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U and I (1991)

This book is nonfiction. It's a great read -- even if you don't know anything about John Updike.

Opening Sentence:

On August 6, 1989, a Sunday, I lay back as usual with my feet up in a reclining aluminum deck chair padded with blood-dotted pillows in my father-in-law's study in Berkeley (we were house-sitting) and arranged my keyboard, resting on an abridged dictionary, on my lap.

Book Jacket Copy:

Few writers have trained an eye on the microscopic particulars of daily life to as much critical acclaim as Nicholson Baker, the author of The Mezzanine and Room Temperature. But in this stylishly written, extravagantly funny book, Baker takes on a subject his own size - John Updike, his loomingly present literary influence and idol. Never mind that he has read only a scattering of Updike's books and has met the author only twice. Out of memory and speculation, admiration, envy, and anxiety, Baker has constructed a splendid edifice that is at once a tribute to Updike and a disarmingly, often hilariously frank self-examination - a work that lays bare both the pettiest and the most exalted transactions between writers and their readers.

Links:

• John Updike, on Nicholson Baker (Scroll down)
• View the listing, or order the book from Amazon.com