Николсон Бейкер

Николсон Бейкер (р. 1957) – современный американский романист, чьи непривычные на первый взгляд романы повествуют о вещах причудливых и странных и подрывают сами основы традиционных методов построения сюжета. Бейкер – правнук известного журналиста, лауреата Пулитцеровской премии Рэя Стэннарда Бейкера (1870-1946). Закончил Истмэнское музыкальное училище (1975) и колледж Хэверфорд по специальности «английская литература» (1979). Он – автор шести романов и нескольких публицистических книг, постоянно печатается в ведущих американских литературных журналах. В 2001 году Николсон Бейкер получил премию Национального круга литературных критиков. Живет с женой к двумя детьми на юге штата Мэн. Николсон Бейкер яростно выступает против отказа библиотек от хранения информации на бумажных носителях, перехода на микрофильмы, уничтожения картотек и отправки старых книг и газет на свалки, считая, что библиотекари лгут обществу о критичности проблемы хранения бумаги и просто одержимы модными технологиями. В 1997 году в ознаменование этих попыток сохранить историческое наследие человечества ему была присуждена премия Джеймса Мэдисона «Свобода информации». Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 in New York City, and spent much of his youth in the Rochester, New York, area. He studied briefly at the Eastman School of Music and received a B.A. in English from Haverford College. He lives today with his wife and two children in South Berwick, Maine. He received a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2001 for his nonfiction book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. Baker has been a fervent critic of what he perceives as libraries' unnecessary destruction of paper-based media. He wrote several vehement articles in The New Yorker critical of the San Francisco Public Library for sending thousands of books to a landfill, the elimination of card catalogs, and the destruction of old books and newspapers in favor of microfilm. In 1997, Baker received the San Francisco–based James Madison Freedom of Information Award in recognition of these efforts. In 1999, Baker established a non-profit corporation, the American Newspaper Repository, to rescue old newspapers from destruction by libraries. In 2001 he published Double Fold, in which he accuses certain librarians of lying about the decay of materials and being obsessed with technological fads, at the expense of both the public and historical preservation. Baker describes himself as having "always had pacifist leanings." In March 2008, Baker reviewed John Broughton's Wikipedia: The Missing Manual in the New York Review of Books. In the review, Baker described Wikipedia's beginnings, its culture, and his own editing activities under the username "Wageless". His article, How I fell in love with Wikipedia, was published in The Guardian newspaper in the UK on April 10, 2008.