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A Box of Matches
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 further 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.
Nicholson Baker’s extraordinary ability to describe and celebrate life in all its rich ordinariness has never been so beautifully achieved.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 7, 2003
142 people are currently reading
1973 people want to read
About the author
Nicholson Baker
37 books963 followersNicholson Baker is a contemporary American writer of fiction and non-fiction. He was born in Manhattan in 1957 and grew up in Rochester, New York. He has published sixteen books--including The Mezzanine (1988), U and I (1991), Human Smoke (2008), The Anthologist (2009), and Substitute (2016)--and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, the New York Review of Books, Best American Short Stories, and Best American Essays. He has received a National Book Critics Circle award, a James Madison Freedom of Information Award, the Herman Hesse Prize, and the Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1999, Baker and his wife, Margaret Brentano (co-author with Baker of The World on Sunday, 2005), founded the American Newspaper Repository in order to save a large collection of U.S. newspapers, including a run of Joseph Pulitzer's influential daily, the New York World. In 2004 the Repository’s holdings became a gift to Duke University. Baker and Brentano have two children; they live on the Penobscot River in Maine.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 353 reviews
August 14, 2009
I have a bad habit of not bothering to review three-star books, just because it’s so hard to anatomize and articulate indifference. How do you make lukewarm admiration sound interesting? It’s like telling someone, ‘I think you’re a really nice person.’ Who wants to hear that?
A Box of Matches is, however, a really nice book. It’s polite, well-spoken and blandly attractive. Your mother would like it, and when, after a week or two, it stopped coming around, she’d ask wistfully, ‘Whatever happened to A Box of Matches? Such a pleasant young book. This new book now…’ and she’d trail off significantly in that way of hers.
Synopses are such a bore to write – and read – but I can summarize this novel in twenty words or less: a guy wakes up early every morning, lights a fire and thinks about stuff. That’s it. There’s no plot, little character development and hardly any dialogue. Calling it a novel is just a terminological courtesy.
Yet it’s all perfectly charming and, as always with Baker, distinguished by insanely precise language (in one passage, the green fuzz on a gravestone is linked to a car battery’s ‘lovely turquoise exudate’ – ‘electrical lichen’, the narrator terms it).
Then why do I feel so ambivalent? I think I can explain, but in order to do so I’ll have to contradict myself somewhat (not that I have a problem with that). Just last week on this website, I was nattering on and on about Le Paysan de Paris, extolling Aragon’s commitment to the humble data of everyday life – a commitment Baker would seem to share. But now I’m thinking that maybe there’s a point at which the quotidian shades into the pedestrian, and another at which the thrillingly local becomes the complacently parochial. And that maybe Baker strays a bit too close to these liminal regions, which Aragon, for all his self-indulgence, somehow avoids. The narrator of A Box of Matches is appealing enough, but his universe is wilfully contracted, as if he’d decided: hey, I’ve got my 200-year-old farmhouse in Maine and my charming family and my exquisite perceptions, so the rest of you lot can fuck right off. Possibly I’m letting my status envy get the better of me, but I detect something sniffily bourgeois in the narrator’s attitude; he lives in a gated community of the mind, from which certain unpleasant facts are turned away by security. There’s a telling moment where he recalls watching a bunch of Marines get their hair cut in the local barbershop. Disgusted by their rampant machismo, he comments to himself: ‘I basically want nothing to do with all men except my son, my father and a few others. Robert Service, the poet, I like.’
Okay, that’s kind of funny, but once you stop chuckling sympathetically, think for a moment about the blitheness with which half of humanity is banished from this cozy little republic. While you’re at it, you might also want to ask yourself if a line about wanting nothing to do with all women would be quite so amusing.
If I’m being hard on Baker, it’s only because he’s capable of so much more. He reminds me -- odd as it’s going to sound – of a Warhammer enthusiast – you know, one of those gamers who spend hours hand-painting their pewter figurines, lavishing enormous care on what is, to outsiders, an incomprehensible fringe activity. Here’s a guy who could be creating huge Sistine frescoes, and instead he’s holed up in his workshop, adding another tiny grey streak to the beard of a ‘chaos dwarf’ (I’ve never played – honest). No matter how detailed and ‘finished’ it is, at the end of the day, it’s just a dwarf, man.
Hmmm… speaking of incomprehensible fringe activities, how many hours did I just waste on this unsolicited book report? Pot, meet kettle.
A Box of Matches is, however, a really nice book. It’s polite, well-spoken and blandly attractive. Your mother would like it, and when, after a week or two, it stopped coming around, she’d ask wistfully, ‘Whatever happened to A Box of Matches? Such a pleasant young book. This new book now…’ and she’d trail off significantly in that way of hers.
Synopses are such a bore to write – and read – but I can summarize this novel in twenty words or less: a guy wakes up early every morning, lights a fire and thinks about stuff. That’s it. There’s no plot, little character development and hardly any dialogue. Calling it a novel is just a terminological courtesy.
Yet it’s all perfectly charming and, as always with Baker, distinguished by insanely precise language (in one passage, the green fuzz on a gravestone is linked to a car battery’s ‘lovely turquoise exudate’ – ‘electrical lichen’, the narrator terms it).
