The significance of the overlooked - The Mezzanine
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 the time to notice things around us.
What's interesting about the story is that despite the fact that much of the short story exhibits such attentive and thorough readings of specific aspects of life, it does not evoke feelings of anxiety or dread within the reader. Howie’s discussions of topics as seemingly mundane as shoelaces or straws are actually filled with appreciation for these aspects of life. Unlike many contemporary essayists who use mundane aspects of life as a means of discussing more significant and important topics, Baker completely avoids this aspect of essays, choosing instead to focus solely on the mundane object that he describes. In a world in which most writing attempts to rush to significance and meaning, Baker’s focus on the ordinary is actually more significant and meaningful than most people realize. This is actually similar to many discussions on phenomenology in the philosophy course I took, in which philosophers discussed the importance of focusing on the experience of a concept before rushing to discuss its meaning and significance.
Formally, the structure of the story is the most persuasive argument of the novel. The story takes place in the span of one lunch break ride on the escalator, but the footnotes and the digressions expand this to a book-length meditation on what Howie values for that page. For example, on page 27 and 28, Howie speaks for nearly a page and a half about doorknobs. He starts the footnote by saying "Too modern-looking, really, to be called a doorknob" (27) and ends the footnote by talking about ties. For baker, time is not a fixed concept but one that can be stretched out to take up as much space in a novel as the reader chooses to give it. It would be interesting to consider whether or not this same genre could be employed outside of the novel in the form of an essay or journalistic article. Would this technique only work for the freedom of the novel where nothing has to actually happen in the story? These are the types of questions that a reader must consider, just as Howie must have considered his shoelaces.
Hey Madden, I totally agree with you on how the most impressive part of The Mezzanine is how Baker was able to produce an entire book of noticing the uninteresting. Your takes on Baker's pushing against the status quo were very interesting to read. You mentioned that The Mezzanine served as a commentary of the "concept of attention in the modern world," and I was very excited to read about that, but you did not really touch on it in the rest of your work. I really wish you had written more on that subject, since there seems to be a lot to dig into there. Great blog regardless!
ReplyDeleteI think you're right that a large part of this odd novel is "about" the nature of attention itself--the mundane is not deployed in order to "stand for" some larger concept or principle. Baker's essential thesis is that the mundane details of everyday life are "worth our adult time to think about." they are "interesting" in and of themselves, not as evidence of some larger concept. And I'd say the novel also dramatizes its own control over a reader's attention--if we continue to read this book, we are sort of "forced" to look very closely at drinking straws, or staplers, or shoelaces. If the footnote goes there, we have to follow.
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