A Box of Matches: A Novel [Anglais] [Relié]

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

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.

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.

Meet Emmett. At 44, he is happily married to Claire; has two kids, a cat, and a duck; and makes a living as an editor of medical textbooks, at roughly $70,000 a year. It is January, and Emmett has launched a new routine of getting up early so he can luxuriate in that precious, sleep-deprived state of postsleep--"early-morning consciousness"--embracing the quiet moments when everyone else is still asleep, the house is dark, and the mind can wander. He is determined to start a fire in the fireplace and make his coffee in the dark because, when you turn on a light, "your limbic system is hauled into the waking world, and you don't want that." In daily entries full of casual observations, tangents, and stream-of-consciousness candor, the novel slowly reveals a quietly obsessive narrator, who maintains that "what you do first thing can influence your whole day." Emmett holds forth on such things as sock holes, picking up underwear with one's toes, his fireplace, Fidel the ant (lone survivor of an ant farm), the proper way to use soap, peeing in the dark . . and other commonplaces. Readers looking for the titillation Baker provided in Vox (1992) and The Fermata (1994) will be disappointed this time. Instead, Baker offers a celebration of all things mundane, such that even the most common things take on the aura of the heroic. Benjamin Segedin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

"Bravura writing....feels like a walk through Big Sky Country."

"Observation of such consistent intensity and minuteness rarely occurs in conventional fiction."

PRAISE FOR DOUBLE FOLD

?There?s no mistaking the passion and intelligence he brings to his task or the fiery zest with which he relays his most damning anecdotes.??Chicago Tribune

?Provocative . . . impassioned and compelling.??The New York Times

PRAISE FOR THE EVERLASTING STORY OF NORY

?Delightful . . . Reading [it] is similar to listening to a series of piano etudes, each with its own theme playfully developed.??Time

?Thoughtful and daft, sure-footed and tentative . . . pitch-perfect.??The Wall Street Journal

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.

Extraordinary prose --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Broché .

PRAISE FOR DOUBLE FOLD

“There’s no mistaking the passion and intelligence he brings to his task or the fiery zest with which he relays his most damning anecdotes.”—Chicago Tribune

“Provocative . . . impassioned and compelling.”—The New York Times

PRAISE FOR THE EVERLASTING STORY OF NORY

“Delightful . . . Reading [it] is similar to listening to a series of piano etudes, each with its own theme playfully developed.”—Time

“Thoughtful and daft, sure-footed and tentative . . . pitch-perfect.”—The Wall Street Journal

Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 and attended the Eastman School of Music and Haverford College. He has published five previous novels—The Mezzanine (1988), Room Temperature (1990), Vox (1992), The Fermata (1994), and The Everlasting Story of Nory (1998)—and three works of nonfiction, U and I (1991), The Size of Thoughts (1996), and Double Fold (2001), which won a National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1999 he founded the American Newspaper Repository, a collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century newspapers. He lives in Maine with his wife and two children.