Each chapter begins with the narrator rising very early in the morning and lighting a fire to start his day. ‘A Box of Matches’ by Nicholson Baker is my current book, and I’ve been taking my time getting through it because it’s that leisurely and enjoyable. Baker is the author of one of my favorite teen-reads, ‘Vox’, which is actually quite a sexually-adventuresome adult novel, but I’ve always been more mature than one would believe. In high school, I’d stay up late at night, a single reading lamp lighting the book and surrounding bed on which I laid, and I’d imagine the world of words, late-night conversations, and adult maneuvering as I fitfully twisted and turned beneath the covers.
‘A Box of Matches’ is a far-cry from the erotic fiction of ‘Vox’ and much more resonant with a fifty-year-old making his way in the winter of 2026. It’s not without underlying tension, the way most of life after the midway point comes with the possibility of peril and loss around every corner. It’s a comfort as well, which is the point of any good winter read.
“I was a man, but I was not nearly the magnitude of a man I had hoped I might be.”
? Nicholson Baker, ‘The Mezzanine‘
