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The Fermata

3.7 of 5 stars 3.70 · rating details · 2,347 ratings · 248 reviews

This 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 nove...more

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Published August 5th 2004 by Vintage (first published February 1st 1994)

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Dec 15, 2010 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: verysleazyfun, novels

It came to me in a blinding flash how almost unbearably clever this novel is. It gets panned all the time for two things:

THE FIRST CHARGE

Nicholson Baker has godlike powers over the English language, particularly when it comes to Jamesian sentence structure and the maximum ramifying of vocabulary and the application of all this to most unlikely subjects, as for instance straws (the ones through which drinks are ingested not the ones in the wind) or shoelaces and here in The Fermata he squanders h...more

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Aug 23, 2011 Sarah Smith rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is so smutty that I should have thought better of reading it at work on a slow day. Some passages – especially those in which Arno, the protagonist, freezes time so he can write a dirty story tailored to one momentary subject of his infatuation or another and hide it within reach so that she will find it when he unfreezes time – test the limits of what one could consider public reading material. The rest of the book considers Arno's unusual abilities from a charmed philosophical distan...more This book is so smutty that I should have thought better of reading it at work on a slow day. Some passages – especially those in which Arno, the protagonist, freezes time so he can write a dirty story tailored to one momentary subject of his infatuation or another and hide it within reach so that she will find it when he unfreezes time – test the limits of what one could consider public reading material. The rest of the book considers Arno's unusual abilities from a charmed philosophical distance, but there's no doubt that when this book gets dirty it gets real durty.

Like many of Baker's other novels, "The Fermata" makes use of an unconventional narrative pace, but what could read as foppish or annoyingly smarmy is instead character-driven, and better yet, driven by a very intelligent, observant character. I guess that's the source of the charm, which is why I consider the outré turns "smutty" rather than "filthy" – because really, smut is a non-threatening grade of human vagary motivated by humility rather than gonzo boners (or at least it seems so to me).

I know others have voiced concerns about the book's lackadaisical morals regarding undressing and examining women who are frozen in time, and if my grad school punch-card hasn't already been revoked, saying that I find those moral quandaries to be ultimately less than crucial here would certainly do the trick. Still, I think the problem most germane to this kind of story isn't what a man does with the power to stop time but how he rationalizes its presence in his life. Arno is a terminal temp, living comfortably but without the garnishes we usually expect to accompany a nearly middle-aged life, but more crucially, he is alienated by the skill he can't share and the attitudes it grants him. Though these particular details are fantastical, in practice they really aren't so different from how so many of us (or myself, anyway) approach adulthood.

And yet, and yet. Such an elegant metaphor could turn nihilistic. The story takes a fairly conventional romantic narrative arc in its last act, one that's reaffirming but not wholly convincing. I found it a little rushed and dissatisfying, but I was still glad Baker didn't turn this effervescent novel into a time-altering update of "The Trial."

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Dec 10, 2010 Joel marked it as to-not-read-ever Recommends it for: tucker max

Recommended to Joel by: loud-talking pretentious subway guy

The Douchiest Conversation I Have Ever Overheard, Or: An Over-Intellectual Hipster Talks About Sex in Such a Pretentious Way that You Suspect He Perhaps Does Not Have It All That Often - A Play in One Act

SETTING: STAIRS leading down to SUBWAY PLATFORM on Jackson Street, Chicago, Ill. It is WINTER, and everyone is dressed in HEAVY COATS and SCARVES.

THE PLAYERS: DOUCHEY HIPSTER and SILENT COMPANION

~

[We encounter DH and SC walking near the Jackson Street Blue Line subway stop. Their conversation i...more

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Jul 29, 2007 Robyn rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is so sexy. My copy is well-thumbed, though currently on loan. Freezing time has never been so pervy or creative. Q: Is it a book about female sexuality or male sexuality? Or is it a book about male sexuality by way of female sexuality? The key is in the ending.

