The Fermata
Nicholson Baker
1995 at Max's House
Synopsis
I have recently reread Nicholson Baker's fascinating novel
The Fermata and something struck me that may have struck
others too. There is an absolute logical flaw in the treatment
of time in the novel. When Strine stops time and enters the
Fold, there is of course no temporal flow at all in "real
time". Yet he is able to do lots of different things that
remain in real time when it is reactivated. For example, he
places a cassette in a woman's car and sees to it that she
starts listening to it when time starts again. Now, when time
flow is resumed there has been absolutely no gap between the
stopping and the starting of it. Hence nothing that has happened
in the Fold can have any effect at all outside of the Fold.
Time will simply go on and nothing Strine has done in the
Fold will be carried over into it. It is just like stopping
music played on a tape recorder. When you start it again the
music will go on just as if there had been no break. This
fact does not in any way detract from the value of the novel.
It just goes to show that any attempt to manipulate time in
fiction, for example stories of time travel, will created
paradoxes and illogical events. Usually, however, these flaws
are very interesting. With best wishes
Gunnar Persson, Professor of English, Lulea
University of Technology
I read this before my freshman year of college. I am almost
a junior now, and I still see no purpose in this book besides
giving curious teenagers more literate porn. But for that
purpose, it's pretty good, I guess."
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