U & I: A True Story

Description

When Nicholson Baker, one of the most linguistically talented writers in America, set out to write a book about John Updike, the result was no ordinary biography. Instead Baker's account of his relationship with his hero is a hilarious story of ambition, obsession, talent and neurosis, alternately self-deprecating and self-aggrandising. More memoir than literary criticism, Baker is excruciatingly honest, and U and I reveals at least as much about Baker himself as it does about his idol. Written twenty years before Updike's death in 2009, U and I is a very smart and extremely funny exploration of the debts we owe our heroes.

Nicholson Baker was born in New York in 1957. He is the author of eight novels, including The Mezzanine, Vox and Room Temperature, and five non-fiction works, including U and I and Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, for which he won the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award.