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Bezig met laden... A Box of Matches (editie 2004)door Nicholson Baker (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkA Box of Matches door Nicholson Baker
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. A Box of Matches stands as a brilliant example of the urge to write in the face of 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. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
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A box of matches is the record of an untumultuous month in the life of Emmett, a forty-five-year-old editor of medical textbooks. Emmett has a wife and 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. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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Here's the theory in Baker's words:
"I have a theory of bad dreams which I think is revolutionary. My theory is that they are most often simply the result of the body's need to wake up the mind using only the tools it has available, most often in order to pee. The mind is unconscious, in a near coma, but the body has received reports of a substantial accumulation of hot urine belowdecks. The body is getting insistent calls and memos describing the gravity of the hot urine situation, and passing it up to the low-brain, but the high-brain's phone is unplugged because it is asleep. What is the low-brain to do? It has three options: laughter, arousal, or fear. All three will elevate the heart rate, but laughter and arousal are, especially if the high-brain really wants to keep sleeping for a last ten or fifteen minutes, less dependable. Fear it must be, then..."
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