Volume 41, Number 7 · April 7, 1994
Stop the World, I Want to Get Off
By Cathleen Schine
The Fermata
by Nicholson Baker
Random House, 303 pp., $21.00
In his new novel, Nicholson Baker turns his full attention to the lonely art, the art of masturbation. The narrator, Arno Strine, possesses a strange gift: he can stop time, halting the world around him. 'I first stopped time because I liked my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Dobzhansky, and wanted to see her with fewer clothes on,' he says, but adds that it was not lust that impelled him. Sitting in the back of the room, he simply desired to see more clearly, to examine. His teacher stalls midsentence in front of the black-board, a piece of chalk in her hand; the class is stilled; Arno strips off his own clothes and stands before her.
Review, 2606 words
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