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May 01, 2007 Chelsea rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was the last Nicholson Baker book I read. The fact that it is his longest and the pornographic one can't be a coincidence, right? I guess I think of NB as fatherly because he has a beard, so reading this book makes me feel only slightly less grossed out than finding my father's Playboy stash. What I learned from this book is simply a reinforcement of a notion which is pretty common sense, which is that nerds and bookworms are just as capable of being perved out as people who can't hammer an...more

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Jun 22, 2007 Jason Pettus rated it 3 of 5 stars

one of two books from the early 1990s to make nicholson baker a household name (the other being the even bigger-selling vox), this novel tells the tale of a dysfunctional intellectual who figures out how to stop time...then uses the ability to keep his life in a perpetual stage of suspended adolescence, as well as commenting a lot about the world at large. like the rest of his work, the fermata is a polarizing piece of fiction, one you're guaranteed to either love or hate.

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Jan 24, 2008 Howard Vu rated it 4 of 5 stars

An entertaining, unexpectedly moving read. I recommend this to all women who want to know how the male mind thinks, especially in regard to sex. Really, I can think of no better novel about this subject. The premise, about a guy who can stop time and do whatever he pleases while the world is frozen, may seem tired at this point, but Baker uses it to often surprising ends. The protagonist at first thinks about using his gift for noble deeds, but doesn't really. That's pretty honest.

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Aug 17, 2007 Nicole rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people not faint of heart

This is the super juiciest book I've ever read. It's still dripping down my leg. A total page turner, but you totally have to put all feminism aside. Perhaps I shouldn't have admitted this was possible for me. Anyway- the storyline centers around a man who can do the 2nd most awesome thing in the entire galaxy--2nd only to obtaining and using a tub of vanishing cream. He can make time stop at his will. It's like if Evie from Out of this World was a total perv.

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Mar 20, 2012 Bob Milne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nicholson Baker's The Fermata is a strange read . . . awkward and hard-to-categorize, much less review. It's comprised of equal parts literature, science-fiction, romance, comedy, erotica, and memoir.

On the one hand, it absolutely deserves an five-star review for its sheer audacity, innovation, and mastery of language. This is a very clever, beautifully written novel that manages to deliberately meander without boring the reader. It's also a very humorous novel, not so much in a laugh-out-loud s...more Nicholson Baker's The Fermata is a strange read . . . awkward and hard-to-categorize, much less review. It's comprised of equal parts literature, science-fiction, romance, comedy, erotica, and memoir.

On the one hand, it absolutely deserves an five-star review for its sheer audacity, innovation, and mastery of language. This is a very clever, beautifully written novel that manages to deliberately meander without boring the reader. It's also a very humorous novel, not so much in a laugh-out-loud sort of way, but one which succeeds in delivering a smile (or more often a smirk) per page. When I allowed myself to become lost in Arno's voice, I quite enjoyed the read, even as I rolled my eyes and scoffed at his good-natured laziness. It's no wonder Baker gets far more attention as a purveyor of literature than as a genre author, but you get the sense that's entirely how he likes it.

Having said all that, this is a book that struggles to earn more than a single-star review for its plotting, pacing, and story-telling. It's is a story comprised of musings, observations, and asides, in which very little happens to advance the plot. Being a fictional memoir does excuse the narrative struggle to some extent, but the 'fictional' element does demand something more. There's a great concept at the heart of the story, with Arno able to freeze time and manipulate those around him, but his own odd sense of morality and decorum won't allow him to exploit it, while his own laziness holds him back from maximizing it. Of course, Arno and his failings are, essentially, the story, so it's hard to find him at fault. Still, it's a read that frustrated me to no extent because it adamantly refused to explore the concept.

Basically, the book comes down to this - Arno longs for women he can never have; freezes time in order to undress or gently molest them; and then restarts time and walks away without the possibility of emotional attachment. It's an interesting concept, and one that's definitely erotic in its application, yet which manages to avoid being obscene in its own cleverness. Arno is so disarming, his efforts come across as innocent and rather naive, good-natured in their thoughtfulness, when in reality they're rather personal assaults upon the women around him.

There's one chapter where he continually stops and starts time, adjusting pornographic images for one woman and adjusting a discreetly place sex-toy for another, which kind of sums up the entire novel. It's weirdly inventive and amusing, but the work required to secretly arouse the two women - with absolutely no payoff for Arno - is so far beyond absurd, it really strains the bounds of credibility.

If you're a fan of literate novels, one who favours concept over content, and one who appreciates narration over narrative, give The Fermata a shot. It is a fun read (taken in small doses) but the novelty does wear thin after a while. On the other hand, if you're at all intrigued by the concept, but (like myself) tend to lean more towards plot and characterization that storytelling showmanship, try giving Dean Koontz's Dragon Tears a read instead.

