Nicholson Baker’s Literary Porn

He’s written books about World War II, poetry, the fate of newspapers. But as a novelist, Nicholson Baker has another side.
Back in the 1990s, he published two R-rated works of fiction: Vox (1993) and The Fermata (1995).   Now he’s returning to the raunch with his new novel, House of Holes. The book is a series of fantastical, and fantastically dirty, sex scenes that take place in a kind of theme park “where impermissible things happen. You are sucked into the House of Holes,” he tells Kurt Andersen, “almost without your control.”
But don’t just call it porn.   Baker’s idea for House of Holes was inspired by a Renaissance painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights. “It’s so hot and startling and so entirely out of a man’s imagination,” Baker explains. “And if Hieronymus Bosch could do it all those centuries ago, why can’t we just open up our brains and just let it go?”
PLEASE NOTE: Although Kurt and Nicholson Baker try to keep the conversation clean – that is, as clean as a conversation about a sex novel can be – this one is strictly for adults.