The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber was published by Random House in 1996. The collection gathers Baker’s journalism and longer essays from the late 1980s and early 1990s — pieces that apply his novelistic attention to subjects that most writers consider beneath notice.
“Lumber” — the title essay — is a meditation on the word itself and the things it describes: the physical substance, its history, its metaphorical uses, its sound. “Clip Art” is about fingernail clippers. “The History of Punctuation” is exactly what it sounds like. “Discards” is about the destruction of library card catalogs — a subject Baker would pursue at greater length in Double Fold — and the loss of physical objects that once organized knowledge.
The longer essays are more conventional in subject but no less distinctive in treatment: a piece on the fiction of John Updike, a review of a dictionary, a meditation on the size of thoughts themselves (are some thoughts physically larger than others? do complex ideas take up more neural space?). Baker’s method is always the same: pursue a seemingly trivial subject until it reveals unsuspected depths, then pursue those depths until they connect to fundamental questions about consciousness, history, and value.
Collecting The Size of Thoughts
First edition (Random House, New York, 1996): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good/very good: $10–$25
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
Essays on Everything
The Size of Thoughts (1996) collects Baker’s non-fiction — essays on subjects including model airplanes, the history of punctuation, the design of nail clippers, the disappearance of card catalogs, and the meaning of the word “lumber.” Baker’s essays apply the same microscopic attention he brings to his fiction, and the results are consistently surprising and entertaining. The essay “Lumber,” a vast investigation of the word’s etymology and cultural history, is a tour de force of obsessive scholarship.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes Baker’s essays distinctive? Their combination of extreme specificity with genuine intellectual depth. Baker can spend pages on a paper clip and make you feel that understanding the paper clip is essential to understanding civilization.