List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Spit
Fisica Sublime
Entering and Breaking
In Media Vita
Empathy
Miser’s Farthings
Buying a Bass
Moment, Momentous, Momentum
On Being Recognized
For the Last Time
Independent Redundancy
Fixity
Patrick Madden is a professor at Brigham Young University.
He is the author of Disparates: Essays (Nebraska, 2020) and
Quotidiana: Essays (Nebraska, 2014), and coeditor, with David
Lazar, of After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays.
His essays have appeared in a variety of periodicals as well as in
The Best Creative Nonfiction and The Best American Spiritual
Writing anthologies. Visit Madden’s website at quotidiana.org.
“No one writing essays today does so with a greater awareness of
the genre’s literary traditions than Patrick Madden. Irresistible,
with their meditative musicality and erudite reflections, these
essays brilliantly balance a tough-minded pragmatism with a warm
embrace of the impossible. Like all the great essayists he pays
homage to, Madden seeks to find the miraculous in the mundane, the
sublime in the ordinary, the hazards lurking in our momentary
contentment. He understands perfectly why Emerson thought the joy
of essaying lay in surprise: to surprise their readers, essayists
must first surprise themselves.”—Robert Atwan, series editor of The
Best American Essays
“It’s like Montaigne and Sebald got drunk and wrote a book
together.”—Brian Doyle, author of Mink River and Leaping
"[Sublime Physick is] a collection of moments that culminate in
lives both exalted and ordinary."—Amanda Forbes Silva,
Ploughshares
“Ingenious and witty, audacious and charming, learned, moving, and
frank: Patrick Madden’s Sublime Physick places him among the most
interesting and essential essayists of our time.”—Mary Cappello,
author of Awkward: A Detour and Called Back
"A fun and funny book."—Joe Plicka, Dialogue
"Reading Madden’s meta-writings on his own writing is like
listening to a magician revealing his tricks, yet he always holds
the upper hand."—E.V. De Cleyre, Brevity
“Patrick Madden combines, to a rare degree, a scholar’s knowledge
and an artist’s command of the essay as a literary form. In his
hands, the essay becomes a medium for pondering and celebrating our
mysterious existence. Readers who wish to reflect more deeply on
their own lives will find abundant rewards in these pages.”—Scott
Russell Sanders, author of Earth Works: Selected Essays
"To read a Patrick Madden essay is to interface with the mind of an
engaged, self-conscious thinker. Actually, that's not quite right:
It is to interface with Madden's curation of the minds of many
thinkers within the expanse of his own."—John Proctor, Numéro
Cinq
"The essays in Sublime Physick are more than self-reflective; they
connect internal states with the marvelous world."—Renée E.
D'Aoust, Inside Higher Ed
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
