Nicholson Baker

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INTERVIEWER

What was Barthelme like as a teacher?

BAKER

He was a genuinely nice guy. He didn’t necessarily want to be there. I mean, he had his own demons. He was always on the lookout for a Bloody Mary. But he said something I’ve never forgotten—that when you get to be over fifty, you start counting. He was much more serious and less funny than you might expect.

-- Nicholson Baker at The Paris Review

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A Sense of Saturday

Pop has left for a couple of days, to be with Kay I assume. Since it is the middle of the week, I guess we can say that they no longer feel bound to having their stay-overs on the weekends. I am just glad to get the couple of days to myself, wherever those days might happily fall in the week. Though, it feels very much like Saturday on the day and night that he is away. I have to be careful about not missing my trash days with this little shake-up in my sense of time and calendar. However, there is a pleasant feeling of having a day off with this impression of Saturday. Maybe I ought to do something about my reading & writing life to retain this weekend feel. The only thing that comes to mind at the moment is to give my weekends to popular novels or some such guilty pleasure, except that I am not feeling any appetite for such reading, as I am still in a Shakespeare sort of mood and only want to read his plays for my fun-reading. Maybe I will let the issue simmer on a back-burner.

The Natural World

Blue Monday by FGW-Photography

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