SOURCE: Baker, Nicholas, and David Dodd. “Requiem for the Discarded.” Library Journal 121, no. 9 (15 May 1996): 31-2.

In the following interview, Baker discusses his controversial 1994 New Yorker essay “Discards,” in which he opposed the destruction of library card catalogs.

Nicholson Baker's new book taps the author's uncanny ability to capture in prose those minute, seemingly insignificant aspects of our daily lives and thought processes and turn them into inspiring reflections. The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber is a collection of essays on topics ranging from the evolution of punctuation (in which he defends, for example, the collash, which connects a colon and a dash) to the use of the word lumber throughout the history of the English language.

Librarians will enjoy this book immensely, not because they will always agree with the controversial Baker on all points but perhaps because he is the ultimate library patron: demanding, meticulous...