Originally reviewed at Beauty in Ruins(less)

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Jan 05, 2009 Allycks rated it 4 of 5 stars

The basic idea here is awesome. Protagonist finds a way to stop time, and is able, during the time-stops, to move around and do as he pleases as the rest of the world remains 'frozen.' Kind of an infantile idea gone literary, like the 'everybody but me is a robot' thing which I think Vonnegut took up. Here the protagonist doesn't want to change the world, get rich, or screw with peoples' minds-- he just wants to see women naked. It sounds pretty damn childish when it's stated as bluntly as that,...more The basic idea here is awesome. Protagonist finds a way to stop time, and is able, during the time-stops, to move around and do as he pleases as the rest of the world remains 'frozen.' Kind of an infantile idea gone literary, like the 'everybody but me is a robot' thing which I think Vonnegut took up. Here the protagonist doesn't want to change the world, get rich, or screw with peoples' minds-- he just wants to see women naked. It sounds pretty damn childish when it's stated as bluntly as that, and yes it could sound offensive. But it's not. It's just the opposite because, simply, the protagonist loves women. Not just hot chicks or girls the protagonist has a thing for, but the fair sex in its totallity. The writing is infused with an intense, honest, and well-considered reverence for women and all things female, from an unapolagetically male point of view.

What carried me through to the end of this hugely overgrown erotic novella was the outstanding writing. Sure, 'The Fermata' is literally navel-gazing and masturbatory, but the protagonist makes no bones about his 'gift,' he is keenly, hilariously self-aware of how lucky he is and how essentially innocent are his desires. This is reading as pleasure, one of the many minor subtexts of the book. Nicholson Baker never never stops offering the sharpest and most utterly original word-craft even when he's essentially given up on the plot itself. The tiniest tinge of pretention would've sunk this book and so it's a credit to the author that 'The Fermata' stays staunchly afloat. Baker's writing is what makes 'The Fermata' such a good read.

Finally here is one of among several paragraphs and-or sections I found outstanding and which would pretty much define the entirety of 'The Fermata':

"The Fermata allows me ... to take in a paricular lived second of one woman's life, the incremental outcome of so many decisions and misfortunes and delights and griefs, while she is in the very midst of bringing it into being. The ability to investigate all aspects of her careless aliveness, where her clothes stretch, her body's textures, her expression, her smells, the way she happens to be standing or moving ... the daily fluidity of her life whose specific complex of qualities would have otherwise gone unseen by anyone-- unphotographed, uncelebrated, unvalued, unloved. It is their randomness and, often their very lack of overt sexiness that makes these instants so erotically precious."

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Mar 03, 2008 Pierce rated it 1 of 5 stars

Mr. Morrison recommended I check this out after reading that "Killing Time" thing I wrote. And yeah, it's kind of exactly the same idea stretched to the length of a novel. Namely, what would you do if you could actually stop time (answer: take people's clothes off).

Except whereas I thought it would be funnier to just hint at the idea, Baker seemed to think it was funnier to go into pages and pages of graphic detail about the whole process. Maybe that is funnier, I dunno.

So it was interesting fo...more

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Joshua Allen I remember being MEGA excited for this book to come out because I think I'd read something else by Baker that I'd liked and of course had spent many h...more
Mar 03, 2008 08:05pm

Jon Maybe because I wasn't MEGA excited I couldn't be disappointed but I thought that this book was tremendously honest and very dirty-but in an uncliched...more
Oct 08, 2008 12:54pm

deleted user I don’t like the sound of this book at all. And as for the cover... Just as well though that we have different tastes in life...
Nov 14, 2012 01:34am

Jul 23, 2007 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Fermata is a book of divine dirtiness. Baker's protagonist Arno Strine is a 30-ish office temp in Boston purportedly writing his autobiography. His autobiography, however, is the tale of a devilish peeping Tom, who uses a gift to stop time to make manifest his voyeuristic fantasies about the female sex. Occasionally innocent (a peek at the items in a woman's purse). Occasionally risque (a ... "full finger tracing" of the body of a woman sitting still in time naked in her bathtub). If it soun...more

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Apr 10, 2007 PMP rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: yellowyellowdirtyfellow

