Traveling Sprinkler by Nicholson Baker

Published by Blue Rider Press on September 17, 2013

Some writers have a knack for making readers feel good, not because they're describing a good world, but because they describe a rotten world in a good-natured way. Nicholson Baker reminds us that the world isn't all bad (even if the news is), that it's filled with well-intentioned (if sometimes misguided) people, and that much of what we fret about is silly, although much (like drones dropping bombs on children) provides good reason to wear a misery hat.

At 55, Paul Chowder (last seen in The Anthologist) is a bit late for a mid-life crisis but he's having one anyway. Chowder is struggling to shape a new identity. He'd like to write protest songs. He'd like to have big lips because he thinks women find them attractive. He'd like to get back together with Roz. He'd like to help people. He'd like to stop eating the peanut butter crackers that are giving him a potbelly.

Chowder figures that after publishing three collections and an anthology, he is finished as a poet. In his youth, Chowder gave up the bassoon for poetry; now he is learning to play a cheap guitar. His friend Tim tells him that taking up the guitar is "a middle-aged thing to do," that he'll be like the people at faculty parties who "sneak off and play Clapton Unplugged and Blind Lemon Jefferson." The wry humor in that observation, and in Chowder's response ("Exactly"), sets the tone for Traveling Sprinkler.

Just as the pleasure of music derives from "the singularity of every utterance," the unique nature of every individual's thought patterns is well illustrated in Traveling Sprinkler. Chowder invites the reader into his cluttered mind, chatting amiably about his scattered opinions and memories. Readers who are looking for some semblance of a plot might be put off but I found it engaging, largely because Chowder's thoughts are so amusing. He talks about self-improvement, cigars, movies, his theory of metaphorical interference, corncob pipes, poetry, Quaker meetings, his car, experts, classical music, pop music, dance music, Debussy, Monsanto, Amazon (which is "using its stock price to take over all of retailing and bankrupt the world"), tradition versus progress, and (of course) traveling sprinklers. He often opines derisively about the CIA and frequently criticizes Obama as a warmonger. Readers who cannot abide left-leaning opinions should steer clear of Traveling Sprinkler.

Although I've never been thrilled with narratives in which the author addresses the reader directly, Baker makes it work. Still, a good novel benefits from characters interacting in meaningful ways with other characters, an element that is largely missing from the novel's first half. Chowder interacts with only a few characters during the course of the story (most notably, in the second half, ex-girlfriend Roz) which produces little in the way of secondary character development. My only other complaints about this thought-based novel are that the ending is too obvious and that Chowder's lectures about the construction of music are a long-winded component of an otherwise breezy story.

Baker's writing is consistently witty and often strikingly imaginative. His pain-shaped humor reminded me of Woody Allen. I admired Baker's use of a collapsed barn floor as a metaphor for the wreckage of life. I appreciated the "misery hat" as a recurring theme; you knit it for yourself "and all of a sudden you're wearing it." Baker's comparison of a Fountain of Waynes song to a scrambling quarterback waiting to launch a pass is a little slice of genius, as is the parallel he draws between a Beatles song and a Tennyson poem.

When I reached the end of Traveling Sprinkler and asked myself "What was the book about?" I groped for an answer. In part, it's about the similarities between popular culture and highbrow culture. It's about a love of words and a love of music. It's about how men cope with the fears that accompany aging. It's about the struggle to live a decent and fulfilling life. All of those themes are interwoven but they add up to something larger, something difficult to define. I suppose they add up to life.

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