The Fermata
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summary
In The Fermata, Arno Strine is not a bad-looking guy with a low-end job cleaning up undifferentiated goop at a cheese factory. He has a tiny apartment in Queens, and a bicycle that he feels more comfortable riding than walking. But a childhood accident has left him with an appalling sexual power which he unleashes compulsively and with panache as an alter ego he calls Kid Williams. Kid is addicted to watching women in a trance-like state. And Arno has always been fascinated by the possibilities of stopping time, fleeing in trapped moments while the world continues without him. He has worked on this force at times, and when, one day, he actually finds he can stop time, he starts up again, but without time: totally white and featureless fields where he searches each day for clues to what his power has done to the world, and to the women he sets free from their frozen enslavement. Nicholson Baker has handily turned his sights to sex and the mind-bending possibilities of stopping time to highlight a tale of obsession about which he had something specific and obsessive to say. And if this human flight drags it into some wildly unexpected places, those are small prices to pay for a work this filthy and fun.