the anthologist: a novel
Buy Cheap The Anthologist: A Novel 
Buy Low Price From Here Now
The Anthologist is narrated by Paul Chowder — a once-in-a-while-published kind of poet who is writing the introduction to a new anthology of poetry. He’s having a hard time getting started because his career is floundering, his girlfriend Roz has recently left him, and he is thinking about the great poets throughout history who have suffered far worse and deserve to feel sorry for themselves. He has also promised to reveal many wonderful secrets and tips and tricks about poetry, and it looks like the introduction will be a little longer than he’d thought.
What unfolds is a wholly entertaining and beguiling love story about poetry: from Tennyson, Swinburne, and Yeats to the moderns (Roethke, Bogan, Merwin) to the staff of The New Yorker, what Paul reveals is astonishing and makes one realize how incredibly important poetry is to our lives. At the same time, Paul barely manages to realize all of this himself, and the result is a tenderly romantic, hilarious, and inspired novel……..
Readmore
Technical Details
– ISBN13: 9781416572442
– Condition: NEW
– Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
– Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
See more technical details 
2009-12-15
By Roger Brunyate (Baltimore, MD)
Paul Chowder is a poet, once somewhat well-known, but now going through a dry spell. Right now, he is living on a farm in New England, doing just about anything he can to avoid writing the introduction to the anthology of verse he has been commissioned to assemble, entitled “Only Rhyme.” Exasperated, his girlfriend of six years has left him, though he loves her hopelessly still. So now he potters around the house, takes books to bed and never reads them, makes a half-hearted attempt to clean out his study, mows his lawn until the mower breaks, does odd jobs for friends, gives bookstore poetry readings attended by thirteen people — anything to avoid having to set his artistic credo down on paper.
Yet set it down he does. This witty, self-deprecating narrative contains more insight about poetry than most textbooks. Indeed, Chowder has ideas about rhyme and meter that you probably won’t find in any textbook, though they make perfect sense. Clearly he is in love with verse — so deeply in love with it that his own talent pales in comparison — hence his writer’s block. Poets, well-known or obscure, from Elizabethan times to the present, are his friends; he meets Edgar Allen Poe in a laundromat, or Theodore Roethke limping at twilight down his lane. Some poems he mentions only with a glance of passing wonder; some, like Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish,” he analyses in detail. He illustrates his theories with diagrams and typographical tricks; he even scribbles snatches of song in musical notation to show how a poem should go. It is a book to make you rush to the web to learn more about the poets mentioned. You want to read it at least twice: once for the story, and once to follow up all the references in it. It really ought to be published with an accompanying anthology, although copyright considerations would presumably prohibit it.
Nonetheless, the book is labeled a novel, and not a memoir or poetry textbook. As such, it is unique, or almost so. The nearest things I can think of are FLAUBERT’S PARROT by Julian Barnes, in which an offbeat disquisition on the French novelist covers a story about the modern scholar writing about him. Or perhaps the book I have most recently been reading, THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery, which hides a touching personal story behind a series of essays on French culture. Chowder’s story falls somewhere in between the two; he is more engaging than Barnes’ character, but he does less than Barbery’s. I found myself reading (avidly) for Chowder’s insights, but losing patience with his flippant avoidance of the job at hand — though fortunately the author does not leave you hanging at the end. All the same, three stars at most for Baker’s book as a novel, though five for his infections delight in poetry and what it can do.
2009-12-09
By Mr. Kurt Tidmore (Ireland)
When someone describes a book as a ‘novel of ideas’ it’s almost a sure bet it’s boring and lacks believable characters (think Ayn Rand), but there are a few exceptions and this is definitely one of them. The basic story line of The Anthologist is the struggle of a poet to put together an anthology of rhyming poems. The problem is he has a huge writers block as regards the introduction. Boring, right? Wrong!! This particular poet is someone you’ll want to take home and make a cup of tea for, someone you’ll want to sit down and have a long talk with. He’s a disturbingly honest klutz who also happens to talk more interestingly about poetry than anyone you’ve ever known. Admittedly talking interestingly about poetry isn’t something most of us have ever heard anyone do, but in this case it’s fascinating, even for those of us who didn’t think we gave a damn about poetry. This book makes poetry and poets as interesting as athletics and athletes or crime and criminals. It’ll send you digging for those old anthologies of poems you put in the back of your closet after college. And it’ll make you sound incredibly smart the next time you get caught in a discussion of literature.
2009-11-26
By G. Noble (Sydney, Australia)
This is funny, entertaining writing which requires from the reader a semblance of wit and intellect, and also a none-too-sexy love of extended exegises on the poetic process and writers’ block. I must say though that there were times where the book could have done with a bit of editing (I had to skip past some of the more detailed arguments about poetry) but this is a minor criticism of a book that was often actually hilarious. Baker’s intelligence, wit and obvious joie de vivre is a pleasure to journey with.
