Baker's autism

Nicholson Baker could be viewed as a political writer in his early writings.  Like Mark Haddon in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, he shows an absorption in small things as sufficing.  The American male scales back, or scales down, his enthusiasms and embraces the study of the grain of wood in the table, so to speak.  This obsession with small-scale surfaces and experiences is the opposite of a war-mongering spirit--although it may (?) dovetail with consumerism.