Then why do I feel so ambivalent? I think I can explain, but in order to do so I’ll have to contradict myself somewhat (not that I have a problem with that). Just last week on this website, I was nattering on and on about Le Paysan de Paris, extolling Aragon’s commitment to the humble data of everyday life – a commitment Baker would seem to share. But now I’m thinking that maybe there’s a point at which the quotidian shades into the pedestrian, and another at which the thrillingly local becomes the complacently parochial. And that maybe Baker strays a bit too close to these liminal regions, which Aragon, for all his self-indulgence, somehow avoids. The narrator of A Box of Matches is appealing enough, but his universe is wilfully contracted, as if he’d decided: hey, I’ve got my 200-year-old farmhouse in Maine and my charming family and my exquisite perceptions, so the rest of you lot can fuck right off. Possibly I’m letting my status envy get the better of me, but I detect something sniffily bourgeois in the narrator’s attitude; he lives in a gated community of the mind, from which certain unpleasant facts are turned away by security. There’s a telling moment where he recalls watching a bunch of Marines get their hair cut in the local barbershop. Disgusted by their rampant machismo, he comments to himself: ‘I basically want nothing to do with all men except my son, my father and a few others. Robert Service, the poet, I like.’
Okay, that’s kind of funny, but once you stop chuckling sympathetically, think for a moment about the blitheness with which half of humanity is banished from this cozy little republic. While you’re at it, you might also want to ask yourself if a line about wanting nothing to do with all women would be quite so amusing.
If I’m being hard on Baker, it’s only because he’s capable of so much more. He reminds me -- odd as it’s going to sound – of a Warhammer enthusiast – you know, one of those gamers who spend hours hand-painting their pewter figurines, lavishing enormous care on what is, to outsiders, an incomprehensible fringe activity. Here’s a guy who could be creating huge Sistine frescoes, and instead he’s holed up in his workshop, adding another tiny grey streak to the beard of a ‘chaos dwarf’ (I’ve never played – honest). No matter how detailed and ‘finished’ it is, at the end of the day, it’s just a dwarf, man.
Hmmm… speaking of incomprehensible fringe activities, how many hours did I just waste on this unsolicited book report? Pot, meet kettle.
January 31, 2012
If you turned up at your agent’s office, caught his attention long enough to pitch a new novel idea, and told him the novel would be structured around a box of matches, with each match unleashing a series of domestic anecdotes told by a very boring and precise man, your agent might throw a plant at your head. Nicholson’s agent, however, simply said: “Sounds great, can you have it by February?” Oh, agents. Oh, Nicholson. Oh, mass of unpublished unloved unwanted writers. Oh dear. Anyway, this is another short unoffensive interesting book from Nicholson. But you have to ask yourself, with books like Checkpoint and Vox and so on, where lieth the substance with Baker? These are great books but Baker prances about the place like a colossus of literature, and I think, why why why? He does have the greatest beard in literary history. Counts for a lot.
May 7, 2018
I'm not really sure what I think about this book. The word mundane comes to mind, monotonous, long, for such a short book (178 pages). I can say, that for me, there really wasn't much of a story and I was definitely waiting for a story to begin, so for me, three ⭐️⭐️⭐️'s but really more of a 2.5.
April 24, 2013
I’m jealous of this guy. I’m jealous because he can write about nothing or next to nothing and not only keep my interest but actually get me to enjoy myself. I had a friend once who, during a party game, spent sixty seconds describing paint dry and it was hysterical. But that was only sixty seconds. This book is another thing completely. As others have said there’s no plot, little character development and hardly any dialogue. A man gets up—or aims to get up—at 4am every day during which time he lights the fire (insisting on doing so in the dark), eats a piece of fruit (usually an apple) and then sets up his computer and begins writing. A couple of hours later the family gets up, he feeds the duck, takes his fourteen-year-old daughter to school and goes to his job. He never actually says what he’s writing—presumably it’s this book—but all he talks about is his mundane existence; he really has done nothing exciting with his life in fact the most riveting bit of the book is where he describes an ant farm he had when he was young and that would’ve been a damp squib had it not been for the last surviving ant who hung on in there for weeks after the rest died.
The book doesn't end—it stops when he’s used the last match in the box. And yet it held my attention completely. The only other books I’d read by him before this were The Mezzanine , which this one is the most like, and Checkpoint , and the only similarity there is that they’re both short.
Each chapter begins with a cheery, “Good morning, it’s 4-something-or-other,” and then he just prattles on about what kindling he’s using or how they ended up with a duck in the first place or the most water efficient ways of washing up. He gets away with it mainly because the chapters are so short I think and in that respect the book’s much better than The Mezzanine with its lengthy footnotes. Some reviewers have hated it. A lot don’t see it as very relevant. I’ve not done an analysis but I wonder how much age and gender have to do with this. I’m a little older than the character in this book and about the same age as Baker in real life so the kind of things he talks about (and moans about) are the very things I talk about and bemoan.
Not for everyone but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The book doesn't end—it stops when he’s used the last match in the box. And yet it held my attention completely. The only other books I’d read by him before this were The Mezzanine , which this one is the most like, and Checkpoint , and the only similarity there is that they’re both short.
