The Mezzanine was “interesting”.
I say that in lieu of a better word because I’m still not sure whether or not I
actually liked the Mezzanine or if I would recommend it to a friend. Up to this
point I have not had much exposure to stream of consciousness novels (only Lucy
and The Mezzanine) and now I don’t think I want any more. There were parts of
the book I found cool and that I enjoyed, but other parts completely bored me.
Near the end I stopped caring about Howie’s life; I had heard enough about
shoelaces and L. and milk.
In retrospect, I read The
Mezzanine in a similar way to how Howie views the world around him. I would
focus on reading the book for a while, but then I would get bored and become
distracted by my own thoughts which would take me down another path. As I read I
was not really comprehending Howie’s narrative, I was relating my own thoughts
and experiences to Howie’s. I started to think more about the mundane objects
and events in my life and be more fascinated with them. The parts of the book I
was able to relate to well were the parts I enjoyed the most.
After discussing The
Mezzanine in class, Howie seems more like an actual person to me than a
character in a book. An intriguing point was brought up earlier in class: how
would Howie react to living in the present day? I think that Howie would love
Facebook and how connected everyone can be. In the Mezzanine (circa 1980s), the
only people Howie interacted were people he saw face to face. If he got on
Facebook, the level of interaction he could have, which is totally normal for
us, would seem alien to him. All of Howie’s experiences in The Mezzanine were
tangible interactions, whereas today more of our interactions and communications
are via the web, an experience in which we only really view our end. In
addition, I think Howie would enjoy being able to take advantage of the
internet to learn more about the myriad of concepts that his consciousness takes
him.
I find it interesting that you consider how Howie would react to living in 2015, because I have always thought of Howie's descriptions of things and reactions to things in 1980 to be very similar to someone who had lived far in the past and then time traveled to the eighties. He finds even the most mundane things interesting, and he achieves this by removing all of his prior prejudices and looking at each object against a clean background. An example would be his appreciation for both garbage trucks and urinals, two objects whose functions cause their meticulous designs to be overlooked. To someone from the past, however, who has never seen a garbage truck or a urinal in action, the technology and the design itself would be what they would focus on, and they might indeed be fascinated. To come back to your question of what Howie would think of 2015, I think he would love it. In my experience, time traveling further into the future is always more exciting and thought-provoking.
ReplyDeleteI like your comments on how you think Howie would react to living in our world today. I largely agree with what you're saying, and I can't help but chuckle at the footnotes he would write about the miracles of social networking and the strange protocols that evolve seemingly from nowhere. I wonder how much he would enjoy the Internet though. From his characterization and Baker's own review of the Kindle 2, I feel inclined to say that Howie would still be one for doing research in books when possible, if only because he liked the smell of them and the personal interaction with the librarians.
ReplyDeleteI found that The Mezzanine to be difficult to read in large quantities. Just like you said, trying to follow Baker's sentences that perfectly depict the complicated nature of our thoughts would eventually lead my mind to different places. When I came into class, I thought that this book could be fascinating at certain points, but I had no idea that the true beauty of the book came in looking deeper into the book through class discussions. As we had more and more discussions about Baker and what we enjoyed about the book, I began to understand how great parts of The Mezzanine are. This book in my opinion, although it might be hard to read, is very good for further analysis and group discussion.
ReplyDeleteI think that Howie could possibly be a completely different person in 2015. A large portion of everyone's life is spent looking at a phone or surfing the internet. For some reason I would picture Howie practically memorizing wikipedia pages. He would also study out social protocols and interactions over the web. Just like his interaction with the pen at the front desk. He would be thinking through each step as he would text his friends over the internet. Just the thought of Howie staring at a screen makes me laugh, but it is entirely possible that Howie could be a completely diffrent person in 2015.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reasons that the Mezzanine was so interesting to me was that it WAS so boring. It was a super interesting change of pace to read some normal guy's ramblings about what you would typically think of as boring subject material. It wasn't unbearable to read, though, just because of the interesting style of writing.
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