One of the first things that Daria and I found that we had in common was that we both liked Nicholson Baker. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he’d gone to our college. I hadn’t read all of his stuff, and for some reason never got around to reading a favorite of hers, Room Temperature, until this week. It’s about a man giving his infant daughter a bottle and his thoughts of love and intimacy. There’s this whole part about how he was living in Boston and visiting her at school near Philadelphia, and it talks about the appreciation of style and color he learned from her and helping her decorate her apartment in Ardmore. He goes over all their pet names, their arguments, their desire to know what the other is thinking and understand the other, the paths of action and decision and chance that brought them together and kept them there.
Obviously, I’ve given up about twenty pages in.
Secretly Ironic 