Each chapter begins with a cheery, “Good morning, it’s 4-something-or-other,” and then he just prattles on about what kindling he’s using or how they ended up with a duck in the first place or the most water efficient ways of washing up. He gets away with it mainly because the chapters are so short I think and in that respect the book’s much better than The Mezzanine with its lengthy footnotes. Some reviewers have hated it. A lot don’t see it as very relevant. I’ve not done an analysis but I wonder how much age and gender have to do with this. I’m a little older than the character in this book and about the same age as Baker in real life so the kind of things he talks about (and moans about) are the very things I talk about and bemoan.
Not for everyone but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
May 9, 2018
Overall, this is an interesting read in that the author skillfully let us follow a man’s daily musings as he strikes a match to start the morning’s fire. Some musings are entertaining, some are deep, but most are ... not. I wanted to stop reading when he examined his belly button lint and then threw it on the fire to see what colors the flame would turn (and no, I don’t remember the colors, but if you are actually interested, read the book; it’s belly button lint, for gawd sakes.) Yet, I persevered, and went on to learn such things as the correct way to wash, and rinse, a casserole dish. In the dark. Because the man does everything in the dark, to avoid the adverse effects of light screwing up his Circadian rhythms or something before it’s daylight. I dunno. It wasn’t my kind of read, but I don’t fault the author for that. It was skillfully done.
September 6, 2016
Ever since I picked up The Mezzanine on a whim, I've been hooked on Nicholson Baker. Since that first entry into his wonderful world of prose, I've read quite a bit of his writing, both fiction and non-fiction. To me, this book totally takes the cake.
I loved the small scale of the narrative "project": as many entries as there were matches left in the narrator's box. It was just so, so perfect.
Baker has this way of describing some of the most intimate things you've ever experienced--the smaller experiences, the sensations and reflexes and decisions that form our daily lives. Most writers wouldn't even bother describing them, but Baker manages to take them all and turn them into a beautiful, hilarious, and moving mosaic. So often when I'm reading his work I'll encounter a phrase that is turned out just so; a comparison will pop into my head, along the lines of something I once read about Flaubert and his obsession over finding le mot juste. But the truth is I'd much rather read about dropping soap in the shower, or rolling belly button lint into a little tube, or about the complexities of facial hair, because, ultimately, these are all things I've experienced--okay, maybe not the beard--only never have I heard them expressed so perfectly.
Absolutely recommend it to anyone and everyone. If ever I take a hankering to standing atop boxes on street corners and shouting at the passersby, THIS will be the book in my hand.
Reviews of life-changing vintage fiction you've never even heard of: www.Anotherlookbook.com
I loved the small scale of the narrative "project": as many entries as there were matches left in the narrator's box. It was just so, so perfect.
Baker has this way of describing some of the most intimate things you've ever experienced--the smaller experiences, the sensations and reflexes and decisions that form our daily lives. Most writers wouldn't even bother describing them, but Baker manages to take them all and turn them into a beautiful, hilarious, and moving mosaic. So often when I'm reading his work I'll encounter a phrase that is turned out just so; a comparison will pop into my head, along the lines of something I once read about Flaubert and his obsession over finding le mot juste. But the truth is I'd much rather read about dropping soap in the shower, or rolling belly button lint into a little tube, or about the complexities of facial hair, because, ultimately, these are all things I've experienced--okay, maybe not the beard--only never have I heard them expressed so perfectly.
Absolutely recommend it to anyone and everyone. If ever I take a hankering to standing atop boxes on street corners and shouting at the passersby, THIS will be the book in my hand.
Reviews of life-changing vintage fiction you've never even heard of: www.Anotherlookbook.com
August 10, 2011
I laughed, I rolled quickly through the contemplative pacing, and I desired to become the character, but alas I lack a fireplace. To me, this book speaks what I most consider classically ideal. It is not a plot driven book (there really is no plot) but it is a scene; it is what I strove to write when I had a chance and encouragement to write for a course in college. I admire Baker (and let's be frank, this book is Baker writing about himself and not even really hiding it), and took much almost giggling delight in his observations, rituals, and natural flow of thought. Honest, humorous, and with humility. A quick and enjoyable read, and a reaffirmation for the simpler things in life.
March 9, 2019
A perfect pre-sleep read. Baker can write about almost nothing in a beautiful, and often hilarious, way. I am a fan of the duck.
February 9, 2009
A Christmas gift from my oldest daughter Laura, the book is a minimalist, episodic, almost diary-like first person account of a father who gets up before the rest of the family every morning, lights a fire, and thinks about what matters. There a lot there that I can't really describe.
August 15, 2022
This deserves 4.5 as I really enjoyed it and would certainly read more by this author
January 20, 2008
The Village Voice describes Bakers, "A Box of Matches," as "hypnotics" and it is so very much. With brief chapters and simple sentence construction, the quick style of the book keeps the reader turning the pages. An impressive feat when you consider that there is no gripping intensity or action in the plot.
But the novella's brevity and slow river rolling movement is what keeps you with it. Before you realize it, you're three miles downstream, so why not kick back and enjoy the read.
As any good hypnotist does, Baker doesn't let the reader idle. He rings his bell and we squak like chickens. He draws the reader in through beautiful eloquence of our most simplistic thoughts. He grabs ahold of the intangible and paints it onto the page with words like a watercolor. Lullingly. Only on a occasion does it jar the reader away from the story--and on those occasions it is only to note that he does it (expressing thought) so damn well.
