'The funniest book about sex ever written' Literary Review
Born in 1957 Nicholson Baker is the author of several acclaimed novels; A Box of Matches, Vox and The Fermata as well as essays, including the campaigning Double Fold for which the New York Times called him 'the Erin Brokovich of the library world'.
Lots of nakedness, quite a few surprises. His novels have the
brazen, daring timidity of love letters you know you'll never
post
*Sunday Times*
The book is bursting with sex and beauty, wound together profoundly
and pornographically. It is bountifully Rabelasisan and intensely
refined. I have never read anything quite like it. Misogynists will
definitely not like The Fermata; there is not one iota of violence
towards or contempt for women in this book. Wildly exhilarating and
confirming. The Fermata should be celebrated
*Mary Gaitskill*
Witty, dry and thought-provoking, a great addition to Baker's
unique observatory of contemporary life
*Vogue*
Baker follows his surprise bestseller, Vox , with a novel once again filled with elaborate sexual fantasies. The ``fermata'' of the title refers to the fold in time that narrator Arno Strine can induce; this allows him to stop the flow of events around him and proceed in his own fashion to undress unsuspecting women. The 35-year-old Strine, appropriately enough, works as a ``temp'' in Boston, moving in and out of various office situations, completing his business and then disappearing. Despite his questionable ethics while ``in the fold''--fondling women's breasts, going through their pocketbooks, writing erotic marginalia in the books they are browsing, stopping their cars and replacing their music cassettes with ones containing his own pornographic compositions--Strine is blithely confident that, since he means no ill will, he is innocent of any wrongdoing. Despite Baker's vaunted object fetishism, which in all his books registers as an unparalleled gift for description, he once again fails to find a novelistic context that would lend his art any lasting resonance. The sexual escapades here--a lonely woman's fascination with sexual toys strapped to a riding lawnmower; a laboratory investigation of the role masturbation might play in Strine's carpal tunnel problem--border on the ludicrous, however titillating. Still, many Vox readers will flock to this erudite smut even as Baker stalls in his campaign to eventually succeed Updike as America's most polished stylist. (Feb.)
Lots of nakedness, quite a few surprises. His novels have the
brazen, daring timidity of love letters you know you'll never post
* Sunday Times *
The book is bursting with sex and beauty, wound together profoundly
and pornographically. It is bountifully Rabelasisan and intensely
refined. I have never read anything quite like it. Misogynists will
definitely not like The Fermata; there is not one iota of
violence towards or contempt for women in this book. Wildly
exhilarating and confirming. The Fermata should be
celebrated -- Mary Gaitskill
Witty, dry and thought-provoking, a great addition to Baker's
unique observatory of contemporary life * Vogue *
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