It was a stroke of genius. A book of genius, in fact. In January, the reviewers’ copies arrived: slim volumes wrapped in very plain, Woolworth’s-type brown paper wrappers with a large black “X” stamped on the lower right-hand corner. Stacked high at Dalton’s in such a manner, the effect would be hilarious (the actual book jacket is black, with a blacker “X” stamped on the front). One would not open a cover like this even if one were all alone on the bus without inviting the taint of perversion. It was truly racy.
So as an apple-pie pornographer with nothing to hide, I blistered when Nicholson Baker, the author of VOX, was interviewed in Vanity Fair. He said that he always wanted to be a pornographer when he grew up. What a little charmer! This was right after Vanity Fair said he was the best writer of our generation and threw in Hemingway’s name for good measure. I was pissed. Nicholson Baker was trifling with a serious issue here. I resolved to call Mr. Next Big Thing and put him to the test.
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But what follows is not a beat-the-clock jack-off contest between the two. They discuss their erotic fantasies and experiences patiently, even shyly sometimes. Baker’s style is famous for artful digression. His most well known book before this was Mezzanine, a hundred-page ditty that consists entirely of a man taking an office break to buy a pair of shoelaces. True to form, his phone sex characters get distracted at the drop of a hat, away from their erotic momentum and into what they ate for lunch.
“God of mercy, I am so jealous!”
I flipped to the end of the book where our two lovers finally do get off. “This was the most boring scene of all,” I said. “After the fantasy with the painters? The Victoria’s Secret warehouse? The olive oil scene?”
“I love that word!” Nick cried. “I am more proud of that word than anything else in the scene!”
