Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods
It must be said that Lightning Rods isn’t actually all that shocking, especially if you happen to have spent a few desensitizing hours with Nicholson Baker’s XXX-rated House of Holes earlier this year. Yet it does manage to burrow down and strike more than its share of raw nerves. That’s because DeWitt’s conception of sexual-release-valve technology is framed as practical above all else. It is a tangible product, designed for actual people with actual desires. As such, it has actual consequences. That frankness is perhaps more disarming than any shock tactic could be.
The invention at the centre of Helen DeWitt’s Lightning Rods allows co-workers to have anonymous sex through a complicated hole in the wall separating the men and women’s bathrooms. And… well, need I say more?
Read my full review, from yesterday’s Edmonton Journal, here.
Dec 5, 2011