Contemporary Literary Criticism | Baker, Nicholson - Jim Krusoe (review date 5 May 1996)

Jim Krusoe (review date 5 May 1996)

SOURCE: Krusoe, Jim. “Head Case.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (5 May 1996): 1, 10.

[In the following review, Krusoe praises The Size of Thoughts, complimenting the obsessive detail and evolution of style presented in the essays.]

I suppose that the two things I've always resented most about sports are exactly the two things most people watch them for: that desire to know the final score and the moment (the one when I'm invariably looking somewhere else) that proves to be decisive. That's why I like six-day bike racing. Not only is the end so far off that I can go out to breakfast (several times, in fact) before it arrives, but when I miss a “decisive moment,” I know any sport that has sleep time built into its structure has already absolved me.

Such, in a way, are also the pleasures of reading the essays collected in The Size of Thoughts by Nicholson Baker. Like one or...

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