Arno Strine is able to stop time, and what he chooses to do with that power is take off women's clothes and get himself off. I'd be lying if I didn't call this one of the best-executed literoti I've come across. And if I didn't agree that the overall premise is cleverly pornographic and a peep at the writer's condition at the same time. And damned if it isn't finally an observant meditation on loneliness. That said, the overall effect of all that outre sex is like the feeling you get after consu...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Rebecca added it

I guess I am committing to this book but I am conflicted. Like Lolita there is an erudite and (slightly) sympathetic narrator engaging in morally questionable sexual acts. Are they sexy? Reprehensible? Gross? I will admit that I feel a new kind of adult ability to engage with sexual material so I am planning on staying with it to see what happens. Also like Lolita the descriptions, language and imagination are truly stunning.

***Ending on this one was way too easy. I do not believe he so blithely...more

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Feb 15, 2011 jw rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: perverts and horny nerdettes

this is a damn, dirty book. but in spite of it's pornograpic content, it maintains a kind of innocence which makes it somewhat literary and definitely nerdtastic -- the main character has the ability to stop time to play with unwitting women and does so in inventive and strange ways. what i found very interesting is that although the book is very male-oriented in its descriptive manner, lots of women i know who have read it have found it equally tantalizing, if not more so. (one girl told me: "a...more

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Jul 18, 2007 Brendan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: John Ashcroft & Mitt Romney

A guy figures out he has the power to stop time. He doesn't use it to rob banks or even prevent banks from being robbed. No, he uses it to look up women's skirts. Sometimes he undresses them completely, but when he's done he very considerately puts them back together so they don't suspect a thing. He indulges himself in writing porn, and Nicholson Baker generously indulges his reader in the full transcript of his stories, which include vibrators and riding mowers.

The Fermata is dirrrrty and very...more

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Dec 14, 2008 Sam rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

The copy I have of the Fermata has a deliberately un-sexy cover; just a green fermata mark on a white cover, one on each side of the jacket. This came in handy when I read it on the Chinatown bus, heading to New York. Considering that this is one of the lewdest books I have ever read, it's good that no one was tempted to read over my shoulder. In fact, trying to hide the book from my neighbor, a very large woman with a Caribbean accent, probably made the contents more authentically smutty.

This i...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Kelly rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

His writing style has evolved into something effortlessly fluid. It's flow is easy yet somehow I find it annoying - the sentences too long, too contrived, just too convoluted for my taste. Yet he does possess insights and humour.
In his novel about poetry, The Anthologist, Baker’s prose is less flash and all the better for it. In The Fermata his ideas are solid but the writing doesn't for me live up to the promise inherent in his premise.
But an entertaining romp nevertheless. Just don't expect...more

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Apr 11, 2012 Marsha rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature-fiction, science-fiction-speculative-fiction

The protagonist of this story has a fetish. He likes to fondle women beneath their clothes. Nature has given him a gift that allows him to indulge this perversion—the ability to stop time at unpredictable times and for uncertain lengths of time. Thus, he can peel apart a strange women’s clothing, fondle her and then push the clothing back into place. Time will click back on and the woman goes on, unaware that she’s been molested.

The novel gives him no feelings of remorse, guilt or shame. He can’...more

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Feb 02, 2012 Ronald rated it 2 of 5 stars

I read this novel a few months ago, it was lent to me by a co-worker/friend. He reads literary fiction, e.g. works by Tolstoy and Updike. In turn, I have been pointing out to him high achievement in fantastic literature, such as stories by JG Ballard and Clark Ashton Smith.

The premise of this novel is that the main character, Arno, has the power to freeze time. What does he do with this power? He doesn't steal. But he takes women's clothes off. And this is most of the novel.

Now, it shouldn't be...more

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May 05, 2011 Mitch rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was one of the weirdest more perverted books I've ever read, thats for sure! "The Fermata" is a tale about a 35 year old named Arno who has the ability to stop time. Now, most people would use this ability to help the greater good of society, or maybe to steal some money or commit crimes. Nope, Arno's main objective is to undress women, or play strange sexual games with them (like hiding sex toys in garbage cans for women to find or giving them erotic stories he has written).

