House of Holes

Nicholson Baker leads a double life in the literary world. He writes standard literary novels like The Anthologist, and even wrote a history of World War II. But he also writes gleefully smutty books, such as Vox and The Fermata, the latter being the best porno I've ever read that is sold right out there without a brown-paper wrapper. He has returned to raunch with House of Holes, which is in essence, a very long, very silly letter to Penthouse.

I've written loads of whacking material in my day, and Baker manages to come up with some similes that we would have found too much. For the male member, he uses "Lincoln Stiffens" and "Malcolm Gladwell," among others. For the female genitalia, I remember "slobbering kitty," and also the more prosaic "train station." There are also some lively euphemisms for semen: "But seeing a man squirt out into the air is much less exciting to me than the idea of a man shooting inside me and filling me up with wonderful hot streams of doodle-goo."

The titular House of Holes is a sort of Fantasy Island for sexual expression. People get there in mysterious ways, through some kind of hole, whether it's a golf hole, the back of a dryer in a laundromat, or their own urethra. I wasn't quite sure of the economics--men seem to pay exorbitant rates to be there, and frequently fall into debt, thus having to work off what they owe. There are also numerous detachable body parts. The novel starts with Shandee finding a detached arm in a rock quarry. The arm belongs to Dave, who told Lila, who runs the House of Holes, that he would give his right arm to have a bigger penis. The arm has a life of its own, and Shandee becomes quite fond of it, but travels to the House to find its owner.

There are also headless men, and swapped penises. I kept thinking of the King Missile song, "Detachable Penis." One woman has sex with a headless man, while another is in the Hall of Penises, which stick through glory holes. One woman has gone around the grounds stealing clitorises. "Shandee was moved. 'We must help you get your clit back,' she said, socking her fist. 'You can't just have that pleasure stolen from you. You have rights!'"

I'm not quite sure what Baker intended here. I like reading porn, so I had a fine time with this, although some of it was too weird even for me, such as when a woman is shrunk down and stuck in the tip of a man's urethra, and he must ejaculate to knock her loose. At times it plays like one long joke, such as when a woman called Luna gives foot jobs to two famous Russian composers: "'Yes, that is my cock,' said Alexander Borodin. 'It is very hard and very famous.' 'I see,' she said. 'It tickles a little. And you, Mr. Rimsky-Korsakov?'"

I don't think Baker is saying anything greater about sexuality, even with all the detachable body parts. He might be wistfully imagining a world where sex isn't such the holy thing it is now, where men can walk up to a women and say, politely, "I would like to watch you come," without getting slapped or having the police called. I would certainly like to live in that world. At times House of Holes can simply be taken at its lowest level: funny, well-written smut: "Everyone went quiet, watching Shandee to her strenuous double service. She pulled up on then slumped down on Glenn's rigid stonker, and she gave simultaneous attention to Dave's jaw-dropping mouthful of dickstick."