Emmett (the main gentle character) permeates into your being. I found myself searching in the dark to find something and when my hands tried and tried again to find the object, I became even quieter and more methodical. When I finally grabbed onto what I was searching for, it was a ta-da! moment, quiet elation in the blackness with just my hand and this object, much like Emmett when he finds the matches on the mantle in the beginning of the story.
It's a quiet book that had this iconic Americana feeling. I would not be suprised if it surpassed the test of time and was being read well into the future. It imparts wisdom and truths that would seem to not be said, but actually die off if unsaid, such as: how (and why) to properly rinse off the soap bar in the shower after use. It's a how-to for all the minute things that people forget to tell young boys so they can grow up into a better man. In essence the novella is all about a man attempting to capture and understand the ultimate mystery, life.
And at the very least, it made me want to go out and buy an ant farm.
But the novella's brevity and slow river rolling movement is what keeps you with it. Before you realize it, you're three miles downstream, so why not kick back and enjoy the read.
As any good hypnotist does, Baker doesn't let the reader idle. He rings his bell and we squak like chickens. He draws the reader in through beautiful eloquence of our most simplistic thoughts. He grabs ahold of the intangible and paints it onto the page with words like a watercolor. Lullingly. Only on a occasion does it jar the reader away from the story--and on those occasions it is only to note that he does it (expressing thought) so damn well.
Emmett (the main gentle character) permeates into your being. I found myself searching in the dark to find something and when my hands tried and tried again to find the object, I became even quieter and more methodical. When I finally grabbed onto what I was searching for, it was a ta-da! moment, quiet elation in the blackness with just my hand and this object, much like Emmett when he finds the matches on the mantle in the beginning of the story.
It's a quiet book that had this iconic Americana feeling. I would not be suprised if it surpassed the test of time and was being read well into the future. It imparts wisdom and truths that would seem to not be said, but actually die off if unsaid, such as: how (and why) to properly rinse off the soap bar in the shower after use. It's a how-to for all the minute things that people forget to tell young boys so they can grow up into a better man. In essence the novella is all about a man attempting to capture and understand the ultimate mystery, life.
And at the very least, it made me want to go out and buy an ant farm.
July 21, 2023
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Dok konvencionalni romani imaju središnji sukob koji se razvija do vrhunca, Kutija šibica djeluje na cikličkom, postmodernističkom planu. Čitatelje izravno pozdravlja Emmettovo veselo „Dobro jutro“, kao i njegov monolog o vremenu. Svaki dan priča o svojim zapažanjima o svakodnevnim aktivnostima kao što su tuširanje, pranje suđa, hranjenje kućnih ljubimaca, promatranje kondenzacije na čaši i premještanje nožnih prstiju kako bi izbjegao rupu u čarapi.
Ujednačen ton koji proizlazi iz ranojutarnje pospanosti više je otežavajući nego hipnotičan. Kao jedini pravi lik romana, Emmett je nešto više od zbroja njegovih mentalnih promišljanja. Kutija šibica se sastoji od periodičnih bljeskova i nestajanja u svom sporom, vremenom opsjednutom maršu prema starenju i kraju života.
Ipak, iako Bakerovo predstavljanje sukoba nije odmah očigledno, ne može biti univerzalnije. Naposljetku, svi mi ponekad prolazimo kroz identične dane baš kao i pripovjedač koji sa zadovoljstvom, strahom i rezignacijom prolazi kroz svoju kutiju šibica. U mirnom bazenu Emmettova svijeta, svjetovne misli lelujaju, baš kao i s nama; samo, naravno, Baker piše bolje od velike većine nas. Ipak, autor se bori s stvaranjem drame. Emmettov život može se doimati bogatim, ali nije dovoljno bogat kako bi mogao pokrenuti cijeli roman.
Iako sam Kutiju šibica pročitala kroz svega nekoliko sati, već mi je nakon par poglavlja svega bilo dosta. Svaki je dan počeo na identičan način, uz iznimku vremena buđenja. Drugih likova nema, osim što nam pripovjedač daje do znanja da oni postoje. Tok Emmettovih misli možda bi bio zanimljiv da svako jutro ne razmišlja o gotovo identičnim stvarima. Možda bi me poglavlja dotaknula da je pripovjedaču barem jedan dan palo na pamet nešto drugačije. Ili da mu je patka uletjela (ili utrčala) u kamin.
Volite li čitati knjige s likovima koji naizgled ne rade apsolutno ništa?
Grickajmo knjige zajedno!
Dok konvencionalni romani imaju središnji sukob koji se razvija do vrhunca, Kutija šibica djeluje na cikličkom, postmodernističkom planu. Čitatelje izravno pozdravlja Emmettovo veselo „Dobro jutro“, kao i njegov monolog o vremenu. Svaki dan priča o svojim zapažanjima o svakodnevnim aktivnostima kao što su tuširanje, pranje suđa, hranjenje kućnih ljubimaca, promatranje kondenzacije na čaši i premještanje nožnih prstiju kako bi izbjegao rupu u čarapi.
Ujednačen ton koji proizlazi iz ranojutarnje pospanosti više je otežavajući nego hipnotičan. Kao jedini pravi lik romana, Emmett je nešto više od zbroja njegovih mentalnih promišljanja. Kutija šibica se sastoji od periodičnih bljeskova i nestajanja u svom sporom, vremenom opsjednutom maršu prema starenju i kraju života.