Although I can...more

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Oct 03, 2010 Syzygous Zygote rated it 4 of 5 stars

Having plowed through 2.5 Nicholson Baker books in the last month, I feel like I have a good grasp on what his theme tends to be all about: someone who's so completely focused on their surroundings that they're completely oblivious to their problems, whether intentionally or unintentionally. His characters struggle to feel worthwhile in their daily lives, but don't recognize or take action on why their real lives suck so much. Fermata is an incredibly interesting take on one man's struggles to r...more

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Nov 10, 2009 Bob rated it 4 of 5 stars

I forgot to write this up when I read it some months ago. The narrator, you may know, adolescently indulges his ability to literally stop time mainly by undressing women that appeal to him (and redressing them before restarting the clock). Voyeurism being a somewhat unlovely fetish and this being a step or two beyond that, it's plainly a challenging book in that one is to some extent fighting the impulse to be sympathetic to the central character, despite his humor and intelligence. Of course, w...more

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Nov 11, 2011 MJ Nicholls rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: merkins, novels

The Fermata doesn’t simply posit the question what would you do if you could stop time? It assumes, quite rightly, that everyone would undress and violate their fellow citizens within about four seconds, so asks instead how would you use this erotic licence to engineer love in the moving world?

Such is the problem of our hapless obsessive narrator who, like the hero in The Mezzanine, observes a pathological attention-to-detail to the minutiae of his warped inventions. Since constructing his time...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Kevin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Deeply introspective, like ... introspective in a way I can't even comprehend. I couldn't write extended passages like that if my life depended on it.

There were a few good things to this book, I can't deny it. In one section Baker describes a child's way of thinking about the world, an untouched place of wonder. It reminded me of memories I haven't seen in a decade - finding on the ground some little bit of plastic and metal, something unfamiliar to me, and being just sure that if I could only f...more Deeply introspective, like ... introspective in a way I can't even comprehend. I couldn't write extended passages like that if my life depended on it.

There were a few good things to this book, I can't deny it. In one section Baker describes a child's way of thinking about the world, an untouched place of wonder. It reminded me of memories I haven't seen in a decade - finding on the ground some little bit of plastic and metal, something unfamiliar to me, and being just sure that if I could only figure out what wires to plug into it, or how to give it power, or in what potion to submerge it ... well if I could figure those things out then things beyond my wildest imagining would happen.

Baker also manages to write consistently about his characters spending time thinking about things that no one else around them will ever know. I don't know how to phrase that better, sadly. I was just impressed with his ability to deliver the insides of people's most (again) introspective thoughts in voices and patterns that were unique to each "speaker".

Past that, though ...

Let me read you the jacket liner: "Arno Strine likes to stop time and take women's clothes off."

There you go. There's the book, all 303 pages of it, Strine giving us his memoirs about stopping time and taking women's clothes off. I'm probably being willfully blind to some blatant metaphor here, but I don't care. What Strine does when he stops time is so antithetical to what I would do that it doesn't matter how deliberately and carefully the author details it for me, it doesn't sit well. At some point in the book Strine has a faux-hypothetical discussion with some guy about what they would do if they could stop time and immediately the guy goes into how he'd just take all the women's clothes off and rape them and Strine is aghast. I guess I'm the next guy down the chain. I can't even tolerate what Strine does.

I mean, yes, I can forgive him for having done it when he was a teenager because what teenage boy wouldn't want to know what was under the clothes of every woman he passed? But to keep doing this into his 30s? And to write an entire book about it?

I was especially put off by pages 185-255 because all that happened there was Strine saw a woman he wanted to seduce so he stopped time, found out details about her, decided to record himself reading an erotic story and leave it in her tape deck, wrote the story, showed us (the readers) the entire story, and then talked about how he envisioned his seduction of this woman would play out. 70 pages. 70 pages of blunt fumbling "eroticism". I started skimming because I got so bored.

Perhaps all of this, recorded and reported to us by Strine himself in a first person "what I did" narrative is supposed to give us greater insight into what kind of person he was. By that point, though, I already knew more about this guy than I ever wanted to.

I was pulled in by some promise of an ending, even people talking about "well, the ending didn't do it for me." I couldn't understand how this story could end since it never really did anything in the first place. I found out, sadly, and you can put me into the list of "well, the ending didn't do it for me."

