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Re: Nicholson Baker



Nicholson Baker is a joke.  His ranting and raving does nothing to aid the
archival profession.  Preaching to the choir is a way of putting it.  If Baker
wants to have newspapers preserved let him try and do it and see what sort of
vault space problems he encounters.  His argument is  a kin to "we should save a
copy of every book ever written in every language for every genre,"  just so we
can "preserve" them. Foolish

Alex Rankin
Assistant Director
Boston University
********************************************************
No comments here stated reflect the opinions and/or attitudes of Boston
University or Special Collections

"Wick, Charles Harrison" wrote:

> Greetings to all,
>
> I am not an expert on Nicholson Baker's work, but I do know about his
> passion for old newspaper.  If anyone has looked at his site entitled, the
> American Newspaper Repository, you'll see that he only has certain years of
> newspapers.  I had the opportunity to ask him, why didn't he have complete
> runs of certain issues, and his lack of response indicates to me that only
> wanted to keep good examples of each newspaper.  Last year he wrote an
> article about how the British Museum was trashing large parts of their
> newspaper collection.  I recently did a database search of the newspapers on
> his website, and compared them to collections in OCLC and RLIN, and found
> that out of the nearly 200 periodical titles he claimed to have, all of them
> were incomplete, and all but about 20 titles were owned - in their original
> format - by at least 5 major repositories.  Although I do agree with him on
> a limited point of view that newspaper should be preserved in its original
> format for some artifactual value, but being a microfilm preservationist, I
> believe that if you preserve an artifact on archival quality microfilm, it
> will last.
>
> Harrison Wick
> Preservation Microfilm
> Indiana University
> Bloomington.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Ross [mailto:wer@CISUNIX.UNH.EDU]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 9:53 PM
> To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
> Subject: Re: Nicholson Baker
>
> Hello all,
>
> Although I am not a big fan of Nicholson Baker's novels (I am not a prude,
> but I do play one on TV -- truthfully, I am a non-fiction reader), I believe
> Jennifer it correct. Baker does not have fangs, nor does he have an
> annotated card catalog in his living room. He is not a Luddite. He leads a
> suburban life, with kids at school, and like most writers, he prizes the
> paper upon which his and other writers' works are written. He is using what
> the "powers that be" regard as the most fleeting of formats (newsprint) as
> an allegory for the preservation of all print materials. If he can salvage
> and preserve old newspapers, then how can we casually reformat and
> "deaccession" less vulnerable library/archival materials? I have read his
> new book, and while I disagree with significant portions of it, I believe he
> raises serious questions; ones which significant numbers of researchers and
> lay people will be asking us in the next few months. I question some of his
> conclusions, his casual use of quotes, and his sometimes bullying prose, but
> he raises questions that cut to the core of library/archival preservation:
> must we kill the patient in order to rid it of disease? Richard Cox has
> provided us with an admirable and measured counterpoint to Baker's argument,
> but if we do not all become acquainted with the timbre of the debate, our
> laxity places us at some peril.
>
> Bill Ross
> Head, Milne Special Collections and Archives
> University of New Hampshire Library
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jennifer Hecker
> To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
> Sent: 4/10/01 4:39 PM
> Subject: Nicholson Baker
>
> Howdy everyone-
>   Just got around to reading the last few days of the list and noticed
> that
> nobody mentioned that Nicholson Baker is also a very fine novelist. Most
> people have heard of one of his novels "Vox" which was given to
> President
> Clinton as a gift from his consort, Monica Lewinsky. The press made a
> pretty
> big deal about it because of the risque nature of the book (it is about
> phone sex). He's also written "The Mezzanine" a slim volume full of
> observations on life's minutae. The only other of his novels that I have
> read (actually, I listened to the abridged book-on-tape version) is "The
> Fermata" another risque piece which hinges upon a brilliant sci-fi
> premise.
> While I am a big fan of Baker's work, I must warn those who prefer to
> avoid
> literary titillation: these books are not for you (he gets pretty darn
> racy).
>   Also, I think that this kind of controversy is often (regrettably)
> missing
> from the library/archival literature. I've had some very interesting
> conversations which were sparked by Baker's writings in this field. The
> fact
> that these articles ran in the lay magazines also served to raise a good
> deal of awareness for the archival plight. I think this dude is really
> doing
> us a favor!
>
> ________________________________________
> Jennifer R. Hecker
> Masters Candidate in Archival Enterprise
> University of Texas Graduate School of
> Library and Information Science
> PMB 292
> 2002-A Guadalupe
> Austin, TX 78705
> 512.445.4373
> geekarchivist@hotmail.com
> ________________________________________
>
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