The Fermata

Nicholson Baker

ISBN 10: 185686247X ISBN 13: 9781856862479

Publisher: Random House Audiobooks, 1995

Synopsis

From the author of "Vox", this is a sexually explicit novel. The hero, Arno Strine, likes to stop time and take women's clothes off.

About this title

Review:

The Fermata is the most risky of Nicholson Baker's emotional histories. His narrator, Arno Strine, is a 35-year-old office temp who is writing his autobiography. "It's harder than I thought!" he admits. His "Fold-powers" are easier; he can stop the world and use it as his own pleasure ground. Arno uses this gift not for evil or material gain (he would feel guilty about stealing), though he does undress a good number of women and momentarily place them in compromising positions--always, in his view, with respect and love. Anyone who can stop time and refer in self-delight to his "chronanisms" can't be all bad! Like Baker's other books, The Fermata gains little from synopsis. The pleasure is literally in the text. What's memorable is less the sex and the sex toys (including the "Monasticon," in the shape of a monk holding a vibrating manuscript) than Arno's wistful recollections of intimacy: the noise, for instance, of his ex-girlfriend's nail clipper, "which I listened to in bed as some listen to real birdsong."

From the Inside Flap:

Having turned phone sex into the subject of an astonishing national bestseller in Vox, Baker now outdoes himself with an outrageously arousing, acrobatically stylish "X-rated sci-fi fantasy that leaves Vox seeming more like mere fiber-optic foreplay" (Seattle Times). "Sparkling."--San Francisco Chronicle.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Audiobooks
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 185686247X
• ISBN 13: 9781856862479
• Binding: Audio Cassette