William Baker’s book wins
prestigious Choice recognition

by Tom Parisi

NIU Professor William Baker’s bibliographical history on Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter has been selected as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2006 by Choice magazine, a publication of the American Library Association.

Choice is the premier source for reviews of academic books. Each January, the magazine publishes its list of Outstanding Academic Titles. The list reflects the best in scholarly titles from the previous year and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community.

Only about 10 percent of some 7,000 reviewed works are named Outstanding Academic Titles.

Baker is an NIU Presidential Research Professor who holds a joint appointment with University Libraries and the Department of English. The British Library, as well as Oak Knoll Press, published “Harold Pinter: A Bibliographical History,” by Baker and co-author John C. Ross, shortly before Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The playwright and poet is among the most prolific British authors alive today. Pinter’s screenplay for the 1981 film, “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” was nominated for an Academy Award, but he is best known for his more than two dozen plays, including “The Caretaker,” “The Homecoming” and “The Birthday Party.”

Baker’s bibliographical history provides a comprehensive account of the published writings and also texts in other media that Pinter wholly or partly authored. No author had previously consolidated Pinter’s body of work into a comprehensive text for libraries, archives, literary scholars, critics and Pinter enthusiasts.

Baker’s book also contains textual variants. It chronicles interviews, recorded in print and other media, and interview-based articles, generated from Pinter’s wide-ranging interest in literary projects, human rights and political causes.

Baker previously won a Choice award for “The Letters of Wilkie Collins,” a book co-authored with William Clarke and published in 1999. Collins was a popular 19th century British writer who helped invent the detective novel.

While Baker welcomes the latest Choice recognition, the highest praise for his work came from Pinter himself. “What a piece of work! I’m staggered,” Pinter wrote in a letter to Baker. “Apart from anything else, it gives shape to my own life.”

1-16-07