Ipak, iako Bakerovo predstavljanje sukoba nije odmah očigledno, ne može biti univerzalnije. Naposljetku, svi mi ponekad prolazimo kroz identične dane baš kao i pripovjedač koji sa zadovoljstvom, strahom i rezignacijom prolazi kroz svoju kutiju šibica. U mirnom bazenu Emmettova svijeta, svjetovne misli lelujaju, baš kao i s nama; samo, naravno, Baker piše bolje od velike većine nas. Ipak, autor se bori s stvaranjem drame. Emmettov život može se doimati bogatim, ali nije dovoljno bogat kako bi mogao pokrenuti cijeli roman.
Iako sam Kutiju šibica pročitala kroz svega nekoliko sati, već mi je nakon par poglavlja svega bilo dosta. Svaki je dan počeo na identičan način, uz iznimku vremena buđenja. Drugih likova nema, osim što nam pripovjedač daje do znanja da oni postoje. Tok Emmettovih misli možda bi bio zanimljiv da svako jutro ne razmišlja o gotovo identičnim stvarima. Možda bi me poglavlja dotaknula da je pripovjedaču barem jedan dan palo na pamet nešto drugačije. Ili da mu je patka uletjela (ili utrčala) u kamin.
Volite li čitati knjige s likovima koji naizgled ne rade apsolutno ništa?
Grickajmo knjige zajedno!
October 10, 2012
This is a short book that took me forever to read - last winter. And I don't really remember if I finished it or not, or whether that even it matters. I loved his little reminiscings. Really. They were fun. Sometimes insightful, sometimes just a slice of life, etc. But, for me, as the book went on it just became less interesting.
I loved the way his little ritual started later and later as time went on. I kinda wish he had said "I give up" or "I quit" and then written a long essay analyzing his little writing experiment. But, like I said, I don't think I finished it. And that doesn't say much for a book.
I loved the way his little ritual started later and later as time went on. I kinda wish he had said "I give up" or "I quit" and then written a long essay analyzing his little writing experiment. But, like I said, I don't think I finished it. And that doesn't say much for a book.
September 30, 2012
A man wakes up every morning when it’s still dark, makes a fire and a cup of coffee in the dark, eats an apple, and thinks. This may sound interesting. However, most of what he recalls and describes is mind-numbingly mundane. I have to give credit to Baker for this. It’s no easy to write page after page after page about nothing. And I’m sure he did this intentionally. The portrait of a man who is mentally and emotionally paralyzed? Maybe. But this comes at the expense of tormenting the reader. This is not an enjoyable read at all.
October 23, 2007
Such a deceptively simple, yet beautiful book of musings. I loved it.
R
R
July 8, 2016
Boring. The only saving grace is the duck.
August 30, 2020
I mean if William Shatner wrote a novel about his pet duck, i would buy it
October 10, 2023
I really enjoyed this, even if it’s not Baker’s best. His books are like treats - I enjoy reading them so much that I hardly care how much substance there is to them.
June 6, 2025
I think it might be a good idea if some writers— maybe not everyone—preface their stories with a request to the reader.
"Dear Reader,
Please enjoy my latest novel with a cup of cocoa somewhere warm, in bursts of no more than 30 or so pages a sitting."
or
"Dear Reader,
Let it be known you are fully expected to keep a dictionary close at hand, as each word in my latest masterpiece was chosen with care and attention, and I don't want you pretending you know what an amanuensis is and misinterpreting the central relationship of the novel."
I suggest this because, somehow, I've read three Nicholson Baker books already before this, despite very obviously not being his Reader at all.
This review isn't going to criticise this novel. It's a very humble offering that is comfortably for a very select audience, even among readers of literary fiction, themselves apparently entering a mass extinction event. I just wish I knew who that audience was, and how I could be a better reader to, if not join the club, observe its activity.
My girlfriend reads intolerably slowly. She started The Brothers Karamazov last year, and despite really enjoying it, she's unlikely to finish this year. Of course, much of that time is spent not reading, but even when she is, we have different approaches.
This website has done a lot to shape the way I read. I've always told people who say they struggle with reading that it is like going to the gym—there is stamina involved, but if you're able to form the routine, it is more difficult to break the routine than keep it. I feel good when I get a lot of reading done in a week. I physically and mentally suffer when I'm busy with work or get distracted by video games and don't read anything off a screen for three or four days. I'm anxious to lose the habit, so if I'm caught in a book I'm struggling to enjoy, I need a cleanser, something short or easy I can power through in a weekend to keep my physique.
I think I've always approached Baker's books from this mindset, rather than any concrete desire to engage with his subject matter. His books are generally very short and inoffensive. Indeed, his focus on the mundane almost invites a style of reading that I wouldn't call skimming, exactly, but skating. I sat down and read this book in just under an hour, hopped up on a long black and Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. I don't think that is at all the kind of energy Baker would have wanted from his Reader.
I liked a fair few of the chapters. The general vibe is nice. Baker is so good at what he does I find it hard to believe he's writing fiction—I just assume that all of this stuff happened to him, and that his memory is excellent. But I know once I finish typing this and go back home from the library and do the washing and have lunch I will have forgotten basically everything except the image of a duck's cold feet in winter.
The fault lies with my frantic reading pace, I know, but I don't really want to slow down, and if I did I wouldn't want to for this. I know I'm supposed to slow down to read Hegel or Lacan or something, which is why I no longer pretend to myself I want to read them, because I don't, not now at least.
