Product Description

Baker has written a novel that remaps the territory of sex--solitary and telephonic, lyrical and profane, comfortable and dangerous. Written in the form of a phone conversation between two strangers, Vox is an erotic classic that places the author in the first rank of America's major writers. Reading tour.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #228584 in Books
• Published on: 1993-01-26
• Released on: 1993-01-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Baker's self-indulgent novel, a 14-week PW bestseller in cloth, transcribes a long telephone conversation between two people who meet over a phone-sex call-in line. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Jim and Abby meet over the phone when they both dial one of those 976 party lines that are advertised in adult magazines. After some exploratory small talk, they retire to the electronic "back room" for a more intimate chat. Their long conversation makes up the entire book. If the premise sounds a bit thin, remember that Nicholson Baker's brilliant first novel The Mezzanine ( LJ 11/1/88) was about an office worker's lunch-hour expedition to buy new shoelaces. Like all great artists, Baker has the ability to make familiar objects and everyday events seem new and strange. Centerfolds, lingerie catalogs, and X-rated videos will never look the same. Indeed, Vox transforms the genre itself: this is eroticism for the safe-sex Nineties. Not only is there no physical contact, the participants never leave the privacy of their own homes. Recommended, with the caveat that some readers may find the subject matter offensive. Baker's Room Temperature ( LJ 3/15/90) was one of LJ 's "Best Books of 1990" ( LJ 1/91).--Ed.
- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
On a private adult phone-sex line, Jim, a West Coaster in his late 20s, connects with East Coast Abby. Birds of a feather--both of them witty, obsessive, yuppie masturbators--they're off, trading stories and fantasies and the psychopathologies of everyday life. Baker (The Mezzanine, Room Temperature), heretofore more a monologist, a literary performance artist, than much of a novelist, folds his deadpan honesty and funny fussiness double--and though Jim and Abby finally seem so much like the same voice that they don't really qualify as characters, they don't have to: Baker has found a conceptual format, the phone sex, perfectly tailored to his talents. This is a mini-epic of Big Chill--ed safe-sex: rambling stories that start out as aids to titillation but dry and crumble into homely and self-satisfied details that challenge eroticism; the overturning of classical seduction theory (here, both the man and woman, unseen to each other, know that the other has his/her hand on his/her self); lots of little snappy apercus and joshings establish intellectual coziness. The tropes of modern sex--olive oil, VCRs, copying machines, the letters in Penthouse Forum--are traded breezily, sometimes hilariously, but are nothing compared to the main technological thrill; after Abby tells him exactly how she masturbates in the shower, Jim (in the book's best and most concentrated moment) declares it a miracle, ```a telephone conversation I want to have. I love the telephone.''' And Baker does expose a strange kind of dignity, in that Jim and Abby aren't using each other for very much more than as instruments of exemption from embarrassment. Quite a literary season for self-relief! First Harold Brodkey as the Mahler, the Liszt, of the hand-job, now Nicholson Baker as its David Letterman. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Vox
Vox is the novella length discussion between Abby and Jim, two relatively lonely people inspired, late one night, to call a sex phone line to make a connection with someone, anyone. They find each other, and as the novel progresses, through a series of neatly spaced erotic stories, they begin to develop a friendship, marvelling at the strange wonders of technology, the phone, and how it could bring two people together who would never otherwise meet.

The entire story is in dialogue, with only a very few 'he said' and 'she said's to allow us to remember just who is speaking - which due to the quality of the writing and characterisation is rarely necessary. At first, Jim is mostly interested in one thing, but early on he realises that he has found someone who is perhaps worth more of a time investment than a 'normal' call to this particular chatline, and for a very long time, there is only very minor sex talk. They discuss the little oddities of life that everyone discusses in quiet moments, sharing thoughts about mundane items or events in ways that would no doubt sound instantly familiar to anyone, anywhere. A huge positive of this novella is that Baker writes both characters with a sense of awareness, just like any other normal person. There are a lot of things that the two characters just plain get, and a lot that they don't. They can talk about the casual immediacy of events, or the metaphysics of those little lights on stereo sets.

A few questions. Have you ever, when talking to someone, wanted to travel through the phone? Yes. Have you ever spoken to someone, and you know that if, through any circumstance whatsoever, there is a break in the conversation, the magic will be gone and that will be that? Yes. Have you ever taken a sick day off from work and then felt so guilty about it that you just had to spend the rest of the day being 'pious'? Yes. Abby and Jim discuss these little truths about the world, and more, though to be honest, most of the rest tend to the explicit. Those conversations are, I think, handled tastefully, without resorting to vulgarity, which is surprising, considering the nature of the call and of the story. To be sure, quite often explicit conversation will begin, but it is of a 'warm' nature, I suppose, not vulgar and shocking and crude - they even make a point about that fact in adult movies.

Nicholson Baker writes with the heart. I've had conversations like this. You've had conversations like this. Whether or not they tended to the erotic doesn't matter, the point is: we've all spoken to another person that we've been interested in, and they've returned the interest, and we know the way we talk and what we talk about. This novel perfectly captures this, and by the end of it, I felt utterly sad that these two, imperfect, beautiful, interesting and sexual characters were just that...characters. Never have I felt so cheated before, or so thankful that I had been, if only for a moment, able to glimpse into the minds of these two extraordinarily ordinary people, through one simple phone conversation.

Kinky, kinky fun, until the laundry's done.
This is the perfect little nibble-sized book to read while waiting for your laundry to finish. It's delightfully naughty without being raunchy, so you don't feel the big, sexless hand of mom slapping you upside the back of your head. The whole thing is dialogue between a man and a woman talking on a phone sex line, swapping fantasies about sex and more. Nicholson Baker is the master of pointing out all the goofy things we do and think about, but never want to admit to anyone. He taps right into the kinky part of your brain and, if you'll let him, he'll take you on an amusing ride of taboo human behavior. Pick up all those dirty clothes off your floor, turn the spin cycle on and read away. By the time the dryer buzzes, you'll be buzzing too. What you do after that is your own little story...

The technology is dated, but the story is still arousing
Back in 1993, before Internet erotic chatrooms, Jim and Abby meet through an erotic phone chat service and begin a conversation that becomes the text of this novel. Devoting a whole novel to one erotic phone call allows the author to develop his characters better than your average pay-by-the-minute erotic service would normally allow. Cost becomes no object to these two people a continent apart as they explore their fantasies with each other. While the conversation doesn't maintain a high level of stimulation throughout, there are exciting moments. Overall, a good light work with exciting episodes and a climactic ending.