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. A novel like The Fermata asks some important questions, most important of which is of course: Does writing literary prose mean your novel about a guy.

Like Baker's other books, The Fermata gains little from synopsis. Anyone who can stop time and refer in self-delight to his 'chronanisms' can't be all bad! 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). However, I find the one mathematical passage in it so hilarious that I have to include. 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. This book is certainly more about sex than it is about mathematics. His 'Fold-powers' are easier he can stop the world and use it as his own pleasure ground. The fashion photographer, O, decides she wants to be the submissive one of her relationship and embarks on a bold exploration of sex, domination, and forbidden fantasies. His narrator, Arno Strine, is a 35-year-old office temp who is writing his autobiography. This erotic tale published back in 1954 under a pen name captures sadomasochism the way Fifty Shades only wishes it could. The Fermata is the most risky of Nicholson Baker's emotional histories. The art is bad, and no one seems to realize it.

The fermata book