I can't trash this book completely because Baker really does have a way with understanding the inside of people's heads. I just didn't want to be there for this one.(less)

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Mar 09, 2012 Arun Divakar rated it 2 of 5 stars

A version of the bullock-powered mill was prominently used in India as much as six-seven decades ago. Tied to a central hub that grinds grain or extracts oil, the bullock traverses a circular course. This path never varies nor does it move one inch away from the center. I took this example as it is very close to The Fermata in its execution. The center of this literary mill is sexuality of the voyeuristic kind and there is hardly anything else in the book !

A thirty year old man who is by natu...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Esmeralda Greene rated it 5 of 5 stars

Nicholson Baker has gotten a lot of attention with his latest book "House of Holes," with a host of highfalutin sources extolling its both its literary merit and its over-the-top eroticism. The New York Times, for example, calls it a “glorious filthfest,” and "as funny as it is filthy."

As someone with an interest both in erotica/pornography (I write the stuff) and works of high literary aspiration (um, I read the stuff), I naturally felt I had to check this dude out.

I tried the Kindle sample-sni...more Nicholson Baker has gotten a lot of attention with his latest book "House of Holes," with a host of highfalutin sources extolling its both its literary merit and its over-the-top eroticism. The New York Times, for example, calls it a “glorious filthfest,” and "as funny as it is filthy."

As someone with an interest both in erotica/pornography (I write the stuff) and works of high literary aspiration (um, I read the stuff), I naturally felt I had to check this dude out.

I tried the Kindle sample-snippet of "House of Holes" first, but it didn't really grab me. It felt too easy, too facile and light-weight. As I read, a voice in the back of my head was muttering "yeah, yeah, some whacky surrealism, some explicit sex, more whacky surrealism, rinse and repeat. Ho-hum." Like the philistine looking at a Jackson Pollock, I kept thinking, "Whatsa big deal? *I* could do this."

Whether or not that leapt-to assessment of "House of Holes" was fair, I decided to try out "The Fermata," an earlier book of Baker's. The major draw of this novel for me was the delightfully sexy premise: A man has the ability to stop time, and uses his power to undress and ogle women. Yes, it's an old idea, but I thought it was potentially a terrific jumping-off point.

I was not disappointed. The main charm of the book is in the character of the protagonist. He's an immensely gentle, thoughtful man who takes great pains to avoid doing any harm or causing any distress with his magical power. The women he undresses, he meticulously re-dresses before restarting time, careful to leave behind no trace of his trespasses on their bodies. Furthermore, he's no mere seeker after nubile perfection. Instead he takes a boundless delight in the variations of women's bodies; "the average woman, the unexceptionable woman, the interestingly ugly woman…" In his delight, he waxes poetic for pages at a time over one woman's pubic hair ("to think I could have died and not seen this…"), the breasts of a host of others ("perfect in their indispensable imperfection"), and even such minutia as "the beautifully defined H shapes" at the backs of another woman's knees. He is intoxicated, transported and inspired by the physical beauty he unveils, by the secrets that women's uncovered bodies whisper to him.

Baker has said that he's a great admirer of John Updike, and it shows. The narrative is often intermixed with Updike-like musings on such peripheral topics as contact lenses versus eyeglasses or the experience of transcribing dictaphone tapes. But always (even more so than in Updike), these meditations are inspired and filtered through the protagonist's all-pervasive sexuality.

Speaking of sex… Yes, there's rather a lot of it. But since this is "literary pornography" (a term that in combination with Nicholson Baker's name returns 206 hits on Google), it's not the wall-to-wall sex you'll find in straightforward porn [cough[like mine]cough]. But the hot parts are definitely hot, and cover a generous range of kinks and variations.

Something of a standard line of description in reviews of erotica is "but there's a good story too." I'm spared from having to parrot that apologetic-sounding phrase here, because really there is no "story" to "The Fermata." There's no plot arc or character arc to speak of. Rather, it's more of a portrait -- a deftly and artistically rendered portrait of a delightful character and his magical gift.
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Dec 04, 2011 Drew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: postmodern-toasties, boulder-public-library

A lot of authors get compared to Nabokov, and it seems that the sole criterion for that comparison is a certain fairly high level of playful facility with the English language. But Nicholson Baker is probably the only author I know whose writing is actually sort of like Nabokov's. I'm not going to back up that assertion other than to say that there's a sub-story in The Fermata that contains the word "dildungsroman."

