has lost his girlfriend Roz. She seems to have given up on him, finally finding his chaotic and disorganised approach to life just too difficult to deal with. Paul misses her greatly and throughout the book launches various half-baked schemes to win her back.

    The remarkable thing from the reader's perspective is how Paul's personal difficulties impact on what he says about poetry, and in a way, almost form a new poem about the inner life of a middle aged man going through a difficult time. The book is very funny, for we get highly involved with the minutiae of Paul's life - we hear about the de-fleaing of a dog, the making of a bead necklace as a gift to Roz, the practical difficulties of laying a wooden floor and the best way to pick blueberries while on a walk.

    I found this a beguiling read. There was something about it which showed that in the midst of immense difficulties, the small details of life can carry you through. The buying of a loaf of good bread with some olives and taking time to savour them can do you good. Going to bed surrounded by books - "I never make the bed - its like a stew of books. The bed is the liquid medium. Its a Campbells Chunky Soup of books". Or going out to the garden at midnight to sit in a chair and listen to the night. Baker's writing has the Zen-like quality which brings you to a halt in your hurried life and says "take your time" - a quality which must be essential if you're going to make any sense out of a new poem.

    I understand that its worth getting hold of the audio book of The Anthologist because the author reads it himself.
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  • Ransen Owen
    4.0 out of 5 stars Good in parts
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 30, 2010
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    This inoffensive book grabbed me strangely as I went further into it.

    I learned some things about poetry,

    The love story is in the style of Mr. Baker, sad and quiet.
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  • Velomoon
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Anthologist - Nicholson Baker
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    "Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill. We think so then, we thought so still". I think that was the very first poem I heard, "The Pelican Chorus" by Edward Lear. My mum read it to me. God it was beautiful. Still is. Those singing Pelicans. They slapped their feet around on those long bars of yellow sand, and they swapped their verb tenses so that then was still and still was then. They were the first to give me a shudder, the shiver the grieving of true poetry--- the feeling that something wasn't right, but it was all right that it wasn't right. In fact it was better than if it had been right."

    If you love poetry, you will love this book, no prevarication, You Will Love This Book. If poetry was a joy, a love that you put aside as childish whimsy, this will re-introduce you to that love, will spark a curiosity, that will combust to no mere bonfire in your heart.

    [...]
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  • CarefulandGreen
    3.0 out of 5 stars Sadly, not funny
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 17, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    We ordered this as it was mentioned as very funny in a review of the Author's books in the Saturday paper… and the reviews on Amazon seemed intriguing. Sadly, it is not, in my husband's opinion (and he has a degree in English, for what that's worth..) funny at all….
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  • vineland
    5.0 out of 5 stars The best 'essay' on poetry I've ever read.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 14, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    If you're a novel junkie who has more or less neglected poetry since University, this book will get you back in the groove. The narrator, Paul Chowder, is intimately engaged in poetry and poetics and peppers his rambling soliloquay with very entertaining facts and observations about poems and the folk who write them.

    Otherwise, Paul is a hilariously infuriating, self-effacing ditherer, whose inability to get stuff done and knack of undermining himself at every turn is genuinely laugh out loud funny (I made a complete fool of myself in a café the other day reading this book).

    On the strength of this book, Nicholson Baker is one hell of a writer. His language is beautifully precise, both rich and sparing, and the subtle structuring of links between Paul's day-to-day inadequacies and observations and his thoughts on poetry, language and rhyme are quite marvellously executed.
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