A follow-up to Patrick Madden's award-winning debut, this introspective and exuberant collection of essays is wide-ranging and wild, following bifurcating paths of thought to surprising connections. In Sublime Physick, Madden seeks what is common and ennobling among seemingly disparate, even divisive, subjects, ruminating on midlife, time, family, forgiveness, loss, originality, a Canadian rock band, and much more, discerning the ways in which the natural world (fisica) transcends and joins the realm of ideas (sublime) through the application of a meditative mind. In twelve essays that straddle the classical and the contemporary, Madden transmutes the ruder world into a finer one, articulating with subtle humor and playfulness how science and experience abut and intersect with spirituality and everyday life.
For teachers who'd like to adopt this book for their classes, Madden has provided a number of helpful teaching resources, including a 40-minute lecture on his writing process and writing prompts for each of the book's essays.
Access the free teaching resources.
Watch a book trailer.
A follow-up to Patrick Madden's award-winning debut, this introspective and exuberant collection of essays is wide-ranging and wild, following bifurcating paths of thought to surprising connections. In Sublime Physick, Madden seeks what is common and ennobling among seemingly disparate, even divisive, subjects, ruminating on midlife, time, family, forgiveness, loss, originality, a Canadian rock band, and much more, discerning the ways in which the natural world (fisica) transcends and joins the realm of ideas (sublime) through the application of a meditative mind. In twelve essays that straddle the classical and the contemporary, Madden transmutes the ruder world into a finer one, articulating with subtle humor and playfulness how science and experience abut and intersect with spirituality and everyday life.
For teachers who'd like to adopt this book for their classes, Madden has provided a number of helpful teaching resources, including a 40-minute lecture on his writing process and writing prompts for each of the book's essays.
Access the free teaching resources.
Watch a book trailer.
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
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