Contemporary Literary Criticism | Baker, Nicholson - Michael Harris (review date 1 April 1990)

Michael Harris (review date 1 April 1990)

SOURCE: Harris, Michael. Review of Room Temperature, by Nicholson Baker. Los Angeles Times Book Review (1 April 1990): 6.

[In the following review, Harris praises the details and intricate observations recorded in Room Temperature.]

Many look but few observe, as Sherlock Holmes noted to Dr. Watson, and a technical writer named Mike, the narrator of [Room Temperature, a] short second novel by Nicholson Baker (the first was Mezzanine) is definitely one of the observers. Bottle-feeding his six-month-old daughter, nicknamed “the Bug,” on a fall afternoon in Quincy, Mass., in the apartment he shares with his working wife, Patty, he asserts that “with a little concentration one's whole life could be reconstructed from any single 20-minute period randomly or almost randomly selected.” He then proceeds to prove it.

Without leaving his rocking chair, Mike shuttles back...

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