The Mezzanine is a stellar representation of a few different novel templates. Baker's piece can function as a stream-of-consciousness narrative, a "book about nothing", a bizarre, joyous character study of an attentive desk-job attendant, but also as an unflinching love letter to the twentieth century. The success (as I have perceived it) draws from defamiliarizing the many objects of the constantly morphing world we live in, as well as describing social situations unique to the modern age in humorous, relatable fashion.
The objects explored and explicated in The Mezzanine are always those created in the past few decades it seems. Howie's insistence on the artful texture of these items, that we frequently go by without noticing, breathes new life into the way one looks at our new world. However, the focus of the book isn't solely on the objects, rather it zooms in on the human interaction and enjoyment of the creations. In this way, by capturing microcosms of new technology with many people using them, it dedicates itself to encapsulating twentieth century life.
Another facet of this book, long after now, will be as a time capsule. Viewers will be able to cherish the subjects of The Mezzanine as they've possibly gone out of use. Perhaps Howie's enthusiasm for the items isn't the sweeping opinion of everyone that lives in this day and age, but future readers can be reminded of the old times, and maybe even learn about stuff (physical realm or social realm) they've never heard of before. The question is; will the entertainment value still exist if the items all go out of use? That's for another time I suppose.
I really liked the way that Howie described the plain objects and interactions in the book. He made everything seem interesting that normally isn't. Your time capsule theory is pretty interesting. I don't know how well it would actually work since the book is mostly based around a single person's thoughts. But at the same time it does give a very real example of how people think, so maybe that would work for the time capsule
ReplyDeleteIn response to your last question, I kind of doubt that anyone who has outlived (and therefore never experienced) the technologies that Baker describes could find any enjoyment in the Mezzanine. So many of his descriptions rely really heavily on a common understanding between Howie and the reader. I'd bet that most of the satisfaction we get from reading this book is in relating to what he's saying, discovering new things about relevant objects in our lives, and reflecting on our own subconscious discoveries. If you took away the relation or the relevance, the book would fall flat. Or at least it did for me when he started to talk about things I didn't know (like record players or the supposedly intimate connection between shoppers at a CVS).
ReplyDeleteNow, that being said, I think that the book would probably hold the most value for somebody in between us and this hypothetical future reader: someone who lived with the technologies, but hasn't experienced them for a long time. I bet this person would find reminiscing with the book extremely entertaining.
Your last point (on what happens if this novel is ever exposed to an audience which never used them) is an interesting one...in that case, there will definitely be an unfamiliarity which really prevents the reader from associating with Howie or the things he discusses. Then again, some of these things will likely be preserved as historical artifacts, so this piece could be seen as reflecting on the stapler, which could be seen in museums, etc, with the dynamic between reader and author being similar to that of reading how to use a roller washer or something that we know of as a historical artifact, which we know of yet do not regularly use or associate with much. While The Mezzanine most definitely depends on the familiarity of the reader in order to make it be a "good novel" to the reader, I think it will still carry some purpose in a future beyond these items (if there ever is one), though a far different one as more of a secondary source on historical artifacts than as a piece of literature, read for enjoyment.
ReplyDeleteI see what Natalie is saying: so many of these examples seem to depend on, if not a shared memory, at least an awareness of how things used to be (i.e. you may never have used a milk carton with the triangular-wedge opening spout, but you've seen them before). With enough distance, will all these references just be obscure? Or, worse, require a bunch of editorial explanatory footnotes, *on top of Baker's own footnotes*?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure, though. It does get a lot of its present energy from this sense of a reader relating to the stuff Howie is talking about, but often the most interesting stuff in archaeology concerns revelations about everyday life. I'm fascinated thinking about what it was actually like to live, day-to-day, in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, or even much farther back in history. Imagine if we had a _Mezzanine_ from 1860, or 1760? We might not "get it" in the way a contemporary reader did, but I bet there'd be a LOT that we'd find interesting. Especially if everyday life were documented as lovingly and with such an attitude of fascination as in this novel.
If the audience has no memory of the objects, you suggest the entertainment value of the novel will go down. In response, I don't think that it's not so much the actual object that makes this novel so unique, but rather the idea that someone would consider an ordinary object to have its own beauty and discuss, at length, its purpose in society. Similarly, whether the audience knows of the item or not, the book serves as an excellent opportunity to discover something new about their history. The whole point of the book is to bring normal objects to life and paint them in a way that depicts it as something extraordinary. It doesn't matter whether the audience understands the object, as long as they understand that it is generally received as something that is typically ignored in daily life. I guess, in the end, it's up to the audience to decide whether Nicholson Baker achieved his goal.
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of the comments here - it would definitely be dated, but I think it would still be interesting if it was set in a less recent time period. A lot of what makes the book interesting isn't just the objects described, but how it shows the kinds of thoughts that we all have but rarely get acknowledged. It's kind of cool to realize, "people back then were like that too!"
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you. It's not the just the details about the objects that make the story good; it's the way these objects affect him and others. I think your time capsule idea is very important as well. In the future, will people be able to read this book and have the same humorous understanding as we do? Or are there certain aspects that only people from a certain generation can grasp? I think this book could definitely help future generations understand the types of details in objects of Howie's time.
ReplyDeleteIt's very interesting to consider how someone far into the future would perceive The Mezzanine. While many of you have commented on the fact that future readers would not understand the minute details of life in the 1970s and 80s, such as the technologies that were around at the time and the intricate human behaviors they inspired, a lot of the interactions that Baker described between Howie and the other characters are essentially timeless. While we don't think about Plato proffering a stylus to Aristotle, and then retracting it awkwardly as Aristotle took out his own, such exchanges probably occurred extremely frequently. I think future readers will be interested and perhaps amused to find that on a certain level, ordinary life and social interaction in Baker's era will not be so different from their own.
ReplyDeleteYeah I don't really see the Mezzanine as a future historical source for forgotten technology. Not only would one's time be more efficiently spent reading an equally detailed, more concise description, but Howie isn't even correct a significant amount of time in his descriptions. I think the novel will always be read as an experiment and a turning point in modern literature.
ReplyDeleteI think that in the future unfortunately this book will become less and less important. As future generations no longer understand what Howie is talking about, the book will have to add footnotes (and we have enough of those) just to explain what the object is. I think that this book's popularity will go down over the years, but I believe it still has many years before this happens.
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