Madden Still 20th Century

  The significance of the overlooked - The Mezzanine What struck me most about Nicholas Baker’s The Mezzanine is the effort he puts into daring the reader to take a seemingly forgettable event and crafting it into an entire novel. At first glance, this seems like a joke. It doesn't seem like the most serious of literary works. However, the more closely one looks at The Mezzanine, the more it becomes evident that Baker took a unique opportunity to explore the concept of attention in the modern world. Howie, the narrator of the novel, takes notice of seemingly mundane objects around him and discusses them in the same way one would discuss the architecture of a fancy church. Baker’s infamous footnotes, which take up more of the page than the novel’s text itself, serve as a way of discussing how a simple thought can morph into more thoughts in an individual’s mind. It made me think about how little attention we allow for our daily lives and what we might be missing if we do not take th...