Hard to know what to say here. Was it a parody of pornography? An attempt to show how ludicrous American society's fascination with sex has become? A nutty comic immersion in the silly excesses of euphemism about sex? A demonstration of how stupid and tedious passionless, emotionless sex can be? I want to take this in some way seriously, for Baker is a serious writer. I thought The Fermata was, more or less, a hoot, but this one was...somewhat less than a hoot. Remarkable that this guy could writer Room Temperature and The Everlasting Story of Nory as well as Vox, The Fermata, and this thing.I always want to read Baker. For many things of his I am perhaps his ideal reader. He takes chances, and what he writes is always readable, interesting, and usually fun, even if in a warped way. I'll remember its straight-faced fantasy, of disembodied body parts, people being sucked into the House of Holes though holes of various sorts–ballpoint pen tubes, finger and thumb in an "O" and so on, the perfectly matter of fact way everyone seems to accept the outlandishness of this place, and participate willingly in what is on offer. A surrealist porn-parody by a respected writer seemed a nice palate cleanser after the more serious reading I'd been doing. For the first 50+ pages (my usual cut off point with books) I was somewhat amused; why it gets two stars.Somewhere approaching page 100 the whole thing started to just drone on. The "surrealism" became sadly predictable, the erotica dulled by a surprisingly constricted hetero-normative imagination, and the creativity of the writing itself reduced to little more that an unimaginative series of juvenile names for genitalia.I persevered. You don't need to even begin.
What do You think about Haus Der Löcher (2012)?
This book has no plot. The characters are not developed and it doesn't conclude to anything.
—mero
So ridiculous that it's enjoyable. Mostly for the odd and amusing language choices.
—Inez
Terrible. Not erotic, not clever, not funny, just stupid and irritating.
—miyuki
