Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker's novels are The Mezzanine, Room Temperature, Vox, The Fermata, The Everlasting Story of Nory, A Box of Matches, Checkpoint, The Anthologist, and House of Holes, A Book of Raunch.

From his Q & A with Sam Anderson at The Paris Review:

INTERVIEWER

Can we talk a little about the perils of sex writing?

BAKER

Yes. There aren’t any.

INTERVIEWER

No?

BAKER

It’s just too darn fun. I recommend it to everyone. I guess the perils are that sometimes you get perplexed or worried reviews. Poor Baker, has he gone off? Have we lost him to wankery and shame? But my basic feeling is that if a novel can offer some entertainment, and maybe a few observations and also, as a kind of bonus, a little arousal here and there, that’s probably not a bad thing.

INTERVIEWER

So it’s fun to write about sex?

BAKER

Of course it is. First of all, there’s the challenge. People have done it over many centuries in many different ways. There’s A Thousand and One Nights and Fanny Hill. It’s a grand theme. I thought I’d done everything I wanted to do on the subject with Vox and The Fermata, but many years have gone by since those books, and it turns out that if you assume that things like interplasmic-crotchal transfers are possible, there’s more to be said.

INTERVIEWER

Is writing about sex arousing for you as you’re writing it?

BAKER

There’s no point in doing it if it...[read on]

--Marshl Zeringue