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Vox Paperback – January 1, 1998
- Print length176 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherGranta Books
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1998
- ISBN-101862070962
- ISBN-13978-1862070967
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Product details
- Publisher : Granta Books (January 1, 1998)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 176 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1862070962
- ISBN-13 : 978-1862070967
- Item Weight : 4.8 ounces
- Best Sellers Rank: #7,229,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

I've written seventeen books, plus an art book (The World on Sunday) that I published with my wife Margaret Brentano. The most recent one is Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act (2020). Before that came Substitute (2016), about working as a substitute teacher in Maine schools. Some earlier books are The Anthologist (2009), a novel about a poet trying to write an introduction to an anthology of rhyming verse; Human Smoke (2008), a bestselling attempt to look at the beginning of World War II in a new way, and U and I (1991), about the vagaries and jealousies of the writing life. My first novel, The Mezzanine, about a man riding an escalator on his lunch hour, came out in 1988 and has been translated into more than fifteen languages. Vox (1992) was a best-selling phone-sex novel--source of the question "What are you wearing?"--and I've produced two other erotic novels: The Fermata, about time-stopping (1994); and House of Holes, about a surreal sex resort (2011). My book Double Fold, about libraries (2001), won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Occasionally I write for magazines. I was born in New York City and grew up in Rochester, New York. At Haverford College I majored in English. I live in Maine, near Bangor, with my wife; we have two grown children. See more at https://linktr.ee/nicholsonbaker
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When a writer, particularly a male one, writes about sex, he runs at least two risks: 1) Should he write the scene ham-handedly he may remind his reader of a little boy grinding together the erogenous zones of his sister's Barbie dolls, or 2) should he write the scene perhaps too vividly he may turn the reader off with an impression of shady, prurient voyeurism. Mr. Baker adroitly avoids both pitfalls by strictly limiting the narrator's intrusion to the reportage of dialogue between two paying customers on a phone-sex hotline. ("`What are you wearing?' he asked. She said, `I'm wearing a white shirt with little stars, green and black stars, on it, and pants, and socks the color of the green stars, and a pair of black sneakers I got for nine dollars.'") Since we are prying with our ears and not our eyes, we learn no more about them (and what they are doing) than they consent to share with each other. That is not to say that they don't share quite a bit. They do, everything from their pet names for the opposite sex's anatomy (Jim calls breasts "frans.") and the random mental images that crop up when they come (such as, in Abby's case, the great seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) to their most vivid fantasies and experiences. While even a modern erotica urtext like Pauline Réage's "The Story of O" can be boring, "Vox" never is, probably because its protagonists are subtly yet strongly drawn, and the stories that they tell are quirkily playful, dramatically taut and deliciously sexy. Above all else, Jim and Abby are so inherently likable that I exalted in their good fortune and practically rooted them on towards orgasm:
"This is a miracle," he said.
"It's just a telephone conversation."
"It's a telephone conversation I want to have. I love the telephone."
If I were a love-doctor, I would recommend that you take a cue from Bill and Monica, read "Vox," and learn to love the telephone, too.
[...]
As one reviewer explained, the "porn" is soft - but the porn isn't what's kept me coming back. The dialogue itself is wonderful. Yes, the character's personalities are a little bland, but I think that's what makes it *good*. If the characters were outlandish and bizarre, their conversation wouldn't be nearly as much fun - these are two utterly ordinary people - having a conversation about things that most people have thought and have perhaps never mentioned out loud.
I for one don't even *read* "erotic novels" - I always wind up laughing too hard to ever get past the first page or two. Vox is surely worth the money, and is thoroughly entertaining. It won't leave you "panting for more", but I at least felt my time and money was well spent (every time I've bought/read it!)
Back then, a man I loved telephoned and, without advance warning, read the the man's conversation from VOX. I quickly grabbed my copy of VOX and voiced the female's responses. And we were off. The most exciting moments of my life occurred when this man and I were in the same room. But at a distance, on separate phones, the two of us reading VOX together, as if the conversation in the book were ours? That was close. Ah the 1970s. Something like VOX can sweep me back there in an instant and remind me once again, "It just doesn't get any better than this." Amen.
Top reviews from other countries
Story is written as a conversation as a virtual blind date - written as if they were socially distancing.




