The Fermata - Nicholson Baker
Category: Novel
Narrator: Peter Ganim
Tags: Novel, General Fiction, Fantasy
The Fermata is the most risky of Nicholson Bakers emotional histories. His narrator, Arno Strine, is a 35-year-old office temp who is writing his autobiography. Its harder than I thought! he admits. His Fold-powers are easier; he can stop the world and use it as his own pleasure ground. 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. Anyone who can stop time and refer in self-delight to his chronanisms cant be all bad!, Like Bakers other books, The Fermata gains little from synopsis. The pleasure is literally in the text. Whats memorable is less the sex and the sex toys (including the Monasticon, in the shape of a monk holding a vibrating manuscript) than Arnos wistful recollections of intimacy: the noise, for instance, of his ex-girlfriends nail clipper, which I listened to in bed as some listen to rea
