The Mezzanine
Encyclopedia
The Mezzanine is a first novel by Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker is a contemporary American writer of fiction and non-fiction. As a novelist, he often focuses on minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness, and has written about such provocative topics as voyeurism and planned assassination...

 about what goes through a man's mind during a modern lunch break.

Plot introduction

On the surface it deals with a man's lunch-time trip up an escalator in the mezzanine
Mezzanine
Mezzanine may refer to:* Mezzanine , an intermediate floor between main floors of a building* Mezzanine, in technology, can refer to a thin sheet of plastic insulating different parts of circuitry from each other in cramped environments, such as laptop interiors* Mezzanine board, or daughterboard,...

 of the office building where he is employed, a building based on Baker's recollections of Rochester's Midtown Plaza
Midtown Plaza
Midtown Plaza may refer to:*Midtown Plaza , a building in Charlotte, North Carolina *Midtown Plaza , a shopping mall in Rochester, New York...

. In reality, it deals with all the thoughts that run through our minds in any given few moments – if we were given the time to think them through to their conclusions. The Mezzanine does that, through extensive use of footnotes, some making up the bulk of the page, travelling inside a human mind, through the thinker's past.

Plot

The novel is a plotless, stream-of-consciousness examination greatly detailing the lunch-hour activities of young office worker Howie. His simple lunch of a hot dog, cookie, and milk, and buying a new pair of shoelaces are contrasted with his reading of a paperback edition of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations
Meditations
Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161–180 CE, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy....

. Baker's digressive novel is partly made up of extensive footnotes, some several pages long, while following Howie's contemplations of a variety of everyday objects and occurrences, including how paper milk cartons replaced glass milk bottles, the miracle of perforation, and the nature of plastic straws to float, vending machines, paper towel dispensers, and popcorn poppers.

Critical reception

The novel was praised for its originality and linguistic virtuosity, announcing Baker's trademark style of highly descriptive, focused prose, "fierce attention to detail", and delight in discrete slices of time within mundane existence. It created the genre for which Baker is best known, and is perhaps its boldest representative. Like Proust, he makes the personal significant.

External links


Further reading

  • Chambers, Ross, '"Meditation and the Escalator Principle – on Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine", Modern Fiction Studies, 40, 4, Winter 1994, pp. 765-806.
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