A Box of Matches

by Nicholson Baker

Book Overview

A man gets up earlier and earlier each day, dresses in the dark, makes his coffee and lights the fire with a box of matches. Then he rummages through the thoughts that crowd his head and preoccupy... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375706038
• ISBN13: 9780375706035
• Release Date: March 2004
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Bedtime stories for grown-ups

At first I didn't have much hope for this novel, as other stories about nothing (to which I was exposed through school) were nearly the death of my love of reading, but this was a book apart. I flipped through it several times on different visits to the book shop, each time thinking to myself that there was no point to reading it, yet inexplicably I kept picking it up. When I got it home I just couldn't put it down. It is original and well observed, and it is also deeply moving and strangely poetic. I found the subject matter and writing style very soothing-- like reading "Goodnight Moon" as a child. The pureness of emotion was amazing; who'd have thought that reading about somebody drawing the curtains could make you cry? If you open your mind to it, this book will rekindle your appreciation for life's little things.

There's No Such Thing as Trivia

This should have been the most boring book in the history of writing. The plot: a man wakes each morning at 4:00, and we get a couple of pages of his thoughts while he is making a fire. The Things he talks about: his pet duck, needing to pee, the best way to shave, and how well belly-button lint burns. Yes, belly-button lint. This should have been either a really boring novel or a really irritating one, but it was neither. Nicholas Baker finds in this world of minutia a lot to live for and a lot to write about.A Box of Matches is at turns humorous, touching, and wise. It's quick and light and entertaining, and you come away with a little greater appreciation for the smallest things in life. It's a truly worthwhile and life-affirming read.

Literature of the Quotidian

I had never read anything of Nicholson Baker's before this book, primarily because I remembered reading a review of his earliest book, Mezzanine, in which, as I recall, the whole book takes place in the mind of someone while they're riding an escalator. I thought to myself that, after almost forty years of listening to stream-of-consciousness as a psychiatrist, I didn't need to read it, too. And so Baker was on my To Be Avoided list. But something about this book called out to me and I got it. I'm grateful that I did.The book has no plot - it is simply the thoughts of a middle-aged man moving about his house in the dark very early each morning as he makes a fire and then sits in front of it before anyone else in the family is awake. And since I tend to potter around my house in the dark, very early, thinking my own thoughts, that appealed to me. What I didn't expect was that Baker's character, Emmett - who is, of course, Mr Baker himself - was thinking MY thoughts, or very often so. I had so much 'shock of recognition' here that it was eerie. His character's thoughts are not the neurotic sort made famous - and slightly repellent - by Proust or Joyce. They are the thoughts of a basically normal, healthy middle-aged family man. Beyond that, Baker's ability to notice usually unnoticed and unremarked things, and then describe them not only accurately but in evocative language has now made it necessary for me to go back and read everything he's written. I look forward to it.Scott Morrison

Minimalist Masterpiece

Emmett is forty-four years old, an editor of medical textbooks, married to Claire, with two growing children. The story begins when he decides to get up early each morning, light a fire in the pitch-black darkness, and spend time in quiet reflection. And he does so through a whole box of matches--thirty-three matches--thirty-three frigid mornings, thirty-three delightful short chapters.This is not a traditional novel with a plot. It is more like a journal, in which a man shares his inmost thoughts--small thoughts, anecdotes, observations about matches and fires and how to find things in the dark; and about his family, his troubled thoughts about his father, the children he dearly loves; his sense of time slipping away; his surprising discoveries about his pet duck... and so much more. It is the story of a man's life, not in chronologic order but as the network of meanings and experiences that life is made of.So little seems to happen, so little seems to change from one day's musings to the next, that I would call this minimalist fiction. And yet, much is revealed. You come to know Emmett and his family in a deep and touching way.I enjoyed this little book and I recommmend it highly. There is more to it than meets the eye. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

A Book of Small Pleasures

There are 33 matches in a box, hence the 33 chapters in this book. Every morning (each chapter), Emmett, a medical textbook editor (with a pet duck), lights a match to start a fire in the fireplace. Each chapter starts with a 'Good morning', and then minute observations on minutiae of life from an ordinary man. Nicholson Baker's prose is effortless and light. He's probably one of the most elegant prose stylists writing today, and he clearly has written a gem with this one. His comic sensibility is sneaky and fun, and I found myself laughing out loud in public places while thinking about passages from this book.The contemplation of details of life and the tangential fantasies that spring from mundane activities lead to subtle and touching refletions on life itself. This book is, above all, about what makes life worth baring. And the book's ultimate accomplishment is that it bares the beauty of life without resorting to building a dramatic resolution or an epiphany, but rather shows life as is, quietly and truthfully. One of the most pleasurable reads of this past few years.