Angelica's Grotto

Now in his infirm seventies, art connoisseur Harold Klein finds himself inexplicably afflicted with a strange malady. He has lost his "inner voice" – the mental faculty that would under normal circumstances prevent him from blurting out, uncensored, the first thought, or insult, that pops into his head – and consequently suffered some irate punches in public places. On the Internet, though, the dangers to Klein's person are only virtual. So are the pleasures, when he wanders one evening into Angelica's Grotto, a pornographic Web site, and without any verbal inhibition whatsoever enters the ongoing online dialogue. Klein's untrammeled libidinous gusto soon attracts the attention of the Grotto's creator, a brainy and beautiful academic sex researcher named Melissa Bottomley. "You're a tiger from the neck up, Professor," Melissa tells Klein, when at last he more than virtually faces the object of his desire as well as her formidably endowed male colleague, Leslie. The erotic odyssey that ensues takes Klein through unimagined erogenous zones as well as the more arcane corners of the art world, where he seeks to meet Melissa's need for funding. In return, she meets his for sexual gratification. As Klein strives to reconcile new desires with old habits, author Russell Hoban compellingly and often riotously explores the dark relations between art and pornography, between virtual acts and real emotions, between sexual fantasy and morality.