For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo.

He is hard at work on his autobiography 'The Fermata. All of the Updike quotations used are presented as coming from memory alone and many are inaccurate with correct versions and Baker's (later) commentary on the inaccuracy given in brackets. ' It proves in the telling to be a very provocative funny and altogether morally confused piece of work.

Nicholson Baker (born January 7 1957) is a contemporary American writer of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization.