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Product Description
Literary Review
'The funniest book about sex ever written'
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Nicholson Baker's new novel is the story of Arno Strine, a modest temporary typist, who has perfected the knack of stopping time in its tracks and taking women's clothes off. He is hard at work on his autobiography, THE FERMATA, which proves in the telling to be a very provocative, very funny and altogether morally confused piece of work. Hilarious and totally original, Nicholson Baker's new novel is a triumphant comedy about sexual fantasy and fantastic sexuality.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It's true that this book contains extremely descriptive sexual passages and is certainly not for the faint-hearted. But call me smutty; I enjoyed it enormously - the dirty bits and the rest. I find it intruiging that on the one hand, Baker, a big, red-faced, blustery middle-aged bear of a man turns out books like this (and Vox, the book Monica Lewinsky gave Bill Clinton to excite his intrest), and then puts out scholarly items like his defence of paper-based library systems - and they're all equally readable. A remarkable book, based on a daring, schoolboy fantasy. Read it when you're alone though, or you'll go scarlet-faced.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this novel on the strength of a reference to it in James Gleick's recent book: "Faster: The acceleration of just about everything". Gleick dissects our changing attitude - particularly in the last decade - towards time. He examines how there never seems to be enough time to get things done, how we feel dissatisfied when we feel we are not making the most of our time.
In the Fermata, Arno Strine is lucky enough to have the power to stop the planet, to "explore the instant", and the idea is certainly imaginative and interesting. Yet his time-halting powers are used solely for selfish, sexual and often, masturbatory pleasures. On this level, the book is funny, highly charged and erotic.
Yet you can't help feeling that there is something empty and missing from the novel. For me, it loses two stars simply because Baker's fails to explore issues of "the abuse of time" in more depth. He doesn't allow his character to exploit his powers positively (unlike in the film, Groundhog Day, in which the central role, Phil played by Bill Murray, managed to emerge from different circumstances as a better human being).
With the Fermata, you just get the feeling that the time-stopping idea provides Baker with the opportunity to write a pornographic account, which despite the Blurb on the cover, does at times come over as very misogynist and unsettling.
Nevertheless, The Fermata is provocative - you find yourself questioning how you would apply Arno Strine's power if you had it. It's just a shame Baker doesn't do this himself within the context of the story.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A fermata (also known as a hold, pause or as a grand pause when placed on a note or a rest) is an element of musical notation indicating that the note should be sustained for longer than its note value would indicate. Exactly how much longer it is held is up to the discretion of the performer or conductor. What it refers to in Baker's novel is a period of time which his protagonist, Arno Strine, can induce during which the world stops, and only he can move around in it freely. He uses this time to undress women and otherwise indulge his sexual desires. The women concerned have no knowledge of what he does and no idea that a period of time has elapsed during which they have been in suspended animation. It isn't as rollickingly funny as it would like to be, but having said that, it isn't as offensive or creepy as you might imagine either. It is, in part, gratuitously pornographic, depicting several scenarios that he either writes about or imagines happening, or that actually do happen (in the novel that is). As those who have read this writer before will expect, he employs his linguistic gifts with great wit at times and to great effect as he writes of, for instance, "fully realised frigments of my invagination".
Obviously, this is not a book for everybody, and if you are at all nervous of sexual frankness, don't start reading - it will offend you. This is a man who is mightily respected for his detailed and dexterously knowledgeable prose. He is, perhaps testing how far he can go without upsetting his literary readership? That, or sheer exhibitionism has got the better of any natural good taste he might have once cultivated. Whether you view this as acceptable in today's climate, or still beyond the pale, will depend entirely on you.
Obviously, this is not a book for everybody, and if you are at all nervous of sexual frankness, don't start reading - it will offend you. This is a man who is mightily respected for his detailed and dexterously knowledgeable prose. He is, perhaps testing how far he can go without upsetting his literary readership? That, or sheer exhibitionism has got the better of any natural good taste he might have once cultivated. Whether you view this as acceptable in today's climate, or still beyond the pale, will depend entirely on you.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Weird
It was ranked as one of the funniest sex books written but for me I foun d it difficult to get into and not the slightest bit funny
Published on 2 Mar 2009 by Mr. Hugh Allen
A waste of a good idea
Baker takes an interesting and amusing concept - the ability to stop time - and squanders it. Whilst one doesn't necessarily expect high minded intellectual moral quests, the lead... Read more
Published on 1 Aug 2003
The rudest book my wife has read.
If you're not aroused by this, you're unarousable. Clever, pacey, and very horny.
I bet no one who read it didn't try at least once to see if they could stop time! Read more
I bet no one who read it didn't try at least once to see if they could stop time! Read more
Published on 11 Mar 2002 by Owen Boyd(owen@merrill.demon.co.uk)
A compellingly good read.
I just love this book. It is clever, funny, erotic, thought-provoking and well thought-out. Those who carp about the 'hero' not becoming a better person or the author breaking his... Read more
Published on 14 Dec 2001 by david@museum2uk.com
Stop the world, I want to get off.
Baker's book introduces us to Arno Strine, a morally ambiguous hero who is blessed with the ability to stop time in it's tracks and go about his business without interruption from... Read more
Published on 10 Oct 2001
Don't waste your time
Not a very good or enjoyable book. The idea of being able to stop time so that you are free to act as you please whilst everybody and everything around is frozen has been... Read more
Published on 15 Aug 2000
A thoughtful and disturbing novel.
Nicholson Bakers' novel is an impressive investigation of sexual politics. Despite extremely graphic sexual content, the book is intensely literary. Read more
Published on 16 April 2000
Interesting idea, creepy story
Unlike his earlier book, Vox, in which the characters are human and likeable, Nicholson Baker has created a self-centred and vaguely sinister character in Arno Strine. Read more
Published on 17 Oct 1999
Orifice-boggling pornathon from the geek's geek
Baker's earlier outings, The Mezzanine and Vox, just hinted at the porn-script writer scrambling to escape the bounds of the popular fiction imagination. Read more
Published on 14 April 1999
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