Angelica's Grotto

by Hoban, Russell

• ISBN13: 9780786708789
• ISBN10: 0786708786
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-05-16
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub

Summary

Altogether original, at once searing and amusing, this darkly comic novel confronts Harold Klein, now in his infirm seventies, with a strange malady -- the loss of his "inner voice" -- and introduces him to the steamy world of Internet sex. Inexplicably bereft of the mental faculty that would under normal circumstances keep him from blurting out, uncensored, the first thought that pops into his head, art connoisseur Klein wanders one evening into a pornographic Web site, Angelica's Grotto. An ongoing on-line dialogue, totally without verbal inhibition on Klein's part, eventually brings him face-to-face with the brains behind the grotto, an academic sex researcher named Melissa Bottomley. Harold Klein's erotic odyssey takes him not only through unimagined erogenous zones but also into arcane corners of the art world, as he seeks to meet Melissa's need for funding and she his for sexual gratification. As Klein strives to reconcile new desires with old habits, author Russell Hoban compellingly explores the dark relations between art and pornography, acts virtual and real, culture and politics, revelation and privacy.

Table of Contents

Breakage	1	(5)
Escher, for Christ's Sake	6	(8)
The Meissen Girl, the Paxos Stone	14	(3)
Fountain of Youth	17	(3)
Worth Writing Up?	20	(2)
A Person, Another Person, a Tree	22	(7)
Fingers and Fins and Wings	29	(3)
Fear, Guilt, Violent Fantasies?	32	(4)
All at Sea	36	(2)
First Session	38	(8)
Angelica's Grotto	46	(5)
The Gorgon Smile	51	(3)
Night Side	54	(17)
Doe Not Call Upp	71	(3)
Second Session	74	(5)
Rock of Aged	79	(5)
The Goodbye Look	84	(6)
Halcyon Days	90	(7)
The Quarry	97	(2)
Everybody's Somebody's Fool	99	(3)
Noah's Ark	102	(2)
Third Session	104	(5)
Death and Life	109	(2)
Hoka Hey	111	(8)
A Taste of Honey	119	(9)
Last Tango in Fulham	128	(3)
30,000 Feet Up	131	(6)
Pillow Talk	137	(6)
The Gybe	143	(3)
Fourth Session	146	(8)
Unknown Tongues	154	(13)
Underworlds	167	(1)
Takeoff	168	(5)
`El Choclo'	173	(5)
Deck The Halls	178	(2)
Gynocracy	180	(3)
A Firm Hand	183	(9)
Numbers	192	(2)
By the Swells, by the Stars	194	(3)
Fifth Session	197	(9)
Really Perky	206	(8)
Lot 37	214	(5)
Happy Hour	219	(6)
Oannes Says	225	(3)
Last Session	228	(6)
Rubicon Grove	234	(8)
Deeply Moving	242	(9)
Loomings	251	(5)
Nimfb	256	(11)
Catching the Bus	267