Writing about commonplace books ("Narrow Ruled"), Baker gets right to it from the opening sentence ("When I come across something I really like in a book, I put a dot in the margin") and never flags, delivering a gathering of quotations about the gathering of quotations.
Carver once said it was possible "to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language and endow those things – a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring – with immense, even startling power".
Murders, he wrote, are "commonplace, a logical product of widespread gangsterism".
Many short and unusually spelled words are rarely used in speech and writing, but commonplace in crossword puzzles.
That kind of writing is commonplace now in any fiction about gritty, urban realities, north or south of the border.
The actors speak English in their own accents, and since the writing is commonplace — without flavor or idiosyncrasy — no one seems at home.
Hosokawa's piece supposedly depicts the life-cycle of a lotus plant, from germination to flowering and decay, though the same generalised musical shape could just as easily be describing the making of a cup of tea or having an orgasm; the quartet writing is commonplace, its trajectory predictable.
"It is the protest of romance," he wrote, "against the commonplace of life".
In a realm where tactless questions have become commonplace, writes Michael Silver of Yahoo.com, Ireland has nonetheless reached a new low.
"She is wonderfully curious about the commonplace," wrote Kate Summerscale in the Daily Telegraph, and "her book works best when she ignores the bigger picture and closes in on the sticks, capes, umbrellas and perspective glasses".
