The Mezzanine

Literary fiction · Comedy

First published: 1988
Print length: 135 pagesVintage Books, 1990

Description

Office worker Howie rides an escalator back from lunch carrying a new pair of shoelaces. That brief return to his workplace supplies almost the entire outward action, while his mind ranges over the meal he has eaten, the Marcus Aurelius he has read, and the ordinary objects crowding modern life. Milk cartons, straws, vending machines, perforations, shoe-tying methods, and bathroom hand dryers prompt elaborate inquiries into design, usefulness, memory, and change. His digressions spill into unusually long footnotes, allowing minor observations to open onto further chains of association. With meticulous, comic attention, the novel replaces conventional plot with the movement of thought, revealing how much history, feeling, and unnoticed ingenuity can accumulate inside a routine lunch break.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Dense · Essayistic · Stream of consciousness · Witty

Pace

Measured

Tone

Cerebral · Humorous · Playful · Reflective

Structure

Fragmented

Focus

Character · Ideas · Voice

Emotional intensity

1 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 4 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 4 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

Knowledge and truthMemoryTechnology and societyWork

About Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is an American novelist and essayist whose work ranges from microscopic studies of consciousness to erotic fantasy and documentary history. He often reduces outward action so that attention itself becomes the organizing force. Objects, bodily habits, memories, and stray facts generate digressions, while unusual structures expose how narrators arrange or excuse their own thoughts. In The Mezzanine, an escalator ride back from lunch expands through long footnotes and chains of association into an inquiry about shoelaces, straws, hand dryers, and other overlooked designs. His interest in desire can take a more troubling form. The Fermata gives its secretive protagonist the power to stop time, then lets his confessional narration reveal the evasions with which he defends invasions of women’s privacy. Baker’s nonfiction applies the same concern with arrangement to public records. Human Smoke builds its account of the origins of World War II from chronologically ordered speeches, reports, and transcripts, using limited commentary and close juxtaposition rather than a continuous retrospective argument.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Vintage Books
Language: English
ISBN: 9780679725763

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