Nicholson Baker writes a novel about a poet compiling an anthology

It won't be published for another week or so, but may I enthusiastically recommend Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist, a new novel about a poet who has writer's block composing the introduction to a poetry anthology.

There are marvelous Bakerite meditations on W.H. Auden, the state of poetry reviewing, and the flaw of iambic pentameter in English. I think it may be his best novel since The Mezzanine, which is really saying something.

Order yours, as they say, today.

--Ken Tucker