Rating: 
Summary: Think Hot -- Think Nicholson Baker!
Review: Let's imagine what it would be like to read a full-bore pornographic novel written by any of the most famous American authors; John Updike's would be explicit but grimly unsexy -- late middle-agers having one last wheeze in the sack; Phillip Roth, who has certainly done his best to pornographify even his most respectable National Book Award-contending novels, has nothing new to offer except look-what-a-dirty-old-Jew-I-am! tee-heeing; Don De Lillo's would be pedantic, full of long-winded mid-stroke ruminations on how sex and love are cheapened by the evil Media Age; David Foster Wallace's would be thousands of pages long and no one would be able to read it. So maybe it's a good thing someone like Nicholson Baker has taken on this task instead. I can't think of any one man or woman more well-suited to the art of smut than this anal retentive to end all anal retentives. Read The Mezzanine? Now imagine all that loving attention paid to shoelaces and escalators and library cards and the planar interstices of Chinese take-out cartons -- imagine all that masturbatory detail in service of REAL masturbatory detail, imagine that famous love for minutiae being lavished on something worth lavishing on, like, say, for instance... boobs! Well, that was the idea at any rate, and one which cranked up the temperature on my hot pants high enough for me to shell out the baksheesh ( even if four years after the fact -- hey, I was 16 when it was published; I didn't read literary pornography then, I sat in front of my T.V. watching the scrambled Playboy Channel ). But the end result turned out to be -- and there's no other word for it -- an anti-climax. A lot of reviewers will tell you that the true pleasure of this book comes not from erotica, but from esoterica; that Baker's odes to the female mons pubis are all very well and good, but his tender-hearted digressions on stuff like transformer sets and nail clippers and rubber-band machines are well and gooder. Twaddle! If you're going to write a titillating novel with a gimmicky concept, then write the damn thing and no bones about it. Nicholson's prose goes down as easy as you like, but this is a man seriously bereft of big ideas -- I know that's the point, he's someone who lives and breathes in the details, but I mean this idea of stopping time to undress women... I swear to God, I once heard Arnold make a joke to that effect on Diff'rent Strokes. It is not an original concept. Of course, Baker would say, yeah, but no one ever took it to the extreme I did. Got me there. Then again, when I was six or seven I had fantasies of aliens beaming down to earth, herding me and the world's choicest women into vast squares of ranch land in New Mexico, stripping us naked, and forcing me to breed with the tearful girls en masse while searing my buttocks with laser guns. But I never wrote a three-hundred page book about it. Uh-oh, I just heard a crackle. The coils in Nicholson Baker's brain are heating up! I'll be expecting ancillaries, you cretin.
Rating: 
Summary: Still my guiltiest pleasure!
Review: After the brilliance of "Vox," I expected this book to be a pale follow-up to that instant classic. Eight years and countless re-reads later, I've changed my tune. "The Fermata" is, bar none, Baker's finest hour. Yes, it borders on pornography, but it's unusually good for that subgenre - and besides, it plays in depth on a fantasy nearly all men (and maybe women too?) have surely had at some point. If nothing else, Baker deserves kudos for taking his simple idea far beyond the middle-school titillation it could so easily have devolved into. Stopping time in order to undress women - the very idea invites accusations of misogyny, but the genius of the book is that Baker keeps his protagonist, Arno, on the right side of that line at all times. While his hobby is undeniably invasive and lacking in respect for privacy, Arno leaves no doubt that he loves women and is in awe of them in any number of ways. His lengthy but enjoyable treatises on the minutiae of women's bodies in general, and those of his "victims" in particular, suggest a genuine and deep admiration that enables us to forgive him for having no use for personal boundaries. Rather than just treat us to egregiously detailed descriptions of female flesh, he takes time - often a lot of it - to explain just why it's all such a turn on. (For me, this is what keeps the book squarely in the realm of erotica rather than pornography.) Arno also displays a sense of ethics about his powers - never using them to humiliate or hurt anyone, still expressing regret decades later about stealing a few shrimp from a "frozen" chef as a child, always putting his subjects' clothes back exactly as he found them - that makes his one vice seem wholly forgivable by comparison to other things he is capable of. Although Arno's story is focused all but completely on the seamiest details of his life, he's not one-dimensional. As enviable as his voyeuristic abilities are, there's a strong sense of underachievement and untapped potential in the few non-sexual details he provides throughout the book. There is also an unspoken but growing aura of loneliness throughout the story, due to the touch-but-don't-be-touched-or-seen nature of his pastime, which Baker finds a wonderful way to address toward the end. Along the way, Baker's famous knack for detailed descriptions comes in handy with the scenes of frozen moments in the midst of everyday events. I have read critiques explaining that Baker got a number of things "wrong" (i.e. rain wouldn't really stop in midair), but it's beautifully illustrated all the same. I'm hesitant to give away any further details, not only of the ending but of any part of the book, because it all deserves to be savored firsthand. If you're openminded about sexuality and not afraid to confront feelings and ideas we all have at some point in our lives, there's a lot to enjoy here. Don't let the raunchy nature of the story scare you off from such a brilliant achievement!
Rating: 
Summary: Very Entertaining
Review: Any male conscious of his daydreams realizes that he has many fleeting erotic desires, harmless save for stigmaticism and inpracticality of fulfillment. This book, giving the protagonist the ability to stop time, explores fulfilment of these modest though eccentric seeming fantasies. The ethics and value of aesthetic fulfilment are explored in a very entertaining and comprehensive manner in this novel. It makes for an enjoyable read.
Rating:
Summary: Sex plus humor...what a concept!
