The Mezzanine [Paperback]

Nicholson Baker (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 16, 1990

Turns an ordinary ride up an office escalator into a meditation on our relations with familiar objects--shoelaces, straws, and more. Baker's debut novel, and a favorite amongst many of us here.

Product Details

• Paperback: 135 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Vintage Contemp Ed Jan 1990 edition (January 16, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679725768
• ISBN-13: 978-0679725763
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #635,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Baker's irresistibly readable short novel presents the quirkyand often hilariousinner life of a thoroughly modern office worker. With high wit and in precisely articulated prose, the unnamed narrator examines, in minute and comically digressive detail, the little things in life that illustrate how one addresses a problem or a new idea: the plastic straw (and its annoying tendency to float), the vacuous ci vilities of office chatter, doorknobs, neckties, escalators and the laughable evolution of milk deliveryfrom those old-fashioned hefty bottles to the folding carton. Using the keenly observed odds and ends of day-to-day consciousness, Baker allows his narrator to re-create the budding perceptions of a child facing a larger mysterious world, as each event in his day conjures up memories of previous incidents. Through the elegant manipulation of time, and sharp, defining memories of childhood, the narrator dissects each item of apparent cultural flotsam with the thoroughness of a prosaic, though wacky, technical manual. The rambling "footnotes" alone are worth the price of this cheerfully original novel.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Baker's first novel recounts one afternoon in the life of an office worker named Howie; or, more precisely, an afternoon in the life of Howie's mind . There are more digressions, asides, and tiny facets than one can imagine fitting into an afternoonor a short novel, for that matter. Each "real" event or actiongetting onto an escalator, for instanceis surrounded by the narrator's meditations on any number of thoughts or processes spawned by that event. A notable departure from traditional novel form is the extensive use of often lengthy footnotes, wherein many of the digressions take place. The line between the footnotes and the main text in fact tends to blur, with the reader drawn repeatedly into the highly detailed odysseys of the footnotes and then pulled back out. A very funny, enjoyable novel by a writer whose work frequently appears in The New Yorker . Jessica Grim, NYPL
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 135 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Vintage Contemp Ed Jan 1990 edition (January 16, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679725768
• ISBN-13: 978-0679725763
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #635,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've written thirteen books, plus an art book that I published with my wife, Margaret Brentano. The most recent one is a comic sex novel called House of Holes, which came out in August 2011. Before that, in 2009, there was The Anthologist, about a poet trying to write an introduction to an anthology of rhyming verse, and before that was Human Smoke, a book of nonfiction about the beginning of World War II. My first novel, The Mezzanine, about a man riding an escalator at the end of his lunch hour, came out in 1988. I'm a pacifist. Occasionally I write for magazines. I grew up in Rochester, New York and went to Haverford College, where I majored in English. I live in Maine with my family.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 61 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A book about nothing? No, a book about everything. August 15, 2000

By J. T. Nite

Format:Paperback

The undeniable appeal of "The Mezzanine" is almost impossible to explain to anyone who hasn't read it. Try it, sometime; tell someone "It's a 150 page book about what a guy thinks about as he goes up the escalator to his office." Not exactly an easy sell.

But it's a fantastic read. This is not just "some guy" who's sharing his interior monologue, it's a guy written by Nicholson Baker. That means he's funnier than you, smarter than you, and his meandering observations are bound to be entertaining. His neuroses are interesting, his thought processes bizarre (but no more bizarre than mine or yours).

So if the "plot" of the novel is "a guy goes up an escalator and sits down in his office," what is the novel about? It's about all of the tiny little thoughts that fly through our head, day in and day out. This is significant because these "unimportant" thoughts are our *lives.* All of these idle wonderings are what make us human and what makes each person an individual.

So walk a mile in Baker's head, and know him and yourself better.

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "Funny that God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen is in a minor key.." March 13, 2000

By "claud1019"

Format:Paperback

I've wondered that every Christmas for most of my life. It's a jolly song about "tidings of comfort and joy" that sounds, due to the minor key, like it should be on the Schindler's List soundtrack. How can Nicholson Baker have known? I've never been inspired to write an on-line review, despite having read many books within the past few years that I've judged to be excellent. This book, however, has affected me like none other that I can remember. It's the kind of book that you will either WORSHIP or DETEST. I don't think there can be any in between. You either get why it's pure genius, or you don't. This book is hysterical in a supremely intelligent way. One other reviewer compared it to Seinfeld. It's like Seinfeld with the intelligence factor cranked up to a thousand, and the subject matter magnified by a million. I've never read anything more fascinating and truly gripping. Baker has a way of describing things so eloquently and differently, that I often thought, "What on earth does he mean by--" just as the beautiful revealing moment occurred and I got it. For example, a sentence from p. 97: "I polished the lenses [of his glasses] with the fifth paper towel, making bribe-me, bribe-me finger motions over the two curved surfaces until they were dry." Those four words, "bribe-me, bribe-me" describe perfectly the motion that most of us undertake several times a day. Has anyone in the history of the world ever described that act in such a succint, clever way? I doubt it. Poetry. Read it immediately, but savor it.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars In Search Of Lost Marbles! May 21, 2000

By Bruce Loveitt

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The narrator of this novel is nuts.... but don't let that stop you from reading this wonderful book! Just be aware it might take you a little while to get comfortable with the quirky way the protatgonist has of thinking about things. After the first ten pages I was laughing out loud but after thirty pages I almost put it down because I didn't know if I could keep handling 2 page footnotes on, say, the physics of what makes shoelaces break! But I stayed with the book and I was glad I did. It is a pleasure to keep up with the narrator as his mind meanders through the minutiae of everyday life. He has a childlike curiosity about the world. Everything fascinates him! He is a lucky man because he enjoys understanding the little things in life and life presents a neverending supply of little things to think about. This is a guy who will never be bored! I also get the feeling that this is the way the mind of a really good scientist works, analytical but childlike as well. Want to know if you will like this book? Here is one sentence, expressing the narrator's admiration for the way the old-style packages of Jiffy Pop popcorn were engineered: "Jiffy Pop was the finest example of the whole aluminous genre: a package inspired by the fry pan whose handle is also the hook it hangs from in the store, with a maelstrom of swirled foil on the top that, subjected to the subversion of the exploding kernels, first by the direct collisions of discrete corns and then in a general indirect uplift of the total volume of potentiated cellulose, gradually unfurls its dome, turning slowly as it despirals itself, providing in its gradual expansion a graspable, slow-motion version of what each erumpent particle of corn is undergoing invisibly and instantaneously beneath it." Whoooh!... I can see where this book would be the type of thing you either love or hate, so if the above sentence made you squirm, stay away. But if a smile emerged while you read it I think you will enjoy "The Mezzanine" as much as I did. Read more ›

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars the visible hand April 9, 2006

By Dr. Eigenvalue

Format:Paperback

If you don't spend a lot of time contemplating your shoe laces, this book may come as somewhat of a revelation to you. A very, very minor revelation. The fact is that someone probably spent a good part of their professional life developing and testing that shoe lace, and someone else spent many hours fine-tuning it to make it as pleasing as a shoe lace can possibly be. Same goes for escalators, plastic straws, and staplers. The neat thing about a market economy is that so many people spend so much time improving such minor commodities, just so they can exchange them with each other. Nicholson Baker has written a humorous and almost touching tribute to this system. Very enjoyable (although I don't think I would have wanted it to be any longer).