Sublime Physick - by Patrick Madden (Paperback)

About the Book

Comprised of twelve essays that straddle the classical and the contemporary, Sublime Physick 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.

Book Synopsis

2016 Foreword Reviews Indies Award, Silver
2016 Association for Mormon Letters Award
2017 Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold

This introspective and exuberant collection of Patrick Madden's 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.

Review Quotes

"[Sublime Physick is] a collection of moments that culminate in lives both exalted and ordinary."--Amanda Forbes Silva, Ploughshares-- (3/25/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"A fun and funny book."--Joe Plicka, Dialogue

"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-- (3/4/2015 12:00:00 AM)

"It's like Montaigne and Sebald got drunk and wrote a book together."--Brian Doyle, author of Mink River and Leaping -- (3/4/2015 12:00:00 AM)

"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-- (3/4/2015 12:00:00 AM)

"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-- (3/4/2015 12:00:00 AM)

"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-- (7/20/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"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-- (3/21/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"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

About the Author

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.