Vox - Hardcover

Baker, Nicholson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394589955 ISBN 13: 9780394589954

Publisher: Random House, 1992

Synopsis

Baker has written a novel that remaps the territory of sex--solitary and telephonic, lyrical and profane, comfortable and dangerous. Written in the form of a phone conversation between two strangers, Vox is an erotic classic that places the author in the first rank of America's major writers. Reading tour.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

itten a novel that remaps the territory of sex--solitary and telephonic, lyrical and profane, comfortable and dangerous. Written in the form of a phone conversation between two strangers, Vox is an erotic classic that places the author in the first rank of America's major writers. Reading tour.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Reviews

For readers who feel that, descriptive virtuosity aside, Baker's previous books displayed a disturbingly narrow focus-- The Mezzanine documented an office worker's lunch-hour search for shoelaces; Room Temperature studied a 40-minute bottle-feeding of an infant; U & I lingered over a young writer's obsession with John Updike--Vox will put paid to their most negative suspicions. And for those who feel that Baker is an unparalleled talent, forgiveness may be the only recourse after reading this thin (176 pages) and unaccountably self-indulgent work . Terms like masturbation, onanism and fetishism not only capture this book's themes, they serve as well to characterize the author's unseemly affair with a language closeted from the real world. Baker's inestimable gift, evinced in the other books, for describing the indescribable with absolutely spot-on flourishes are nowhere to be found in Vox . Instead, the reader is treated to one long conversation between Jim and Abby, two people who have just met over a phone sex call-in line. Together they explore rather tame and respectable sexual fantasies and regale each other with inane disclosures. In the end, this long-distance pillow talk is less a commentary on human intercourse than an indictment of Baker's own rarefied style. 50,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

On a private adult phone-sex line, Jim, a West Coaster in his late 20s, connects with East Coast Abby. Birds of a feather--both of them witty, obsessive, yuppie masturbators--they're off, trading stories and fantasies and the psychopathologies of everyday life. Baker (The Mezzanine, Room Temperature), heretofore more a monologist, a literary performance artist, than much of a novelist, folds his deadpan honesty and funny fussiness double--and though Jim and Abby finally seem so much like the same voice that they don't really qualify as characters, they don't have to: Baker has found a conceptual format, the phone sex, perfectly tailored to his talents. This is a mini-epic of Big Chill--ed safe-sex: rambling stories that start out as aids to titillation but dry and crumble into homely and self-satisfied details that challenge eroticism; the overturning of classical seduction theory (here, both the man and woman, unseen to each other, know that the other has his/her hand on his/her self); lots of little snappy apercus and joshings establish intellectual coziness. The tropes of modern sex--olive oil, VCRs, copying machines, the letters in Penthouse Forum--are traded breezily, sometimes hilariously, but are nothing compared to the main technological thrill; after Abby tells him exactly how she masturbates in the shower, Jim (in the book's best and most concentrated moment) declares it a miracle, ```a telephone conversation I want to have. I love the telephone.''' And Baker does expose a strange kind of dignity, in that Jim and Abby aren't using each other for very much more than as instruments of exemption from embarrassment. Quite a literary season for self-relief! First Harold Brodkey as the Mahler, the Liszt, of the hand-job, now Nicholson Baker as its David Letterman. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Jim and Abby meet over the phone when they both dial one of those 976 party lines that are advertised in adult magazines. After some exploratory small talk, they retire to the electronic "back room" for a more intimate chat. Their long conversation makes up the entire book. If the premise sounds a bit thin, remember that Nicholson Baker's brilliant first novel The Mezzanine ( LJ 11/1/88) was about an office worker's lunch-hour expedition to buy new shoelaces. Like all great artists, Baker has the ability to make familiar objects and everyday events seem new and strange. Centerfolds, lingerie catalogs, and X-rated videos will never look the same. Indeed, Vox transforms the genre itself: this is eroticism for the safe-sex Nineties. Not only is there no physical contact, the participants never leave the privacy of their own homes. Recommended, with the caveat that some readers may find the subject matter offensive. Baker's Room Temperature ( LJ 3/15/90) was one of LJ 's "Best Books of 1990" ( LJ 1/91).--Ed.
- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394589955
• ISBN 13: 9780394589954
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 165