The Mezzanine is a confusing book in many ways. For starters the plot (if you can even call it that) consists of a guy going up the escalator at work. However, the author adds a twist to it by going into extreme detail and including all of the main characters thoughts and flashbacks along the way. The book may seem over simplified but it in facts holds a deeper meaning for a lot of us. As we read further into the book, we (at least somewhat) stopped seeing the words on the page as an annoying burden but we began to relate to them a little bit. Not only that but they pushed us out of our comfort zones, and I think thats what this book was written to do. We saw a part of ourselves in Howie as we read his racing thoughts on the page. Some were thoughts that we have on a day to day basis without even realizing it.
Part of the reason the book makes us the most uncomfortable is when we get to see Howie's thoughts in the bathroom scenes. Fir starters, we're not used to seeing scenes take place in bathrooms in books most of the time. Secondly, it's where we see Howie's weirder and creepy thoughts. It becomes hard for us to still say we relate to him after these chapters, yet we still aren't able to say we don't relate to him at all. There are still parts of him that are relatable to us, and again Howie is your average person. It's almost as if the author designed Howie in a way that purposefully makes Howie a relatable character to put the reader out of their comfort zone.
I totally agree. I think the plot is different and seems to not even be a plot but as we keep reading we find that the thoughts fill in the plot and add a lot to the book. The flashbacks also add a lot and see to aid in the going up the escalator plot. His thoughts are defiantly relatable to us and as we go on with the book your right the words stop seeing annoying but turn in to more fun and relatable. His thoughts do uncover thoughts we have in our daily life that we don't think we have. The bathroom scene was weird and left us uncomfy but even some thoughts there were relatable except for the peeing and aiming it on peoples heads. Overall the book was designed in a way that left us wanting more relatable thoughts but also thinking that the book didn't have enough plot.
ReplyDeleteI actually find that Howie revealing his creepier thoughts to the reader makes him a lot more relatable. If you deny ever having had creepy/murderous/other thoughts like this, you're simply not telling the whole truth. Personally, I've out of nowhere imagined pushing people off of cliffs or stabbing them out of nowhere with kitchen knives, wondering what the aftermath would be like, etc. Everyone has weird thoughts sometimes, but our thoughts don't define us.
ReplyDeleteThere are definitely aspects of Howie's character that are relatable, but I think the book also does a good job of helping us understand some of the traits or patterns of behavior that are not relatable. For instance most of us aren't nearly as obsessive over small details such as Howie, but following his thinking we get a better picture as to why someone might have these thoughts, or how they work. The book takes something that we can all relate too and sort of pulls it into something new, in a way that in most cases, makes it understandable.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea that Baker purposefully wrote Howie's disturbing thoughts to make us uncomfortable with the fact that we once related to him at some point. It is funny to think that all of his disturbing and intrusive thoughts were made on a mundane escalator ride. In that sense, he is kind of relatable, as we all practice mundane tasks but often think deeply during them.
ReplyDeleteIt's not my favorite stuff in this book to talk about, and I agree that it can be a little unnerving to read (because we're simply not used to people being so frank about such private/personal affairs), but Howie's narrative of navigating the corporate rest room is a rich and unique setting in this novel, and it engages a bunch of the novel's themes all at once. There's a reason we rarely have scenes narrated in bathrooms--unless it's like a big blow-out fight in a public bathroom at school, or a close conversation between two characters who repair to the bathroom for that purpose. The focus is usually on the non-bathroom-related action and speaking.
ReplyDeleteBut it seems important that Baker explores a very unique hybrid of public and private, which we all have a range of different experiences with over the course of our lives, and which is a setting where there are all kinds of unspoken but firm RULES, and no one ever explains them to us. We just have to figure them out, by trial and error. The public bathroom at work (or school? for some of us one and the same!) is a unique setting that blends what is usually completely solitary and private activity, NEVER spoken about (and if at all, with embarrassment), with being in semi-public around people you know solely in a work-related setting. Isn't it weird that we still go through all these extremely private actions and motions while surrounded by bosses and co-workers? How we give each other space but ALSO talk to each other, avoiding mentioning some things while talking openly about other things? It's a unique setting that brings up most of Baker's obsessions (also a lot of specific and specialized technology to explicate!).