A Peeper's Paradise

By John Skow

Nicholson Baker's brand of soft-core porn is better written than is usual for such naughty stuff, and now and again the suggestion is made that what he is writing is mainstream fiction. Or even, in the case of Vox (1992) -- his long transcription of an entirely satisfying anonymous phone-sex relationship -- that he is producing something like satire, driven by something like a point of view. A concept for our times: how safe can sex get, not just from infection but from imperfection, and of course from conception, though not from Baby Bell? His new novel, The Fermata (Random House; 303 pages; $21), is somewhat less elevated. A fermata, in music, is the extension of a note, chord or rest. What is extended, or stopped, in Baker's tale is the forward motion of the universe. His hero, a fellow named Arno Strine, has discovered that he can freeze time (presumably from sea to shining sea) by snapping his fingers, while all else is stopped. What he does is a 13-year-old boy's dream: Strine, who's 35, takes the clothes off unresisting women and masturbates. Then he re- dresses the women, snaps his fingers again and the decline of the West resumes, with no one the wiser.

That's about it. Not another idea or phenomenon disturbs the flow -- that's probably the right word -- of the narration. As with any extended porn, the book is a highly elaborate tease, sillier and more exotic with each chapter. It's not ugly stuff, as such things go; Strine isn't a rapist or even a thief, though he does steal peeks. Ogling is really all he's interested in, and all that Baker seems to feel readers need to sustain their interest. That's fairly patronizing and more than a little feebleminded, though maybe he is right. Still, an onlooker wonders whether Baker's eye-roller was really the best that Random House could do to fill out the pop-schlock portion of its spring list.

-- J.S.