Art Complicating Life

Kazuo Ishiguro and Nicholson Baker occupy opposite ends of the stylistic-genius spectrum, and their new books each inhabit the form of their passions—the world of music for the former; the messy workings of the human mind for the latter.

Nocturnes (Knopf), Ishiguro's elegant song cycle of five short stories, is composed of characters defined, however roughly, by their relationship with music. Melancholy and often absurd, Ishiguro conducts understated symphonies of longing and regret. Baker, a dark dipper into the stream of consciousness, enters the mind of The Anthologist (Simon & Schuster), a lesser poet recently abandoned by both his girlfriend and his writing mojo, who suffers hilariously over the composition of the perfect introduction to a new poetry anthology. Since nothing short of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—spun with Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language—will suffice, all seems hopeless.

The resonance in these books is borne out of the fission between the promise art holds and what happens when reality orchestrates another movement.

E.S.