I also took out a nonfiction book by Baker from the library. It's amazing what a good beard can do to get your stuff read. Lately I've been enjoying nonfiction more because I don't have to pretend to slow down to appreciate the prose. If I understand, I keep going; if I don't, I reread. Yes, those dreams of being an academic must truly be dead.
Sorry I'm not your kind of reader, Nicholson Baker. Maybe somebody who reads this review will be more amenable. Honestly I doubt it, but maybe.
"Dear Reader,
Please enjoy my latest novel with a cup of cocoa somewhere warm, in bursts of no more than 30 or so pages a sitting."
or
"Dear Reader,
Let it be known you are fully expected to keep a dictionary close at hand, as each word in my latest masterpiece was chosen with care and attention, and I don't want you pretending you know what an amanuensis is and misinterpreting the central relationship of the novel."
I suggest this because, somehow, I've read three Nicholson Baker books already before this, despite very obviously not being his Reader at all.
This review isn't going to criticise this novel. It's a very humble offering that is comfortably for a very select audience, even among readers of literary fiction, themselves apparently entering a mass extinction event. I just wish I knew who that audience was, and how I could be a better reader to, if not join the club, observe its activity.
My girlfriend reads intolerably slowly. She started The Brothers Karamazov last year, and despite really enjoying it, she's unlikely to finish this year. Of course, much of that time is spent not reading, but even when she is, we have different approaches.
This website has done a lot to shape the way I read. I've always told people who say they struggle with reading that it is like going to the gym—there is stamina involved, but if you're able to form the routine, it is more difficult to break the routine than keep it. I feel good when I get a lot of reading done in a week. I physically and mentally suffer when I'm busy with work or get distracted by video games and don't read anything off a screen for three or four days. I'm anxious to lose the habit, so if I'm caught in a book I'm struggling to enjoy, I need a cleanser, something short or easy I can power through in a weekend to keep my physique.
I think I've always approached Baker's books from this mindset, rather than any concrete desire to engage with his subject matter. His books are generally very short and inoffensive. Indeed, his focus on the mundane almost invites a style of reading that I wouldn't call skimming, exactly, but skating. I sat down and read this book in just under an hour, hopped up on a long black and Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. I don't think that is at all the kind of energy Baker would have wanted from his Reader.
I liked a fair few of the chapters. The general vibe is nice. Baker is so good at what he does I find it hard to believe he's writing fiction—I just assume that all of this stuff happened to him, and that his memory is excellent. But I know once I finish typing this and go back home from the library and do the washing and have lunch I will have forgotten basically everything except the image of a duck's cold feet in winter.
The fault lies with my frantic reading pace, I know, but I don't really want to slow down, and if I did I wouldn't want to for this. I know I'm supposed to slow down to read Hegel or Lacan or something, which is why I no longer pretend to myself I want to read them, because I don't, not now at least.
I also took out a nonfiction book by Baker from the library. It's amazing what a good beard can do to get your stuff read. Lately I've been enjoying nonfiction more because I don't have to pretend to slow down to appreciate the prose. If I understand, I keep going; if I don't, I reread. Yes, those dreams of being an academic must truly be dead.
Sorry I'm not your kind of reader, Nicholson Baker. Maybe somebody who reads this review will be more amenable. Honestly I doubt it, but maybe.
Read
March 22, 2025Just a nice book to read on your lunch break
May 29, 2017
For a light diversion from ""Ulysses," I read this book, which turned out to be not so "light."
On the surface, “A Box of Matches” by Nicholas Baker is a pretty dull novel in terms of its content! It is, however, anything but shallow. In fact, it could serve as a psychological study of boredom—probing into the unconscious thoughts of its protagonist, Emmett.
All through this short book, Emmett, seeks to escape that boredom: For example, if he could only have someone shoot an arrow into his heart; but “...nothing like that happened to me. I’ve just ridden my tricycle, gone to school, greased my bicycle bearings, gotten a job, gotten married, had children, and here I am. There are lots of stars out tonight–I looked through the glass at one, which broke into two because of a distortion in the glass. Or maybe it was my tears. (pp 149-50)”
Sitting very early every morning in a dark room before a lit fireplace, Emmett relishes losing his sense of scale...”Sometimes I think I’m steering a space-plane into a gigantic fissure in a dark and remote planet. The planet’s crust is beginning to break up, allowing an underground sea of lava to ooze out. Continents are tipping and floundering like melting icebergs, and I must fly in on my highly maneuverable rocket and save the colonists who are trapped there.” (pp 3-4)
Or he might turn to the simple verses of Robert Service, who, in fact, did write about the hardships in the Yukon early in the 20th Century (Dan McGrew, Sam McGee, et al).
During his early morning ritual, floundering in the dark, Emmett searches inward at the thoughts and feeling which have shaped his unconscious mind—that is, what it does automatically, regarding his thinking, his memories, his interests, and his motivations His vehicle of escape: Complete darkness in the predawn hours, equipped primarily with a box of matches. The minutia he uncovers could put the reader to sleep, except for the author’s skill at making it sound interesting.
But the question becomes: Why bother exploring what one does almost mechanically? The excitement, the unexpected just isn’t there. This emptiness continues from his conscious hours during the day right into those early morning day dreams about his unconscious thoughts and actions. There’s no escape for Emmett.
