Fulfillment of Desire Not End in Itself

Helen M. Farrell, M.D.Authors Info & Affiliations

Publication: Psychiatric News

Volume 46, Number 22

https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.46.22.psychnews_46_22_8_2

House of Holes

By Nicholson Baker

Simon & Schuster; 262 pp.

Sexual fantasy and gratification transcend social norms in Nicholson Baker's novel, House of Holes. Its premise is that regular, discontented people disappear through portals, like dryers and golf-course holes, into a sort of sexual resort. There is no plot. Instead, a series of vignettes transport the reader into a parallel world in which people endlessly participate in elaborate and peculiar sexual scenarios.

The id, a great reservoir of libido, emanates from every line in Baker's novel. Ego and supergo, the other two constructs of Freud's structural model of the psyche, completely evade this new book. Baker dwells on a theme of emptiness through banal sexual searching and exhilarating trysts in what is comic, albeit lewd, writing.

This sexually explicit novel mixes creativity with eroticism. Baker's obsession with the human orgasm is provocative. He captures what a world based only on the fulfillment of frustrated desire might be like—unsatisfying.

Helen M. Farrell, M.D., is an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a staff psychiatrist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Information & Authors

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Psychiatric News

Volume 46 • Number 22 • November 18, 2011

Pages: 8B

History

Published online: 18 November 2011

Published in print: November 18, 2011

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Helen M. Farrell, M.D.

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Fulfillment of Desire Not End in Itself