The Mezzanine reaches beyond itself
"I love the constancy of shine on the edges of moving objects. Even propellors or desk fans will glint steadily in certain places in the grayness of their rotation; the curve of each fan blade picks up the light for an instant on its circuit and then hands it off to its successor." (3)
Few books have left me with such a strong aftertaste as The Mezzanine has. In the book, Nicholson manages to create a character with a unique permanence, both for his relatability and for his surprises. He lingers in your head and in the small things of life, when you sweep your floor or put your straw in your drink, tie your shoelaces or ride up an escalator. This dual aspect of Howie's character, his intense relatability and foreignness at the same time, is established since the first page in passages like this one. We have all seen fans move, and seen the sunlight shine on fan blades. We can trace their rotation, admire the light flickering, and convince ourselves we are like Howie in this way. But then the line strikes you with its beauty, as the fan blades literally take on a new light and Howie steps outside the limits of our own observation. Throughout the book Howie catches us with these playful, unexpected, and sometimes poetic considerations on the mundane and unexciting small things in life.
This is defamiliarization and it is the motor to the book. We wouldn't keep returning to the book and the book wouldn't keep returning to us if Nicholson weren't able to maintain our interest and curiosity in this way. This technique also changes the reader's relationship to Howie. Throughout the book the readers begin to question if they themselves are like Howie, if they could write a book similar to The Mezzanine because it seems so accessible. We all have thoughts and experiences similar to Howie's, so if he manages to compile them into such an audacious book then it feels as though we can as well. But many moments in the book distance the reader from Howie, as we're struck with one of his thoughts or perspectives that is so different from our own that we lose the relatable aspect of his character:
"Cobblestone-sized particles of airborne dust, unlucky spores with rinds like coconuts, and big obsidian chunks of cigarette smoke are lodged here and there in the oddly echoless surface, and once in a while, a precious boulder of diamond, shorn somehow from the stylus by this softer surface, shines out from the slope, where it has been pounded deep into the material by later playings, sworn at by the listener as if it too were common dust. That was needle wear." (66)
This passage became my favorite one in the book as soon as I read it. It was during one of those stretches of Mezzanine you enjoy less, where fatigue makes the book less entertaining and you begin to dislike Howie for his pages-long footnotes. I think it was proof of Nicholson's skill as a writer that despite my mood I read it and reread it. I wrote it down and it occupied my mind for a while, because I didn't fully understand the passage but it felt like a poem tucked into a footnote. It made enduring the footnote worth it. Moments like these also reinforce the ways The Mezzanine remains a piece of fiction; Howie's thoughts are fluid and immersive, and many of them resemble our own. We think of the book as an experiment in the imitation of a human mind. But parts of the book remain too well-crafted, organized and detailed to mimic what normal thoughts are like. To me the passage had left the point of familiarity and stepped into something like art.
The Mezzanine is the type of book to remain in your thoughts even after you've finished it. It's not self-contained, as the ideas you come across spill out into your daily life. Howie's way of seeing life echoes beyond the subjects he treats in the The Mezzanine, and you'll begin to apply his thinking to your own routine. I will remember it more than other books because in many ways I see myself in the novel. I'm not an observer to other people's lives as other books will put me, but I'm almost participant in the book, with thoughts and experiences similar to Howie's. In these ways, The Mezzanine manages to reach beyond itself and into your own life.
Great post! You do a good job highlighting how The Mezzanine is so much more than the ramblings of a man with a rather uninteresting life. Baker does a great job of drawing you in with his writing's relatability, then flips that expectation on its head with, as you describe, this "poem tucked into a footnote," and other passages like it. Baker pushes the character of Howie to be more than relatable, but poetic and philosophical.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of the book "reaching beyond itself", and I think you expressed how Baker manages to evoke that feeling very nicely. In a way, The Mezzanine describes a sort of approach to life, which is to slow down, forget about the plan, the big picture, the future, the past, and to live in the present. Howie shows us that hoping for fulfillment in the larger aspects of life--whether that's success, friendships, etc.--is unsustainable. His life is boring, repetitive, dull, and not at all what he'd hoped for it to be. Because of this, he's given up on hoping for happiness and instead gone about making his own by appreciating the little things that give him that spark of inspiration. Especially with college and our whole lives right around the corner, I think we could take a page out of Howie's book and stop hoping for happiness to come, and instead to enjoy the small things that are right in front of us now.
ReplyDeletenice post!
I love the example of Howie "explaining" the phenomenon of "needle wear" on a turntable as "like a poem tucked into a footnote"--I would say that the analogy of poetry is totally apt to describe Baker's technique in this novel, and poetry thrives on the same kind of "defamiliarization" of familiar language and uses of language. I always want to emphasize the *artistic* (metaphorical, figurative, evocative) nature of Baker's writing throughout this novel--it's VERY different from some kind of relentless effort to "document" or "catalog" reality in technical or strictly fact-based terms. Baker's sentences are always subjective, reflective of the character who is making these observations--in a novel so focused on the surrounding world, it's maybe surprising that the grammatical subject of most sentences is "I." Howie's close-focus on overlooked details is always *transforming* those details via metaphor and defamiliarization. And in the example you cite, we also see the combination of aesthetic language and "microscopy," as we get an almost electron-microscope level of "zoom-in" with the reference to a "boulder of diamond . . . shorn from the slope" of the nearly invisible groove of the record.
ReplyDeleteI agree in that this book is definitely something to linger in your mind. It never seems to have a conclusive conclusion (?), definitely to its benefit. The book is presented as something so accessible as you mentioned, and I also felt like it was something I too could write. I also really liked how you mentioned Howie as a character. Even though we were reading the book with the fact that it was his opinion, I sometimes read it as if it were me thinking those thoughts. It's definitely really interesting to pick apart who Howie is as a person, and how he reacts to different things in life!
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing Amelie! The first line of your post is so captivating--I've never considered describing the effect of the Mezzanine as an aftertaste of reading the novel. I feel you really hit the nail on the head with the immense role of defamiliarization in the novel. One part that resonated with me is his comment on the sad technological advancement in library checkouts. The loss of those tiny check out slips that show the book’s age and the people that enjoyed it, erases a large part of a book’s history. When I started reading Mrs. Dalloway I noticed that my book had some interesting annotations. Highlighting different passages with bold orange sharpies and pencil stars. The another was a person of few words, and did not care to elaborate as to why these passages were important–aside from that, most of them discussed Septimus Smith! Perhaps they were a fanatic? Or decided to write an essay on the character and their parallels with Virginia Woolf? It was fascinating, as I have ever rarely touched a book that was annotated previously, and quite sadly never took the time to analyze it. Howie’s perspective is quite enlightening, and forces you to pay attention to the little things that go unnoticed.
ReplyDeleteHi Amelie! I really like that you talked about how you relate to Howie, in a way. The specific quote you referenced at the beginning of your post and the way that Howie breaks down its every single specific detail, to the point that we forget what he was even talking about -- I agree that this style does help to keep the reader engaged and interested. I also love how you talked about your favorite moments in Howie's page-long, dense footnotes. This was an amazing post, great job!
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