Reflecting on Montaigne, Virginia Woolf remarked, “The most common actions—a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own orchard—can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind.” In Quotidiana, Patrick Madden illuminates these common actions and seemingly commonplace moments, making connections that revise and reconfigure the overlooked and underappreciated.

 

Focusing on the search—for meaning, for approximate knowledge, for hints and intimations of the larger world—Madden ponders the finite by counting fruit at the local supermarket or estimating the number of grains of sand on the earth or celebrating linguistic and grammatical miscalculations. He muses on the origins of human language, the curative properties of laughter, and the joys and woes of fatherhood. Sparked by considerations of selling garlic, washing grapes, changing a diaper, or chipping a tooth, his essays are an antidote to the harried hullabaloo of talk-show and tabloid culture—and a reminder that we are surrounded by wonders that whisper to the curious and attentive.

 

Ingenuous and erudite, with a beguiling wit, Madden weaves an intricate tapestry of ordinary life in its extraordinary patterns. His book is a poetic and engaging exploration of the unexpectedly wide scope of our everyday existence.

Patrick Madden is an assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University. His essays have appeared in the Iowa Review, Portland Magazine, Fourth Genre, Hotel Amerika, and other journals, as well as in the The Best Creative Nonfiction and The Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. Visit his Web site www.quotidiana.org.

"Words form constellations; they glitter on the pages. . . . There is a religiosity here, though not the usual kind. It's a glow on the horizon, a low light, something to think our way toward."—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"Charming and liberating."—Robert Birnbaum, Morning News

"Flutter the pages of Patrick Madden's Quotidiana, and entering it becomes irresistable. . . . At once an approachable and postmodern composition, Quotidiana presents an enthralled, reflexive mind at work. Readers will eagerly await his next thought."—Janelle Adsit, ForeWord Reviews

"If Madden is a prophet of the essay, if his words seem inspired by the classical masters of the form, then he is at his most inspired when he essays upon the essay."—Joey Franklin, New Letters

"For readers who wince at the sentimentality of some creative nonfictional writing, Madden's book might be the ideal transition into the genre. Madden, who was once on a scientific path himself, not only embraces academic research, he joins it with his personal accounts, holding out his hand to readers who crave objective data."—Eric d'Evegnee, BYU Studies

“Patrick Madden has a footloose, restless, well-stocked mind, sometimes maddening but always quite interesting; he gleefully demonstrates what Montaigne claimed: an essay is the best way to show that everything is connected to everything else.”—Phillip Lopate, editor of The Art of the Personal Essay