Nicholson Baker - Vox

Acclaim for
Nicholson Bakers
VOX

An anatomically correct, technology-assisted love story Vox proves once again that the brain, as love doctors always tell us, is the sexiest organ.

Richard Stengel, Time

Baker freshens the tattered clichs of sex talk the same way he has made the mundane language of corporate and domestic life snap, crackle, and popby inventing new words, or toying masterfully with ones we already have.

Deborah Garrison, The New Yorker

The book achieves between its two geographically distanced protagonists the kind of intimacy that all of us, from Bible-thumpers to leather fanciers, yearn for. Vox is that rarest of rarities: a warm turn-on.

James Kaplan, Vanity Fair

Delicate, perceptive, kind Vox is a novel for the nineties.

Fay Weldon, The Guardian

Fancifully and amusingly detailed Vox deserves to be read with full attention to what surrounds and lies between the sexually explicit moments.

Robert Towers, New York Review of Books

Bakers characters are flesh-and-blood narrators whose stories stir up more than the imagination.

Dan Cryer, Newsday

Astoundingly funny [Bakers] jewelers-loupe perspective discloses comedy in all kinds of unexpected, intimate spots.

James Marcus, Village Voice Literary Supplement

The most overtly feminist sex novel that anyone has attempted in years. I say feminist because the female character is on a par with her male partner erotically. She is articulate, lusty, supplied with normal female caution but, just as normally, feminine curiosity and desire.

Susie Bright, L. A. Reader

Graphic, playfully erotic Baker, the hyper-observant author of The Mezzanine and Room Temperature, has found an engaging way to celebrate the power of the human voice.

Kim Hunter, Cleveland Plain Dealer

Baker has no challenger today as a master of the minuscule, and he pays out his tale with an aesthetes attention to detail and the moment. His powers of description are formidable.

Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe

Vox isnt just Bakers hottest book; its also his warmest.

David Gates, Newsweek

Nicholson Baker
VOX

Nicholson Baker was born in 1957. He is the author of The Mezzanine (1988), Room Temperature (1990), U and I (1991), Vox, (1992), and The Fermata (1994). He has written for The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. He is married with two children.

Books by Nicholson Baker

The Fermata
Vox
U and I
Room Temperature
The Mezzanine

VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, FEBRUARY 1993

Copyright 1993 by Nicholson Baker

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1992.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baker, Nicholson.
Vox: a novel / Nicholson Baker.1st Vintage contemporaries ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-80748-9
I. Title.
[PS3552.A4325V6 1993]
813.54dc20 92-56365

v3.1

for M.W.B.

What are you wearing? he asked.

She said, Im wearing a white shirt with little stars, green and black stars, on it, and black pants, and socks the color of the green stars, and a pair of black sneakers I got for nine dollars.

What are you doing?

Im lying on my bed, which is made. Thats an unusual thing. I made my bed this morning. A few months ago my mother gave me a chenille bedspread, exactly the kind we used to have, and I felt bad that it was still folded up unused and this morning I finally made the bed with it.

I dont know what chenille is, he said. Its some kind of silky material?

No, its cotton. Cotton chenille. Its got those little tufts, in conventional patterns. Like in bed-and-breakfasts.

Oh oh oh, the patterns of tufts. Im relieved.

Why? she asked.

Silk is somehow you think of ads for escort services where the type is set in fake-o eighteenth-century scriptFor the Discriminating Gentlemanthat kind of thing. Or Deliques Intimates, you know that catalog?

I get one about every week.

Right, a deluge. Lace filigree, Aubrey Beardsley, no thank you. All I can think of is, maam, those silk tap pants youve got on are going to stain.

Youre right about that, she said. Someone gave me this exotic chemisey thing, not from Deliques but the same idea, silk with lace. I get quite I get very moist when Im aroused, its almost embarrassing actually. So this chemisey thing got soaked. He said, the person who bought it for me said, So what, throw it away, use it once. But I dont know, I thought I might want to wear it again. Its really nice to wear silk, you know. So I took it to the dry cleaners. I didnt mention it specifically, I bunched it in with a lot of work clothes. It came back with a little tag on it, with a little dancing man with a tragic expression, wearing a hat, who says, you know, Sorry! We did everything we could, we took extraordinary measures, but the stains on this garment could not come out! I took a look at it, and it was very odd, there were these five dot stains on it, little ovals, not down where Id been wet, but higher up, on the front.

Weird.

And the guy who gave it to me had not come on me. He came elsewherethat much I was sure of. So my theory is that someone at the dry cleaners

No! Do you still give them your business?

Well, theyre convenient.

Where do you live?

In an eastern city.

Oh. I live in a western city.

How nice.

It is nice, he said. From my window I can see a streetlight with lots of spike holes in it, from utility workersI mean a wooden telephone pole with a streetlight on it

Of course.

And a few houses. The streetlight is photo-activated, and watching it come on is really one of the most beautiful things.

What time is it there?

Umsix-twelve, he said.

Is it dark there yet?

No. Is it there?

Not completely, she said. It doesnt feel really dark to me until the little lights on my stereo receiver are the brightest things in the room. Thats not strictly true, but it sounds good, dont you think? What hand are you holding the phone with?

My left, he said.

What are you doing with your right hand?

My right hand is, at the moment, my fingers are resting in the soil of a potted plant somebody gave me, that isnt doing too well. Im sort of moving my fingers in the soil.

What kind of a plant?

I cant remember, he said. The soil has several round polished stones stuck in it. Oh wait, heres the tag.

No, thats just the price tag. An anonymous mystery plant.

You havent told me what youre wearing, she said.

I am wearing Im wearing, well, a bathrobe, and flip-flops with blue soles and red holder-onners. Im new to flip-flopsI mean since moving out here. Theyre good in the morning for waking up. On weekends I put them on and I walk down to the corner and buy the paper, and the feeling of that thong right in the crotch of your toeman, it pulls you together, it starts your day. Its like putting your feet in a bridle.