His boredom does him in, right down to his last match with his final words: “I was done.”
On the surface, “A Box of Matches” by Nicholas Baker is a pretty dull novel in terms of its content! It is, however, anything but shallow. In fact, it could serve as a psychological study of boredom—probing into the unconscious thoughts of its protagonist, Emmett.
All through this short book, Emmett, seeks to escape that boredom: For example, if he could only have someone shoot an arrow into his heart; but “...nothing like that happened to me. I’ve just ridden my tricycle, gone to school, greased my bicycle bearings, gotten a job, gotten married, had children, and here I am. There are lots of stars out tonight–I looked through the glass at one, which broke into two because of a distortion in the glass. Or maybe it was my tears. (pp 149-50)”
Sitting very early every morning in a dark room before a lit fireplace, Emmett relishes losing his sense of scale...”Sometimes I think I’m steering a space-plane into a gigantic fissure in a dark and remote planet. The planet’s crust is beginning to break up, allowing an underground sea of lava to ooze out. Continents are tipping and floundering like melting icebergs, and I must fly in on my highly maneuverable rocket and save the colonists who are trapped there.” (pp 3-4)
Or he might turn to the simple verses of Robert Service, who, in fact, did write about the hardships in the Yukon early in the 20th Century (Dan McGrew, Sam McGee, et al).
During his early morning ritual, floundering in the dark, Emmett searches inward at the thoughts and feeling which have shaped his unconscious mind—that is, what it does automatically, regarding his thinking, his memories, his interests, and his motivations His vehicle of escape: Complete darkness in the predawn hours, equipped primarily with a box of matches. The minutia he uncovers could put the reader to sleep, except for the author’s skill at making it sound interesting.
But the question becomes: Why bother exploring what one does almost mechanically? The excitement, the unexpected just isn’t there. This emptiness continues from his conscious hours during the day right into those early morning day dreams about his unconscious thoughts and actions. There’s no escape for Emmett.
His boredom does him in, right down to his last match with his final words: “I was done.”
April 5, 2012
A slim little book packed with quirky, sensitive ruminations about life. Emmett awakes every morning, lights a fire and enjoys some quiet time before his family awakes and starts the day. Each chapter (there are 33 because there are 33 matches in his box) begins the same way, "Good morning it's (whatever time) a.m. ..." and then Emmett shares his thoughts. He enjoys his coffee and a crunchy apple while he meditates. The writing is sensitive and lovely. Emmett's thoughts are deep and yet ordinary. He worries that the pet duck may not be warm enough in her little house. He contemplates his navel (literally!) and celebrates the everydayness of life. Emmett is a good solid guy and one really gets the feeling that he IS Nicholson Baker sharing the thoughts of a middle-aged family man. Ultimately the book is about the passage of time, the little sensations that make up life and the bigger themes of love and loss. If you need a plot-driven book this isn't for you, but if you enjoy Emmett's meanderings (how to clean a casserole dish, why he urinates while sitting down etc.) this is a terrific read.
The writing is lovely. I adored this passage about taking a walk with his wife.
"When we started, there was still plenty of afternoon light left, and then the slow-roasting orange clouds began, and by the time we reached the little cemetery where you can see through to the lake, the light had an impoverished glow of the sort that induces one's retinas to give extra mileage to any color because the total wattage of light is so radically reduced. Where the snow had gone away, the tan layer of needles on the ground sang out with a boosted pallor, and a mitten shaped patch of cream-colored lichen on a gravestone waved at me in the gloom and made me want to have been a person who devoted his life to the study of lichen. I told Claire that I was having lichen-scientist thoughts, wishing I had become a lichen man, and she nodded. She's heard me say it before."
Claire has few lines in the book but her humor shines through. As they are in bed, Emmett awake and Claire drifting off to sleep, " I asked her if she had a need for anything I might have stowed away in my pajamas.
'All set for the moment, thanks,' she said."
ENJOYABLE BOOK!
The writing is lovely. I adored this passage about taking a walk with his wife.
"When we started, there was still plenty of afternoon light left, and then the slow-roasting orange clouds began, and by the time we reached the little cemetery where you can see through to the lake, the light had an impoverished glow of the sort that induces one's retinas to give extra mileage to any color because the total wattage of light is so radically reduced. Where the snow had gone away, the tan layer of needles on the ground sang out with a boosted pallor, and a mitten shaped patch of cream-colored lichen on a gravestone waved at me in the gloom and made me want to have been a person who devoted his life to the study of lichen. I told Claire that I was having lichen-scientist thoughts, wishing I had become a lichen man, and she nodded. She's heard me say it before."
Claire has few lines in the book but her humor shines through. As they are in bed, Emmett awake and Claire drifting off to sleep, " I asked her if she had a need for anything I might have stowed away in my pajamas.
'All set for the moment, thanks,' she said."
ENJOYABLE BOOK!
June 22, 2010
I picked up a copy of this after reading Walter Kirn's review in the New York Times. It's a beautiful novel, and Kirn really captures what Baker is seeking to accomplish with it when he says:
"His grief, it's hinted, is all prospective. He's mourning the future, not the past. While fondly shampooing his son's hair, he remembers the day when his own body grew long enough to touch both ends of the bathtub at the same time. ''This is all too much for me,'' he thinks, realizing that his son's day will come, too. For now, Emmett couldn't be happier, but tomorrow? His is a largely undiscovered species of male American midlife crisis, and one that most novelists wouldn't know what do with, because its subtle menace is beyond them. Women unconquered and alpine summits unscaled aren't what's haunting Emmett. His demon is joy. The man is peaking, he's hitting his stride -- the horror!"
