Vox (Nicholson Baker novel)
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Vox is a 1992 novel by Nicholson Baker.
The novel covers an episode of phone sex between two young single people on a pay-per-minute party line. The sex scenes in the novel, though quite vivid, nevertheless share the basic approach that Baker has taken since The Mezzanine: in this case, he explores two characters' accumulated thoughts and memories in relation to sex. For some readers, Baker's obsession with detail detracted from a hoped-for pornographic effect. Others, in reading the imaginative sex stories that the two protagonists produce for one another, have perceived a budding romantic affection: in the last act they perform before hanging up, the man gives the woman his phone number. The book was Baker's first New York Times bestseller. Monica Lewinsky supposedly once gave a copy to President Bill Clinton.
Stephen King notoriously compared Baker's novel Vox to a "meaningless little fingernail paring".
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