I sort of thought this book was going to be lame and/or repetitive, and certain...more A lot of authors get compared to Nabokov, and it seems that the sole criterion for that comparison is a certain fairly high level of playful facility with the English language. But Nicholson Baker is probably the only author I know whose writing is actually sort of like Nabokov's. I'm not going to back up that assertion other than to say that there's a sub-story in The Fermata that contains the word "dildungsroman."

I sort of thought this book was going to be lame and/or repetitive, and certain parts of it definitely were (I'm looking at you, 20-page interpolations of Strine-penned amateur erotica). But what ended up making it really interesting was Arno Strine's ultimate dissatisfaction with his power. Yes, he can stop time and do all sorts of dirty things to women. But if he were really all about sexual gratification, wouldn't he just go around raping them? Which he never actually does (although that actually depends on your definition of rape), and which another minor character says he would, hypothetically. Despite his powers, Arno ends up reminiscing quite a bit about his old ex-girlfriend, with whom he had a comparatively normal relationship, and also devising ridiculous schemes to make some sort of personal connection with someone. For instance, he drives alongside a woman on the highway, stops time, makes a tape of his own (not too great) erotica, sticks it in her tape player, and goes back to his own car, only to see her toss the tape out the window later on. Granted, it's pretty hard to make moves on a girl you see on the highway, but that's what he does. I don't remember him even undressing her. And he's constantly lamenting the fact that when you stop time, people lose dimensions; their faces are less lively, etc. etc. and if he were to have sex with anyone, it'd be ruined by the lack of reaction, of interaction. And that rings true. Arno would for the most part rather have love than sex, which is why he never does the horrible things that other people might. And in that way, as he argues at one point, maybe he does deserve it.(less)

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Sep 11, 2007 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Some people may think Baker is prurient, others that he is deeply philosophical about relationships and sexuality. But there is no denying that he is a bold, fearless writer of erotic scenes and situations. This book capitalizes on what I suspect is a universal male fantasy -- being able to freeze time and use that opportunity to undress women, but in his hands, this is much more than just creepy groping.

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Apr 02, 2011 Brian Berns rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: erotica, fiction, sci-fi

This novel is, first and foremost, the most brilliantly kinky smut ever written. Presented as the memoir of its fictional author, it consists of a series of his inter-related pornographic fantasies and adventures, some of which stand nearly on their own and others of which combine to tell his life story. The fascinating and humorous twist is that protagonist Arno Strine has the unique ability to stop time on a whim, which he uses to satisfy his wildly perverted urges. To call this story merely "...more

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About Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is a contemporary American writer of fiction and non-fiction. As a novelist, his writings focus on minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness. His unconventional novels deal with topics such as voyeurism and planned assassination, and they generally de-emphasize narrative in favor of intense character work. Baker's enthusiasts appreciate his ability...more

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Quotes from The Fermata

“I don’t think that loneliness is necessarily a bad or unconstructive condition. My own skill at jamming time may actually be dependent on some fluid mixture of emotions, among them curiosity, sexual desire, and love, all suspended in a solvent medium of loneliness. I like the heroes or heroines of books I read to be living alone, and feeling lonely, because reading is itself a state of artificially enhanced loneliness. Loneliness makes you consider other people’s lives, makes you more polite to those you deal with in passing, dampens irony and cynicism. The interior of the Fold is, of course, the place of ultimate loneliness, and I like it there. But there are times when the wish for others’ voices, for friendliness returned, reaches unpleasant levels, and becomes a kind of immobilizing pain. That was how it felt as I finished packing up the box of sex machines.” — 5 people liked it

“Gerard Manley Hopkins somewhere describes how he mesmerized a duck by drawing a line of chalk out in front of it. Think of me as the duck; the chalk, softly wearing itself away against the tiny pebbles embedded in the corporate concrete, is Joyce's forward-luring rough-smooth voice on the cassettes she gives me. Or, to substitute another image, since one is hardly sufficient in Joyce's case, when I let myself really enter her tape, when I let it surround me, it is as if I'm sunk into the pond of what she is saying, as if I'm some kind of patient, cruising amphibian, drifting in black water, entirely submerged except for my eyes, which blink every so often. Each word comes floating up to me like a thick, healthy lily pad and brushes past my head.” — 1 person liked it

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