Is 'House of Holes' necessary?
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Nicholson Baker, author of "House of Holes." -
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Nicholson Baker and I haven't been able to connect writer to reader over the odd-dozen years that I've been reading his steady output of fiction and nonfiction.
I've also followed his efforts to rescue old newspapers that libraries have been saving for decades in those big clothbound books.
They used to save them, that is. With the arrival of microfilm and then digital copying, the libraries have been chucking the originals after preserving them in those convenient formats.
Mr. Baker believes rightly that a valuable piece of American culture is going into the landfill. His 2002 book, "Double Fold," was his plea for preservation of these daily papers that often sold for a penny.
It's a noble one, but impractical for libraries strapped for space and, more important, money.
Then, two years ago, Mr. Baker published "Human Smoke," again a noble project that made the case that there was no "right side" in World War II and that both the Allies and the Axis were equally to blame.
The book seemed more an attempt to be shockingly contrarian as Mr. Baker used mostly sources that backed him up.
But where Mr. Baker has made his reputation is in the field of fiction, where his joy of writing explicit sex scenes that could pass for pornography have been published by his mainstream publishers.
Such titles as "Vox" and "The Fermata" are, to me, at least, fictional attempts to shock, but little more. Mr. Baker seemed like the guy who bragged -- without prompting -- about his sexual successes to the point of caricature.
Now he's done it again with "House of Holes," subtitled "A Book of Raunch," as if we needed any more in our lives.
But, where "Jersey Shore" is raunch, "House of Holes" is a mild-mannered parody of crudeness. Although its short chapters are full of sex acts, the effect is a bit like reading one of those marriage "manuals" from the 1950s that Woody Allen talked about.
There's plenty of "nnnnnngggggggaaaaaaw" or "ohhhhhrrrrr" to be heard from Mr. Baker's orgasmic characters, a dull bunch distinguished only by their considerable physical endowments. There's not much insight or clever commentary, but many corny euphemisms for those endowments and their functions.
The "House" is a magical sex clinic for his crew to cavort with each other or themselves, culminating in a large scale masturbation contest.
In the 1920s, E.B. White and James Thurber collaborated on a cute little humor book, "Is Sex Necessary?" which leads me to the question: Is "House of Holes" necessary?
I have my doubts, not about Mr. Baker's imagination, but about what he was trying to accomplish. Certainly not erotica or shock. Boredom, perhaps, but then again, to what end?
As a writing exercise, "House of Holes" is a tour de force of storytelling, drawing chuckles here and there, but it's too conventional and restrained to make much impression.
First Published August 21, 2011 12:00 am
