"A Box of Matches" by Nicholson Baker

A Box of Matches stands as a brilliant example of the urge to write focused minutely on the quotidian. But author Nicholson Baker turns mundane activity into deep imaginative realms and far-fetched speculations: an inchoate blaze in a fireplace becomes a far-off corner of a violent universe; a burning Quaker Oats box becomes a coastal British fort. Such are the pathways of Baker’s mind and observations. And they prove once again that it’s not the subject matter that counts in fiction, it’s the way the subject matter is presented. For me, Baker has yet to disappoint. Far from it.

He greets us each morning with the time and sometimes adds an observation about the weather. It’s winter in the Northeast of the U.S., so cold and snow occupy the land and lives. And because cold is a factor, our narrator builds a fire in the fireplace each morning, and he uses a box of strike-anywhere matches during the course of the book. The business of this novel is the minutiae of daily life. But far from boring, Baker leavens his prose with not only thought-provoking observations, but takes journeys out over the town, the landscape, and the history of his area, to destinations philosophic and speculative.

I love Nicholson Baker’s work. He makes startling and original revelations about everyday objects and activities, and in his hands these ordinary things and events take on a mysticism, an inherently more meaningful and illuminative existence. A Box of Matches is no exception, and I urge you to take it up and be charmed with very little investment in time.