Substitute: In the Classroom with Nicholson Baker

“A gripping and indispensable time-capsule of teaching and learning in the 21st century.” —Publishers Weekly

Whether in fiction or non, Nicholson Baker‘s varied but genuine obsessions—music, newspapers, literature, familial dynamics, video game culture—find their way into his smart, deft, and hilarious prose. In Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids, he turns his eye to public education, detailing his spring as a substitute teacher. Writer and Pomona faculty member Jonathan Lethem joins him for a deconstruction of one of our most essential, and problematic, institutions.

Nicholson Baker is the author of 10 novels and five works of nonfiction, including The Anthologist, The Mezzanine, and Human Smoke. He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Hermann Hesse Prize, and a Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Maine with his wife, Margaret Brentano; both his children went to Maine public schools.

Celebrated for his novels, short stories, and essays, Jonathan Lethem is recognized today as one of America’s foremost contemporary writers. His works include nine novels, five short-story collections, six nonfiction books and an array of essays published in such publications as Rolling Stone, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. His novel Motherless Brooklyn was named Novel of the Year by Esquire magazine and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Salon Book Award as well as the Macallan Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005.

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