The One on Earth: Works of Mark Baumer

Fiction. Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Edited by Blake Butler. Mark Baumer wrote like he was trying to have a consciousness, like he's trying to avoid feeling anything; then it's like he's working really hard to feel more. It's like he's a child of the internet plus Wendell Berry, an anti-folk folksy speaker navigating the industries of gigs and professional writing culture. Baumer's life was ended by an SUV in January of 2017 while he was walking barefoot across America for the second time to draw attention to climate change. Baumer was a prolific wizard of non sequitur and displacement, and these writings show the maturation of an absurdist conscience, applying itself to inequities of access: power, security, and meaning itself, within the confines of America and within that the contemporary professionalized writing culture.