Resumo de The Fermata - Nicholson Baker

In The Fermata, Nicholson Baker takes the concept of sexual voyeurism to never before seen heights (or is it depths?). It is written as the autobiography of one Arno Strine, who is quick to modestly acknowledge that writing is much more difficult than he thought.Arno has stumbled on a unique gift, the ability to stop time. Arno uses his power, which he refers to as dropping into ?The Fold,? to create situations in which he can undress women and look at their bodies. With very few exceptions, one involving an ex-girlfriend with whom he?d already been sexually intimate, there is no actual physical, sexual contact with the women he observes.It?s interesting that Arno?s twin motivations appear to be curiosity and providing sexual pleasure to women, albeit without the real intimacy involved in actually interacting with them at a personal level. He uses The Fold multiple times to arrange situations in which he can anonymously leave vibrators where women will find them, write sexually graphic statements in the margins of books, and, in one case, leave a lengthy recording of a pornographic story he?s authored in a young woman?s moving car.The tone of the book is one of emotional distance. Arno is not an unpleasant character, but he is an odd duck and comes across as socially somewhat awkward. His descriptions of genitalia and sexual activity provide some humor, as he exhausts all common (and some uncommon) euphemisms. The elaborate and sexually explicit stories he creates are very graphic and may offend, arouse, or confuse the reader depending on his or her particular tastes. He is competent, if not accomplished, in his work life. He is a temp with a gift for fast typing; he can also stop time and catch up on transcribing dictation if he gets behind.From what I?ve written so far, you would not really grasp maybe the most important this about it: it?s very, very funny. The humor ranges from the ridiculous detail of Arno?s observations to sly word tricks to descriptions of sex toys such as the Monasticon, a phallic monk holding a vibrating manuscript). By the end of the book, Arno appears to have found a real relationship with a real person with whom he has real-time interactions. Interestingly, and perhaps instructive for all of us, he seems to have no regret about losing his ?special ability,? and the obsessions that accompanied it. Despite all the oddities in this book, it leaves the reader with the sense of a grown-up boy who somehow made it through an extended adolescence. If possible, read Baker?s better-known Vox as well as The Fermata; this is an author onto something about people and their wide varieties of sexual appetites.

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