Review: As a fan of Nicholson Baker right from the start ("The Mezzanine") I loved this book for all the usual reasons -- his keen observations, sharp prose, clever wordplay, etc. But what made this book special was the wonderful mixture of sex and humor. When was the last time you read a porn story that made you laugh out loud? This book made me wonder why sex is always taken so seriously. Yes, it's pretty raunchy stuff, so stay away if you're easily offended. For everyone else, "The Fermata" will be a revelation.
Rating:
Summary: not funny, nothing interesting to say
Review: Baker came up with a great premise, and a great theme but he just failed to tie everything together nicely. The book is almost totally devoid of humanity, except for a last minute attempt to provide the main charector some. It's hard to be funny when there's no life to your story. That doesn't even go into the fact that Baker seems to have no idea how to write a female charector, i mean i'm male but the way the women in this story acted and reacted was ludicrous. Baker goes off on long tangents frequently which are supposed to be amusing, but they just become tiresome. To see random tangents done right read The Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner. Baker doesn't totally grasp what is funny thinking that bizarre sexual fantasies are amusing. I mean they are but only when they are ridiculous not disturbing. I must say though I wish I had this guy's powers, and yeah when I think about it I guess all I would is look at women with their clothes off, but at least my autobiography would be about something...like say a profound life lesson i learned because of my ability. So that my book you know, has a reason to exist.
Rating:
Summary: not funny, nothing interesting to say
Review: Baker came up with a great premise, and a great theme but he just failed to tie everything together nicely. The book is almost totally devoid of humanity, except for a last minute attempt to provide the main charector some. It's hard to be funny when there's no life to your story. That doesn't even go into the fact that Baker seems to have no idea how to write a female charector, i mean i'm male but the way the women in this story acted and reacted was ludicrous. Baker goes off on long tangents frequently which are supposed to be amusing, but they just become tiresome. To see random tangents done right read The Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner. Baker doesn't totally grasp what is funny thinking that bizarre sexual fantasies are amusing. I mean they are but only when they are ridiculous not disturbing. I must say though I wish I had this guy's powers, and yeah when I think about it I guess all I would is look at women with their clothes off, but at least my autobiography would be about something...like say a profound life lesson i learned because of my ability. So that my book you know, has a reason to exist.
Rating:
Summary: Yes, but it's very good pornography
Review: Baker has taken a popular adolescent fantasy and given it a first rate treatment. Even he admits, in interviews, that he found it embaressing to publish. I found myself skipping large bits. But it is indeed well written, and the perfect thing to read in a waiting rood, a stck elevator or anywhere else time seems to have come to a halt.
Rating:
Summary: #1 Fan
Review: Baker makes me laugh and think and wish I could write as he does. He's the only author I've ever written a fan letter to. I've read everything he has written, and what I find most remarkable, beyond his masterful command of language, is his unabashed love of women. Baker is one of the few modern writers who loves and likes women. So even though he never responded to my fan letter, I will continue to buy everything he writes (in hardback) and lend his books to anyone I can get to borrow them. By the way, his U and I is the best homage to John Updike ever written.
Rating:
Summary: Lighthearted fantasy
Review: Baker's protagonist, Arno Strine, calls the pornographic stories he writes "rot", short for "erotica" but also suggesting a British term for "nonsense" or "baloney". This is clearly a description of the book itself -- not to be taken seriously, but enjoyable nonetheless. Most of the book is a series of unrelated fantasies. Every hetero male will recognize their essence -- man sees pretty woman at the office; man sees pretty woman sunbathing at the beach; man sees pretty woman driving on the highway; man is examined by pretty female doctor -- but Baker develops them in original and witty ways. The novelty is that Arno is magically endowed with the intermittent power to stop time for everyone except himself. This being a sex fantasy, Arno does not use his power to rob banks, perform instantaneous surgery, embarrass corrupt officials, rescue people from burning buildings, etc. -- all he does is take off women's clothes and write about it. There isn't any plot to speak of, and not much character development. Arno himself is quite believable, but the women he strips, as is traditional for erotic literature, are just scenery. If this bothers you, then look elsewhere; but if you take it for what it is, you will likely be both titillated and entertained.
Rating:
Summary: Andy Rooney gets down and dirty
Review: Ever wonder what a porn novel written by Andy Rooney would look like? Me neither. But with "The Fermata" Nicholson Baker has provided us with an answer to that question anyway. Like Rooney, Baker's narrator is endlessly digressive and fascinated by by the minutiae of nearly everything he encounters: the workings of a cassette tape, the difference between the way a woman sounds when she pees and the way a man sounds when he pees, the workings of a centrifuge. Like Rooney, Baker is a good writer, and so he manages to make these musings entertaining most of the time and sometimes even profound-sounding. But long before you reach page 100 you'll begin to appreciate the wisdom of "Sixty Minutes" producer Don Hewitt's decision to allot only two or three minutes a week to Rooney's ramblings. At book-length, such digressive and destinationless diatribes -- even when the subject is sex -- tend to become deadeningly dull. One could argue that this is just another example of Baker's genius: He has written a book about the stoppage of time so slow that the reader often feels as though time for him really HAS stopped. A literary example of form following function. But don't let this observation keep you from reading the book. Taken in small doses, "The Fermata" can be hugely enjoyable. In fact, Baker is a better writer than Rooney, so you should be able to spend much more time with him than just a couple of minutes per week. But when you're done reading "The Fermata", you may end up asking yourself, a la, Rooney: "Dija ever wonder why Nicholson Baker, a writer who seems to be fascinated by just about everything, has never managed to interest himself in the plotting of a novel?"
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