Baker's squibs and brief forays have an uncommon ability to touch the center of our private perceptions. His subject [in All Things Considered] is the modern U.S. culture as viewed through the eyes of the New York Times—our 100-eyed cultural Argus…. He revamps the plots of Anna Karenina by Henry Miller, Heidi by Terry Southern, Huckleberry Finn by James Baldwin, A Tale of Two Cities by Joseph Heller, Wuthering Heights by Tennessee Williams, and The Iliad by Norman Mailer, and does it amusingly. Most often, while enjoying Baker, one has the sense of being in even when he is talking about the relative intelligence of dolphins, cats and men. He is quite keen on the average American's non-life and disposable children. His is an assault on middle-class values, and he tilts with more accuracy than Quixote had. He also has many readers, deservedly.

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