Nicholson Baker's novel, The Mezannine, turned a lunch hour into a postmodern version of The Odyssey. In Room Temperature, originally published by Grove Press in 1984, Baker takes the reader even greater distance in the course of twenty minutes, although his narrator is obliged to be stationary, as he is giving his baby daughter her bottle. Though all in the room is still, the narrator's mind is not, and in inspired moments of mental flight, Mike's...

Amory Blaine, intent on rebelling against his staid, Midwestern upbringing, longs to acquire the patina of Eastern sophistication. His quest for sexual and intellectual enlightenment at college leads to a series of relationships, until he is cast out of paradise into the frightening labyrinth of the real world.

The book chronicles the maturing of Wolfe's autobiographical character, Eugene Gant, in his desperate search for fulfillment, making his way from small-town North Carolina to the wider world of Harvard University, New York City, and Europe.

The rise of a terrorist organization, led by a waiter who enjoys spitting in people's soup. He starts a fighting club, where men bash each other, and the club quickly gains in popularity. It becomes the springboard for a movement devoted to destruction for destruction's sake.

The job-hunting adventures of an unemployed widower with a daughter to support. He is Forrest Gump whose adventures range from selling encyclopedias to discovering New Coke, to the Gulf War during which he captures Saddam Hussein.