NP new Powers novel review

Tim Strzechowski dedalus204 at attbi.com
Wed Jan 15 21:38:22 CST 2003


For anyone in the Chicagoland area on 1/23:

A Box of Matches: A Novel
Thursday, January 23, at 6 p.m.
Speaker: Nicholson Baker
Admission is free. A book signing will follow the lecture. For more
information, call (312) 255-3700.
Following the success of Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper,
winner of the 2001 National Book Critics Award for non-fiction, Nicholson
Baker returns to fiction with the publication of A Box of Matches, his first
new novel in five years. In Box of Matches,Baker introduces readers to
Emmett, a middle-aged editor of medical textbooks, who prefers to be
conscious while the rest of the world sleeps. Every morning around 4 a.m.,
Emmett quietly rises, so as not to wake his family, and makes his way
downstairs drink coffee in front of the fireplace and think. What Emmett
thinks about is the subject of this novel. Once again, Baker displays his
extraordinary ability to describe and celebrate life in all its rich
ordinariness as Emmett's thoughts carry readers over vast distances, while
never straying beyond his hearth and home.

http://www.newberry.org



Posteth pynchonoid:

<http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/01/mallon.htm>
Going to Extremes
Richard Powers is getting bigger and more ponderous.
Nicholson Baker is getting smaller and more
evanescent. Decision: Baker







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