The Fermata

Literary fiction · Dark comedy · Satire

Print length: 303 pagesRandom House, 1994

Description

Arno Strine, a shy young temporary worker in Boston, discovers that he can stop time while remaining free to move through the frozen world. Practice gives him increasing control over the pauses, but he uses that extraordinary power chiefly to invade women’s privacy and construct sexual situations without their knowledge. Arno records these experiences in an autobiography also called The Fermata, attempting to explain desires that his own narration cannot make harmless. At the same time, he longs for a genuine relationship and tries to overcome the social fear that keeps him isolated. The novel’s provocative premise places fantasy, confession, and moral self-justification in continual conflict, asking what intimacy can mean when one person possesses absolute, secret control.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Essayistic · Experimental · Ornate · Witty

Pace

Measured

Tone

Cerebral · Intimate · Irreverent · Unsettling

Structure

Episodic

Focus

Character · Ideas · Voice

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 4 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

IdentityIsolationLoveMoralityPowerSexuality

About Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is an American novelist and essayist whose work ranges from microscopic studies of consciousness to erotic fantasy and documentary history. He often reduces outward action so that attention itself becomes the organizing force. Objects, bodily habits, memories, and stray facts generate digressions, while unusual structures expose how narrators arrange or excuse their own thoughts. In The Mezzanine, an escalator ride back from lunch expands through long footnotes and chains of association into an inquiry about shoelaces, straws, hand dryers, and other overlooked designs. His interest in desire can take a more troubling form. The Fermata gives its secretive protagonist the power to stop time, then lets his confessional narration reveal the evasions with which he defends invasions of women’s privacy. Baker’s nonfiction applies the same concern with arrangement to public records. Human Smoke builds its account of the origins of World War II from chronologically ordered speeches, reports, and transcripts, using limited commentary and close juxtaposition rather than a continuous retrospective argument.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Random House
Language: English
ISBN: 9780679415862

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