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Vox (1998)

Vox (1998)

Book Info

Rating
3.43 of 5 Votes: 2
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ISBN
1862070962 (ISBN13: 9781862070967)
Language
English
Publisher
granta books

About book Vox (1998)

Vox is a highly entertaining novel from the highly observant author Nicholson Baker. If you’re familiar on how his first novel The Mezzanine was just about an office employer’s lunch expedition to buy new shoe laces, you’ll have an idea how this brilliant author makes a premise that sounds a bit thin and boring and makes it highly entertaining and informative.Vox is about a 165-page length conversation about Jim and Abby, who meets over the phone when they both dial one of those enticing advertisements in an adult magazine. Two lonely people late one night inspired to call for a sex phone line and hoping to find connection with someone. Of course they start to interest each other and starts to share erotic stories (some are fictional, some experienced) and after a time -although all of this happens in just a span of a night- begins to develop a sort of friendship.Asking questions and marveling at what each other’s surroundings and clothing like “What hand are you holding the phone with?” “What are you doing with your right hand?” and the realization on the strangeness and wonders of technology, the telephone in particular and how it could bring two people together without seeing each other and possibly never going to meet in their lifetime. Of course it could be dated for we now have the internet, but that realization over the telephone I could consider as magical.The whole story is entirely written in dialogues and has a few ‘he said’ and ‘she said’ to orient us on who the speaker is. As I read, I’ve come to ask on how these two individuals keep on talking without being tired and how are they much able to talk for hours since I am sure conversations like these has its higher rates compared to the much plain calls, but all of my questions are answered after a time it pops-up in my head. And the author’s observation about the things we usually don’t bother to observe are really clever. I can say that a dark room but those little stereo lights on stereo sets are pretty nostalgic.And if the following questions I’m going to ask rings a bell, it is enough for me to convince you to read this particular title.Have you ever imagine while talking to someone, wanted to travel through the phone to the place on other line? Yes?Asking or asked to describe the picture on your window? Hmm?What time it is there? The weather?Although the first part of their conversation talks of nothing but erotic stories that has a tendency to tire some readers for the two to get into it, Baker writes form the heart. For as we near the climax of the novel –climax too for the characters- I felt somewhat sad because things like a long conversation have to end and the exchanging of their numbers makes it bearable and thus serves as a possibility for them to converse again.Vox is a funny and highly entertaining novel that needs to be read in one sitting from one of the cleverest and observant writers I’m glad to come to.Opening Sentence: “What are you wearing?” he asked.Ending Sentence: They hang up.

Do you know why emoticons exist? The theory in psychology is that a large portion of communication is nonverbal and an even larger portion of this is actually specifically facial. So what happens when you take seeing someone out of the picture? "I liked your voice" "What are you wearing" "which hand" and that sort of thing. I am left to wonder if perhaps phone sex party lines might be the reason men can no longer read body language. Gentleman, crossed arms means don't approach. This book is interesting in the sense that it takes place in a very small moment of time. Perhaps I missed the long craze but growing up I remember chat rooms and phone lines becoming a very big deal, and I mean they actually do still exist. I totally see commercials for them, but people don't use them in the same way. Not that people stopped hooking up, what with skype and all it seems silly that they shouldn't get a nice view as well. So this book carries with it a sense of nostalgia and innocence, yeah I said that. There is something more pure about the characters stepping away from the men asking about bra size, and yes the book is one long sexual fantasy but it isn't one that is terribly out of the ordinary, except perhaps the part about the painters. Where the french attempt to go bigger, brasher, and more Baker gives us only what truly exists for two people in the moment they exist. This is something anyone could have done maybe ten years ago. Before ASL and suicidegirls. On the other hand this is one of those books I take on the subway and then pray that someone isn't reading over my shoulder. It happens... I had to stop reading de sade on the subway because of it.

Do You like book Vox (1998)?

Ok, so it's erotica, but about a thousand miles away from Fifty Shades ... at least until the end. It is essentially the inverse of a typical date. These two people start with the most intimate, weird, specific details of their internal lives, and in the telling of those things, they reveal some of the more mundane aspects of their personalities, vocations, and external lives. They (and we) never really know what the other looks like, what their voice sounds like, where they live, who their family is, and so on. We do learn their fantasies and fetishes, the very particular mechanisms of their arousal. Sure, it's sexual, but I found most interesting was how these most-hidden, least-discussed aspects can be so separate from their exterior lives, but still influence them so deeply. They think and feel and do things that no one who "knows" them has any sense of, yet those thoughts and feelings and actions are so close to the core of their beings. It seems like it should be a profoundly lonely experience, but it isn't. There is a good deal of silly-sexy that comes through, mostly in the absurdity of their fantasies, which keeps the whole book light, but there is a stronger core that runs underneath. Something about two strangers finding shared ground, in spite of a great distance (literal and figurative) between them. Perhaps I'm waxing a little too poetic about a book that's essentially pornographic, but what the heck. I liked it. Given all the strangeness throughout, I thought the end of the final scene was pretty standard/trite... which was weird. You'd think two people with extremely creative sexual imaginations would have gone somewhere new when fantasizing together... but perhaps "normal" was the new place for them?
—Kate

I've been wanting to read another book by Nicholson Baker ever since I read--and loved--The Fermata. This one isn't as striking or profound as I found that one, but an enjoyable read nonetheless. Still, I feel like he hadn't quite let loose yet. There is a bit of wordplay, creating new words (which, in a weird backwards way, redefine the meanings of the words they're replacing) for sex and body parts; however, it's not as deliciously fun and funny as it is in The Fermata. Vox is almost impossible to put down. A slim novel without chapters or page breaks, the conversation between two strangers on opposite coasts just flows--filled with random asides and strange erotic stories. Vox is a love letter to masturbation. This usually secret act is shared between two people and ultimately brings them (and maybe someday, THE WORLD) together temporarily.
—Chance Lee

I'll add my two cents to the small change of positive opinion about this book. I really liked it and think it's just about the cleverest erotica I've read. It's the only time I can recall laughing out loud while reading erotica, not because it was being ridiculous but because it was genuinely funny. The entire thing, if you don't know, is a phone sex conversation between a man and a woman who have never met, which involves several purely friendly and refreshingly literary digressions. I recommend it, even more so if you've got a special somebody to read it with.
—Bennet

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