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Loading... House of Holes (2011)by Nicholson Baker
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. The premise is that random unrelated people, by choice or circumstance are transported to The House of Holes, where their wildest kinks can be realized. The result is a loosely connected series of bizarre and fantastical erotic vignettes, often involving the (non-permanent) loss of various parts of the anatomy. I appreciated the author's willingness to allow his imagination to roam wild, however, some semblance of a narrative arc would have made it more compelling to read. For me, the stories were more amusing than erotic. ( ) "House of Holes" doesn't come close to being a must-read, but it is fun, occasionally inventive smut with a literary slant. It's been said that pornography is nothing but a fantasy of universal consent, and Nicholson leans into the fantasy aspect here, describing a world of semi-enchanted bodily fluids, fantastical sexual technologies, and consequence-free intercourse that doesn't have a lot to do with the world that we actually bump and grind in. Some of these stories -- such as the one that describes how a woman who's tired of being judged for her appearance finds satisfaction with a man whose head has been temporarily removed -- are both pleasingly ingenious and seem to be getting a larger truth about how real people relate to each other. Baker's also smart enough to realize that while most of us, sensibly enough, get off on release, some of us are turned on by restraint: this particular sexual paradise features a subgroup of men who make it a point not to gratify themselves. But those are the better stories in this collection. Some of the others are just, well, porn that's been effectively workshopped. I'm a dude myself, but I thought that the author wrote sex from the female perspective tolerably well, although "House of Holes" is, in the final analysis, straighter and more forthrightly cis that it necessarily needs to be. Genitals -- both male and female -- sometimes appear in less-than-expected places, but the essential duality of man and women doesn't come in for much questioning. This isn't a book for people who get off on ambiguity, or, for that matter, subtlety. The sort of ridiculous sex talk that's indelibly associated with letters to Penthouse is all over this collection, and it's good fun to see it in a relatively literary environment. There are so many ridiculous, gross, and just plain strange terms for genitalia here that I would lay money on the fact that the author had been saving them up in some notebook or other for years. In true pornographic form, he shows no embarrassment at all about deploying them here. Everything about "House of Holes", in fact, suggests an author on a lark. I, like just about everyone in "House of Holes," am more than willing to indulge him, even if he gets a bit cheesy on occasion. Authors will have thier fun.
Alice in Pornoland - Das Böse als Stimulans: Der Marquis de Sade und Elfriede Jelinek dienen dem amerikanischen Romancier Nicholson Baker nur zum Teil als Vorbild - der Teufel steckt bei ihm in den Zwischentönen des Systems, die voller Sexualangst schrillen. Deswegen haut er der amerikanischen Prüderie nun das Schmuddelbuch "Haus der Löcher" um die Ohren. A world of universal arousal is common enough in pornography, but Baker has fully realized its comic possibilities—specifically, the possibilities that a roomful of horndogs offers for the use of deadpan, comic understatement, and up-tempo romantic repartee. Of course, the novelistic stakes are low—this is not a book invested in psychological realism. Baker can conjure fantastical sexual scenarios and unspool yards of charmingly filthy dialogue without having to worry much about the subtleties of his characters’ inner lives. There are some faint traces of a larger plot (cartoon-style villains to be defeated), but for the most part each chapter is a free-standing pornographic sketch that illuminates some new feature of the House of Holes. Each chapter’s mini-plot hinges on whether and how a character will reach orgasm, and most chapters obligingly end in florid exclamations of pleasure. Distinctions
Presents an explicit new tale of carnal improprieties and comic raunchiness set in a surreal but familiar world of fantasy sex.
A fuse-blowing, sex-positive escapade. Baker returns to erotic territory with a gleefully over-the-top novel set in a pleasure resort where normal rules don't apply. In charge of day-to-day operations is Lila, a former hospital administrator whose breast milk has unusual regenerative properties. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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