{"id":776,"date":"2013-09-17T09:14:45","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T17:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=776"},"modified":"2017-12-18T13:27:34","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T21:27:34","slug":"review-house-of-holes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/17\/review-house-of-holes\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: House of Holes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"House<\/a>
\n House of Holes<\/a> by Nicholson Baker<\/a>
\n My rating: 2 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

Ambivalence. On the one hand, I was endlessly fascinated by Baker\u2019s easy and surprising inventiveness in House of Holes<\/i>. On the other hand, I don\u2019t think I would have missed a thing if I had never read this book. And yet, to know that I would not have missed anything requires me to have read what I would have missed. I don\u2019t want to suggest that I regret reading it\u2014it was over too fast for it to have been much of a waste of time. And it\u2019s not like my time\u2019s all that important anyway.<\/p>\n

Why to women and men jill and jack off? To assuage sexual urges, certainly, but sometimes, other times, because they\u2019re bored, nothing meaningful to do. We are, at our very cores, being designed to want to have sex, and in our hyper-modern world, that urge has been sublimated a thousand different ways. So this book is just a kind of bored act of jerking off for Baker, I guess.<\/p>\n

Language, too is integral to our identity as humans. We\u2019re born to it. Baker, here, mixes the two. He\u2019s undoubtedly talented with the written word. So I guess, in as much as I would rather see some people jill off over others, because they\u2019re beautiful or good at it or seem to just do it so well, so too would I rather read Baker\u2019s wording-off over some other author.<\/p>\n

But, as I said, the novel\u2019s more or less meaningless. House of Holes<\/i> has no spirit, no soul, no substance. It is indeed a hole, a thing defined by what it isn\u2019t. I am not trying to be all metaphysical and deep here, not saying that there\u2019s a message in a Baker\u2019s magico-porn. It\u2019s just a tug-book for your Broca area.<\/p>\n

Take it or leave it.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House of Holes by Nicholson Baker My rating: 2 of 5 stars Ambivalence. On the one hand, I was endlessly fascinated by Baker\u2019s easy and surprising inventiveness in House of Holes. On the other hand, I don\u2019t think I would have missed a thing if I had never read this book. And yet, to know … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: House of Holes”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-cw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions\/777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}