A Small Good Thing

Guardian profile of Nicholson Baker:

…Baker pulls out his laptop and props it up on his knee: “At first I’ll just sit here for a while and yawn and eat an apple,” he says. “But then I’ll get my laptop out. When it is black in here, which it really is, absolutely and totally dark, and I’m down here with this small fire and I’ve got my fingers tapping away at the keyboard, I feel like I can type anything I want.” He lowers the contrast on the screen so that it is the colour of slate, and each keystroke produces a fluorescent letter: “I can now work here in the dark. I don’t even have to know that I’m typing. I just think and my thinking is being recorded. That is part of the feeling, of being in the darkness and following the thoughts wherever they go.”

Also, a movie adaptation of The Fermata is apparently heading towards pre-production with Neil Gaiman working on the script and Robert Zemeckis producing.

Related: Spoken and written excerpts from Baker’s latest novel, A Box of Matches; Nicholson Baker fan page.