I ordered Nicholson Baker’s new “novel,” Checkpoint: A Novel, which at 128 pages in length is more like a novella.
I haven’t read it yet, but I did listen to Mr. Baker’s interview on The Leonard Lopate show and I found him to be incredibly modest for his accomplishments, which includes helping to save American libraries’ fragile physical artifacts from history’s dungheap. In fact, I’m buying the book because of his (real or apparent) modesty which lies in stark contrast to the content of the book.
In case you don’t know, in this story, two men discuss, in a hotel room, the implications of killling the President. It’s a grotesque of course, a modern grand guignol that happens to also stand as a read on current events. I thought it appropriate to order during the current RNC less-than-rampage through NYC.
(We babysat our friends’ daughter today so that the mother and father could march in today’s 100,000-strong protest.)