2009-11-08
By Jay C. Smith (Portland, OR USA)
Imagine a novel that is in large part a poetry lesson. The chief plot element involves whether the narrator will ever overcome his writer’s block, although there is also a sub-plot involving whether he will catch a mouse in his kitchen. If you knew just these three things about it would you want to read it? Probably not. But then, what if you also knew the author was Nicholson Baker? “Aha!” you might think, just the sort of thing he could pull off.
Baker’s narrator, Paul Chowder, is a poet who hasn’t been publishing much recently, although he has a commission to produce an anthology. His once live-in female companion, Roz, has moved out, apparently in large part because Paul has failed to make headway writing the introduction to the book. His delinquency seems understandable when we learn that his own poems have been only free verse, although the anthology is to consist entirely of rhyming poems. “But then again my own poems sickened me,” Paul tells us, “so I was confused.” Yet he persists. “My life is necessary because I sustain the idea of poetry through thick and thin,” he says.
True to his mission, interspersed with his reportage of his mundane daily life, Paul tells us what he thinks about poetry. He has opinions about meter, rhyme, enjambment, translations, and more. We also hear what he thinks about dozens of specific poets. Paul’s views are often quite insightful, sound enough that we perhaps may take at least some of them as Baker’s own.
But we can never take Paul too seriously. This is a man, after all, who reports that he once encountered Poe in a laundromat, but couldn’t elicit “Ed’s” explication of the poem he was working on, one about a raven.
Paul draws us into his own fixations by addressing us, his readers, directly throughout. He just assumes that we will follow along and be interested, much like some chatty neighbor you may have experienced, and it turns out that he is right. His digressiveness is a key element of the charm of the novel. He can move in the course of a single paragraph from the history of poetry to the history of clothespins and then back to poetry, for example. When after discussing the life and poetry of W.S. Merwin he abruptly interjects “I miss my mom and dad” and then returns directly to Merwin it doesn’t seem too odd. It’s just Paul being himself.
After two hundred pages we have come to care for Paul, about whether he will ever win Roz back, for instance. A catharsis occurs as he participates on a panel at a writer’s conference in Switzerland. I won’t disclose how it all turns out for him, but here is a clue: you should know enough already.
Read The Anthologist and you may find it to be the best part of your day — perhaps it will even inspire you to write a poem or two.
2009-11-08
By Jill I. Shtulman (Chicago, IL USA)
When I was in college, I used to love to read poetry. I devoured poems by Ferlinghetti, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Why am I starting a review with a look back to my own past favorite poets? Because that’s what The Anthologist is REALLY all about; our personal relationship with poetry. I challenge anyone to read The Anthologist and not instantly get on the Internet and look up Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish, James Fenton’s The Vapour Trail, or any poem by Mary Oliver or perhaps, Selima Hill. It’s nearly impossible.
Anyone — poetry reader or non poetry reader — is in for the treat of his or her life. The conceit Nicholson Baker uses is to create a character — Paul Chowder — who is writing the introduction to a new anthology of poem. But he’s procrastinating: the muse isn’t with him, the love of his life has left him, and he’s beginning to wonder if he can create something new and fresh. So he ruminates and ruminates and ruminates some more — on the various love lyrics, ballads, sea chanteys, and rhymed couplets that he has connected with through the years.
Do you know what an ultra-extreme enjambment is and why it’s the key to the whole poetry conundrum? You will after reading this book. Have you ever wondered why poets such as Vachel Lindsay or Ezra Pound were so depressive and in the latter case, outright crazy? Paul Chowder has his theories: “poets are our designated grievers.” Do you believe that poems need to rhyme to be GOOD? See what Baker’s character has to say! Are long poems better than short poems? Chowder ruminates, “They can all be cut down to a few green stalks of asparagus amid the roughage.” I guess that settles THAT!
What poetry reader cannot swoon to a statement such as: “A Ted Roethke poem is like an empty shoe you find at the side of the road that some manic person has cast aside on a walk but Louise Bogan’s poems are cared-for shoes in a closet, tight and heavy around their clacking wooden trees.” What NON poetry reader won’t want to read both Roethke and Bogan to find out what Paul Chowder means? And when Chowder says, “I was hoping to find a crack in the pavement where my ailanthus of a poem could take root” — every would-be poet can relate.
I am not the type of reader who underlines — I like my books pristine. But I took out my pencil and underlined whole passages of The Anthologist. THAT’S how good it is. After reading The Anthologist, I’ve resolved to go back to reading poetry for the love of it once again. Maybe I’ll start with Mary Oliver…
Images Product
Buy The Anthologist: A Novel Now
Best Book 2009 
Leave a comment