I should also mention that like the narrator Emmett, I now use my hands to squeegee my body after I'm done showering.
"His grief, it's hinted, is all prospective. He's mourning the future, not the past. While fondly shampooing his son's hair, he remembers the day when his own body grew long enough to touch both ends of the bathtub at the same time. ''This is all too much for me,'' he thinks, realizing that his son's day will come, too. For now, Emmett couldn't be happier, but tomorrow? His is a largely undiscovered species of male American midlife crisis, and one that most novelists wouldn't know what do with, because its subtle menace is beyond them. Women unconquered and alpine summits unscaled aren't what's haunting Emmett. His demon is joy. The man is peaking, he's hitting his stride -- the horror!"
I should also mention that like the narrator Emmett, I now use my hands to squeegee my body after I'm done showering.
February 19, 2015
I feel like I could read Baker constantly. He pairs wit and humor with true pathos and poignancy so brilliantly. And, though this wasn't my favorite of his novels, it truly exemplifies his gifts as a writer. So, rather than take my (less good) words for it, note his: "Passing me by, passing me by. Life is. Five years ago I planned to write a book for my son called The Young Sponge. I was going to give it to him as a birthday present. It was going to be the adventures of a cellulose kitchen sponge that somehow in the manufacturing is made with a bit of real sea sponge in it, giving it sentient powers. It lives by the sing but it has yearnings for the deep sea; it thirsts for the rocky crannies and the briny tang. Then Nickelodeon came up with a show, and a pretty good one, about a sponge. My idea was instantly dead: my son would think I was merely copying a TV show. Nickelodeon had acted, I had only planned to act." Funny. Insightful. Poignant. And all about Spongebob Squarepants.
May 22, 2025
My latest novella recommended by Margaret Renkyl involves Emmett, forty-four years old, a medical textbook editor, happily married with two children. He has decided to get up very early every morning, 4-ish, make coffee and set a fire with his box of wooden matches in the dark, then…comment on some of the details in his life. In thirty-three brief chapters, his observations sometimes comment on a moment in childhood, his marriage, his children, holding those considerations as sacrosanct as his quiet moments in the dark. He raises a thought - the Olivetti typewriter his father gave him for college…shaving his beard off on New Year’s Day…taking care of their pet duck…and the reader is deep in Emmett’s experience, the details so clear.
Meditative, soothing, celebratory, funny in many places, prompting many “I remember” moments for me, “A Box of Matches” chronicles those early morning musings until the last match is used…sigh.
Meditative, soothing, celebratory, funny in many places, prompting many “I remember” moments for me, “A Box of Matches” chronicles those early morning musings until the last match is used…sigh.
December 31, 2018
This novel is just absolutely delightful: a complete pleasure from start to finish. I'd heard this was the best Nicholson Baker book and, of those I've read, I'd agree.
It's a short book, but also a small book, focussing on the small details of a quiet life. Each chapter could be a short story of musings.
In the first, the narrator takes a box of matches from the kitchen with which to light the sitting room fire early on a winter morning. Each chapter then begins with an early morning time (at some point between 3am and 6.30), while he lights the fire in the dark. In the last, he uses the last match in the box.
It's all very complete and satisfying, and seeped through with dark and chill silence, in the most comforting way.
It's a short book, but also a small book, focussing on the small details of a quiet life. Each chapter could be a short story of musings.
In the first, the narrator takes a box of matches from the kitchen with which to light the sitting room fire early on a winter morning. Each chapter then begins with an early morning time (at some point between 3am and 6.30), while he lights the fire in the dark. In the last, he uses the last match in the box.
It's all very complete and satisfying, and seeped through with dark and chill silence, in the most comforting way.
January 6, 2023
Love this author's writing style. Hard to describe a book where basically nothing happens. Each short chapter (the length makes it an ideal commute read) starts the same was "Good morning, it's (Insert time here)", followed by the routine of lighting the fire and making coffee (usually in the dark). Each day follows a soliloquy where Emmett, a middle-aged editor of medical textbooks, muses on the detail of his daily routine and commentary on life. His observations of the family pet duck were particularly engaging, and it's the minutiae of daily life that keep you reading this beautifully-written but slim novel. Sounds dull? You'd be surprised.
January 4, 2025
Nicholson Baker is the master of meticulous observation, and this book is full of it. Each morning, Emmett lights a match in the dark to start the fire that will warm the house he shares with his wife, daughter, son, cat, and a duck. He uses the time it takes the fire to catch to muse in the mundane and the sublime.
That's it.
That's the book.
And yet, the clarity and perceptiveness of Baker's writing was engaging enough to keep me reading.
That's it.
That's the book.
And yet, the clarity and perceptiveness of Baker's writing was engaging enough to keep me reading.
June 4, 2019
God, I love this book where very little happens, but happens exquisitely! I've reread it since, but here's a little thing I wrote back in the day:
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
May 14, 2023
For a book in which nothing much happens, this is superb!
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