Travelling Sprinkler

by Nicholson Baker

(Blue Rider Press, £8.99)

THIS enormously engrossing and diverting work is a lyrical statement of praise to the joys of displacement and obsession. 

In true Nicholson Baker style it encompasses microscopic ruminations on YouTube training videos, the bassoon — that most bizarre of conventional orchestral instruments — Debussy piano preludes and quality cigar brands. 

Its protagonist is Paul Chowder, who first appeared in an earlier Baker novel, who has successfully published his work on rhyme in poetry. He is now tackling his own collection of verse, although he spends as much thought on constructing the title as he does on the rest of the content. 

Chowder is a likeable leftie. He’s appalled by the use of drones by the Obama administration, wistful about his failed main relationship and beguiled about youth culture. 

But in part unsettled by his imminent 55th birthday and the travails of both his neighbour and his ex-lover he begins to divert more and more time doing absolutely anything other than settling to the job in hand. 

That’s unsurprising, since the book’s title appears to be a metaphor for something that, directed by its own energy, moves slowly in scattering stuff around without focussing on one main thing. The question is why should Chowder be anything else, since he reveals a rich interior life regardless of either its immediate or ultimate main purpose. 

The hyper-realistic detail that Baker affords us about Chowder’s distractions and everyday thoughts include the precise costs and relative merits of different microphones, music software packages and loads of other associated gear. Chowder is a walking, breathing gizmo catalogue. 

As such he provides a heavyweight critique of the formal and prescribed choices offered by consumer capitalism, while what Chowder really seems to yearn for is the real choice of a renewed love life. 

Travelling Sprinkler demonstrates that Nicholson Baker, best known for a slew of technically and thematically radical novels in the 1990s, has not lost his touch.

Paul Simon