My Dubious Thoughts on The Mezzanine
I started pretty optimistic about The Mezzanine: new class, new school year, new me.
Then you start wondering, where are the characters? Where are the actions? Where is my plot?
I miss my Macbeth, my Purple Hibiscus, the tension of wondering what is going to happen next.
I kept waiting for something to happen to keep me reading;
maybe the escalator would blow up, or perhaps he’s undercover on a secret mission in the mall.
Suddenly he gets distracted by his CVS bag,
and then you're stuck behind another unskippable cutscene of dialogue.
Slowly, while reading through The Mezzanine,
I started to laugh a little and become a little more relatable.
Sometimes, I realise that everyone has moments where they wander.
For example, I am in my eighth-period German Class.
While the teacher is speaking about conjugation (no offense to Frau Schnee),
I end up looking at the posters around the room.
Like there was one about a queen who had a beheaded head of a dead man on her lap;
I thought that queen must have been pretty badass in the past.
Howie is the epitome of this mood.
Especially during the office bathroom scene,
I found a decent amount of relatability because before our addiction to our cell phones,
we were once little kids who had to use our mom’s phone for Subway Surfers.
So when I, like many others, went into the bathroom,
the only entertainment was our own curiosity.
Checking out the different types of crappy toilet paper,
looking at the other people, guessing what they do for work, and seeing if people ignore urinal-spacing etiquette.
These thoughts are pretty worthless, or what Aurelias would say trivial,
but are interesting when there is nothing else to do.
I was enjoying this book until around 100 pages.
How long can one take this many thoughts?
The novelty is worn off,
and my impression of Howie goes from curious kid to annoying guy who won’t stop talking.
Chapters 13–15 were a drag, reminding me of the past me, the initial me who was craving plot.
In general, this book was a rollercoaster of opinions.
It started badly with my craving for plot, then turned into a sudden surge of enjoyment and relatability,
and finally became a question of, “How many more pages is this book?”
Sorry for the format the blogger.com website kept having some difficulties.
ReplyDeleteI'd have to say I agree with you Darshan. There was a point in the book I also thought the novelty wore off. However, our in class discussions showed me that there was a plot but it was buried beneath Howie's sometimes insufferable thoughts. Overall good blog.
ReplyDeleteHi, Darshan. I felt like spamming the skip 10 seconds button on this book quite a bit. Yet, as I kept reading it struck me that his thoughts and observations show how something mundane become interesting when we slow down enough to observe it. I don't think I would read the book again, but it shared an important lesson. Nice work!
ReplyDeleteI kind of like the weird formatting--this blog post reads like a free-verse poem! This novel, like a lot of "experimental" literature, deliberately teases and provokes a reader's conventional expectations--we have been trained to expect plot and character development as the driving forces in a work of fiction, as the things that compel us to want to read and to keep reading, and this novel seems to take some pleasure in withholding that plot and denying these expectations. But once we get past that disappointment (there are still PLENTY of plot-driven novels out there, don't worry!), I agree that there is a surprising kind of appeal to this type of writing. I wouldn't want ALL novels to be like this, although I have found myself reading Baker's other works for pleasure, and I've read a bunch of student-written pastiches in the same style.
ReplyDeleteI think of Woolf's comments on character as a fundamental interest for human beings--we simply are curious what it's like to be someone other than ourselves, and such a deep-dive portrait of a mind that is both quirky/idiosyncratic AND surprisingly familiar/relatable satisfies that urge. Humans write literature in part to testify to the experience of being human, and this novel is almost entirely "about" the experience of being human. And remember, there IS a plot--it just isn't a very exciting one!
I can definitely relate with what you're saying. At first, I kept thinking from the perspective of "what is the purpose of saying all these random remarks?" and the book was not exciting. But once I came to realize that the book was not intended to have some "main idea" or "goal" in the traditional sense, but rather to illustrate the thoughts in the mind of a normal man in his normal daily life, I began to appreciate the book for what it really was and share Howie's thoughts. I can see how the end of the book may have become a little dry. In a way I did feel similarly, though I thought a lot of the concluding remarks were interesting such as the study on the shoelace dilemma. Great post Darshan!
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more that The Mezzanine (Blogger won't let me italicize...) was fun, but felt a bit too long. I actually really liked this book when we started reading it, finding it hilarious and relatable as you said, but as we got farther into the book there were points when I found myself saying, "alright, pack it up, buddy." I think I would've enjoyed the latter half of this book more if I was able to read it more slowly on my own rather than having to blast through forty pages at a time for class. I guess the experience of waxing and waning enjoyment is probably pretty accurate to what it would actually be like to peer into someone else's thoughts: at some points, you'll relate completely, and at others, you'll just find yourself confused and wanting to move on.
ReplyDeleteComment written by Naomi:
ReplyDeleteHi Darshan! I like how you contrast The Mezzanine to MacBeth, it’s definitely wildly different, and it’s kind of funny to contrast the two. Also, when I first heard what the book was going to be about, I too wondered if the escalator would blow up or something like that, though I eventually realized this was not going to be one of those books. Still, I agree that diving deep into Howie’s thoughts was interesting, and I enjoyed comparing his thoughts to mine. Great blog!
Most certainly, many people would say that The Mezzanine could have given a similar impact if it had been a bit shorter. Personally, I had my moments where I would space out while reading the longest footnotes I've ever been forced to interact with, and 'wake up' to find the topic of discussion changing from urinal etiquette to how he cannot find a proper way to speak with coworkers. Maybe, if we had more time to get to enjoy the book further, a better understanding could be drafted.
ReplyDeleteHi Darshan, I really like how you outlined your entire experience reading The Mezzanine in this way, from how you began not very interested in the book to starting to feel how relatable it was, and finally it still ending a bit flat. It's really cool how you sometimes connect with Howie's thoughts, like when our minds always wander to different irrelevant things, like in our classroom during the middle of class. But while The Mezzanine definitely changes our lens on how we think and view the world, I do see how it can get old as it ends. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna be honest, I spent like 30 seconds trying to figure out if you were trying (and desperately failing) to rhyme. But nevertheless, this is a great blog! I am so with you with Howie being like a little kid that just won't shut up. While it was fine during the middle, the end definitely felt like pulling teeth. I think because Howie was so in his head, which was so similar to me being in my head, I honestly got bored of just thinking about thoughts, especially when they're not even about things I care about. While this book was a slow and long read, I kind of feel like that made it better. I like to say The Mezzanine is boring to read, fun to talk about. By how long it was, it kind of showed me how inescapable my own thoughts are, just like how I couldn't escape Howie's.
ReplyDeleteI really like the analogy of comparing the theme of the book to a time in our past where we were too young to have cellphones. It really does feel like the having to make things up from your surroundings to have some sort of dopamine or imagination. I have a similar take on this book. It wasn't the everyday climactic plot driven story, but it has it's own sense of story within the book which was really highlighted in the discussions.
ReplyDeleteI liked how honest your reaction to The Mezzanine was darsh. I think a lot of readers have the same experience of first looking for plot and action, then slowly realizing that the book is more interested in the way our minds wander through everyday moments. Your example of getting distracted by posters in German class was a great comparison because it shows how naturally our thoughts jump from one thing to another, just like Howie's, and expresses how truly disengaged you are from german class and ELA. I also found it interesting that your opinion changed throughout the book instead of staying positive or negative the whole time. The point where the novelty wore off and Howie became exhausting feels fair, because Baker's style is both what makes the book unique and what can make it difficult to read for long stretches.
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