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A Box of Matches: A Novel (Baker, Nicholson), by Nicholson Baker
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Emmett has a wife and two children, a cat, and a duck, and he wants to know what life is about. Every day he gets up before dawn, makes a cup of coffee in the dark, lights a fire with one wooden match, and thinks.
What Emmett thinks about is the subject of this wise and closely observed novel, which covers vast distances while moving no farther than Emmett’s hearth and home. Nicholson Baker’s extraordinary ability to describe and celebrate life in all its rich ordinariness has never been so beautifully achieved.
Baker won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. He now returns to fiction with this lovely book, reminiscent of the early novels—Room Temperature and The Mezzanine—that established his reputation.
- Sales Rank: #1562972 in Books
- Published on: 2003-01-07
- Released on: 2003-01-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.15" h x .80" w x 5.48" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 178 pages
Amazon.com Review
One man's simple, colloquial meditations on his past, his family, and his life's daily minutia are the substance of Nicholson Baker's A Box of Matches. Feeling that life is passing him by, Emmett, a middle-aged medical textbook editor, decides to wake up early each day to sit by a fire in his country house and record his thoughts in a diary. "Good morning," Emmett begins, "it's January and its 4:17 a.m., and I'm going to sit here in the dark." From this vantage point, Emmett reflects stream-of-consciousness style on whatever occurs to him, no matter how mundane: his recent trip to Home Depot, how he met his wife, the habits of the family duck. Routines, such as how he makes his morning coffee in the dark or picks up his underwear with his toes, are described with childlike reverence and directness. All told, nothing much happens in A Box of Matches, which seems to be the point. Baker is more interested in the idea that for many, life is made up of such apparent trivialities, and that only by pausing to appreciate them can anyone gain any lasting satisfaction. Baker emphasizes this through the moments of understated wisdom and joy that Emmett derives from ordinary occurrences, such as the daylight through the window: "a simple light that goes everywhere but with no heat, aware that it is taken for granted and content to be so." This is the philosophical equivalent of a one-joke premise, however, and there are moments when Emmett's naiveté and laundry list-like narrative wear thin. Likely understanding this, Baker has wisely kept things short. A curious, often charming novel, A Box of Matches will inspire some readers, while inspiring frustration in others. --Ross Doll
From Publishers Weekly
The science of the insignificant has always been Baker's field of study. Treading a fine line between microcosmic dazzlement and banality, he has carved out a minuscule kingdom for himself. After his recent excursion into nonfiction (the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Double Fold), he returns to fiction with a novel in the classic Baker tradition. For Emmett, a 44-year-old father and textbook editor, the predawn wintry darkness is an invitation to musings and meditations on life's events-make that nonevents. Each chapter begins virtually identically ("Good morning, it's 4:45 a.m...."), with Emmett reflecting on something as he sips coffee and warms himself by the fire: the family's pet duck, outside in the cold; a well-worn briefcase; an alternative career as a lichen expert; the idea of collecting paper towel designs. His family-two children and wife Claire-occasionally appear in his ruminations, and his love for them is palpable. But they never emerge as more than background figures, because Emmett's preoccupation is with himself; at one point, he (literally) gathers lint from his navel. Baker struggles to manufacture drama ("Last night my sleep was threatened by a toe-hole in my sock"), and his prose is evocative (a match bursting into flame becomes a "dandelion head of little sparks"). He is such an excellent writer, a master of descriptive detail with an unusual perspective on the world, that he can almost be forgiven for his tendency to focus on the mundane-almost. Emmett's life may seem rich to him, but it isn't rich enough to propel an entire novel. Even readers with a weakness for Baker's particular brand of minutiae may find themselves hoping that next time he will find a subject worthier of his prose.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Baker specializes in quirky, small-scale novels that flout most of the accepted rules of fiction while at the same time retaining an old-fashioned, reader-friendly accessibility. His books are not so much anti-novels as anti-blockbusters, intentionally pitched in a minor key. His new book is a comic monolog in 33 chapters written on a series of winter mornings in Maine. Emmett, the middle-aged narrator, lights a fire in the fireplace using just one wooden match, drinks his coffee, and jots down his thoughts before the rest of the family wakes. The novel ends when the match box is empty. Emmett writes about his wife and kids; his pet duck, Gertrude; and his doomed ant farm. He evaluates technological improvements in paper towels and toilet plungers. He tests the combustibility of various types of kitchen trash. Baker is clearly trying to recapture the wide-eyed wonder and laugh-out-loud humor of his celebrated debut, The Mezzanine, after the overly clever sex novels Vox and The Fermata. Fans will love this book, but newcomers may find it too flimsy and insubstantial to take seriously.
--Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
to build a fire
By Case Quarter
‘I fell asleep a little after ten reading a software manual, and now I’m up and waiting for the train whistle. The fire today is made partly of half-charred loggage from yesterday, but mostly from thin apple branches that I sawed up when I got home from work. I tried the ax first and had a heck of a time. But a handsaw will slide right through with wondrous ease, sprinkling handfuls of sawdust out of either side of the cut, like—I can’t think of what—like a sower sowing seeds, perhaps. Anyway the fire took to burning so readily that I’ve had to move my chair back a little so that my legs aren’t I pain through the flannel.’
were it not for the software manual, this paragraph could have been attributed to henry david thoreau. the meditative quality is achieved by arising early every morning, between four and five a.m. and starting a fire in a fireplace built in 1789 and preparing coffee. the writer’s observations are daily, perhaps written in a journal or on a computer. his reflections often turn speculative, productive of homespun wisdom of the marvels of the mundane, the falling of leaves from trees when there is no wind, how the brain uses nightmares as a way of awakening as a summoning to urinate. unlike thoreau, he is no solitary, a medical textbook editor, he is married to claire, and they have a fourteen year old daughter, phobe and an eight year old son, henry.
and for such familial reasons, his reflections over his daily risings in robert frost’s dark wintry vermont in the month of january become less, for lack of a better word, profound. his mind meanders to memories and observations of his family life and the family pets, a cat and a duck. not the stalwart companions for adventures of a man in the cold north.
in TO BUILD A FIRE, a short story by jack london, the protagonist, with his dog, trapped in the yukon has three matches standing between himself and death. emmet has the luxury of an entire box. comparatively, it’s an easy enough metaphor. a neat novel for use in high school english classes. would it be trite of me to leave the potential reader wondering, if the family ate the duck?
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Good Morning. It's 4
By Adriana49
Good Morning. It's 4:18 am. I lit the fire with a piece of corrugated cardboard and a cereal box. I had to use 2 matches because I dropped one.
If you find this scintillating reading, then by all means buy this book. Each chapter starts the same way. He starts a fire early in the morning and describes it ad infinitum. I kept reading, thinking it would evolve into a meaningful meditation on life, but chapter after chapter was the same. He goes outside to check on the duck living in the dog house and drones on about the most mundane details. It was like listening to someone who is tone deaf learning to play the cello. I finally gave up about a third of the way in.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A remarkable reading experience!
By Amazon Customer
I enjoyed every word of this contemplative perspective on the riches of daily life. With extraordinary detail, The author illuminates new levels of awareness (mindfulness) in simple events like making coffee, dropping a bar of soap, or feeding a duck. Of all the readings I've done to achieve mindfulness and calm, this work of fiction took me to that observant, thoughtful place where life actually happens.
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