The Mezzanine

And while we are at it:Bloom will complete his peripatetic roaming around DublinTristram will be born.And here our unnamed, (Sir Edmond Hillary perhaps?) will complete his lunch and make it to the top of the escalator.And while we are ruining "it" for everybody, Andre's Restaurant table, will at some point be cleared for some other party.To help you regain your breath, I will digress into a few niggling technical issues. I am a total fan of my Kindle. This book rather forces me to speak of its shortcomings. This review should include some specific example of Baker's use of vocabulary. Because Kindles are awkward to page through when relocating passages, this is not going to happen. Yes, you can go through a clunky process of underlining and storing, but the fact is that navigation on a kindle is well - clunky.Usually I do need page numbers and the strange little percent system is sufficient. In this book it would be helpful to have page numbers. As if to force this issue, my electronic copy had a tendency to not page properly, such that on more than one occasion I went from some page in the text to some random foot note. - For the record, some fumbling about and I think I always got back to my proper place.Back to the book:Do not come here if you are looking for:plot,character development,spiritual reawakening, orBaker's more famous (infamous) highly literate porn.Not here, not what this is about.This is about a minute, frequently pointless, occasionally droll and always literate musings about nothing, about everything and filling the time the narrator spends away from his office during lunch..Some people will hate that this book was written, never mind published. Hate fill reader, you are likely a normal person and an admired member of your community.The rest of us got to read a fascinating, frustrating, strange, incredibly detailed account of a fastidious, nerdy, average, entirely too complicated, strange non-story about one man's interior life - across part of one particular day.Speaking of footnotes awkward Kindle navigation aside, don't skip them. I had planned to point out that the book contains nothing but foot note 1- feet notes 1<?>; however I think there are precisely two footnotes two. So much of the book is precise, that I cannot think this is by accident. But I digress - this book tends to make you think in digressions.Oh, right the footnotes. Read them. They are more of the same useless, well written trivia of the text and part of what you paid to be on this literary ride.If you have read the reviews, and believe you are not in need of any action, I recommend that you read this book. And read it in short burst. Perhaps during your lunch break.

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.

Penn Jillette recommended this book, and I'm glad he did. The Mezzanine is an ode to the active mind. The book essentially has no plot--the sum total of the action involves buying a new pair of shoelaces during a lunch break--and I suspect many people wouldn't like this book. But for me it was interesting to read what the main character (really just the author, I suspect) thinks about the little details in his life. Many of his thoughts demonstrate a healthy curiosity about the world and the little technological advances made in our advanced society--things like plastic vs. paper straws, the mechanics of escalators and the proper way to fill a napkin dispenser.Baker also has a wonderful way of writing about seemingly mundane subjects that makes them come alive, such as his description of popcorn popping: "I felt somewhat like an exploding popcorn myself: a dried bicuspid of American grain dropped into a lucid gold liquid pressed from less fortunate brother kernels, subjected to heat, and suddenly allowed to flourish outward in an instantaneous detonation of weightless reversal; an asteroid of Styrofoam, much larger but seemingly of less mass than before, composed of exfoliations that in bursting beyond their outer carapace were nonetheless guided into paisleys and baobabs and related white Fibonaccia by its disappearing, back-arching browned petals (which later found their way into the space between molars and gums), shapes which seemed quite Brazilian and intemperate for so North American a seed, and which seemed, despite the abrupt assumption of their final state, the convulsive, launching "pop," slowly arrived at, like risen dough or cave mushrooms."

I can understand fully why some may hate this book. It is almost an anti-book. No plot, and takes ages to get nowhere.But it is also utterly delightful. I have been savouring one short chapter at a time, one each day, for the past week. It has made me look at apparently insignificant things differently.It has had a similar impact as the film Rainman had on me many years ago. Then, I recall seeing little details of everyday life as I had never seen them before and they made a new kind of sense.

I believe a disclaimer right at the start is essential - if you cannot imagine enjoying a plotless book, which basically reproduces a 'consciousness stream' experienced during a single lunch hour, I believe it is best not even attempting to read it.On the other hand, if you enjoyed  White Noise (Picador 40th Anniversary Edition) (Picador 40th Anniversary Editn) , or are in agreement with the ideas from  The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy , the book is likely to seriously appeal.As said, it is a spectaculary detailed observation of the minutest details, be it on straws, shoelaces, staplers, milk containers, shirts or anything else that would be encountered during a lunch break in a city. Given that the author spares no effort in description or detail, you also need to invest a lot more concentration to read it than a book of similar dimensions would otherwise warrant - so definitely not something for a commute or a book where you will dip into before going to bed (the regular footnotes, which can span several pages are an example in point).Finally, Salman Rushdie's endorsement on the book cover - namey that this is a seriously funny book - is in my opinion warranted but not in the sense of slapstick funny; more in that it describes a part of modern urban society spectacularly well, which means a very different type of humour.So if none of the points above deter you or rather pique your interest, I can warmly recommend it. The author demonstrates a wonderful command of language, a great eye for detail and through that for societal developments. What he does not do, is to put a plot around this to make the book more palatable for a wider audience but then again this may very well form part of the appeal. White Noise (Picador 40th Anniversary Edition) (Picador 40th Anniversary Editn)The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy

I really enjoyed this book. I am not a book critic by any means, I have only just started reading on a regular basis, but I am enjoying it greatly, good books, bad books, all genres and ideas.When I read about the author of this book in a newspaper I looked up the first work which was mentioned in the article, "The Mezzanine", I read descriptions and it sounded exactly like what I would enjoy in a book. What I love about media, whether it be photography, film or now books, what I like is to immerse myself in the ordinary, but not my ordinary, someone else's ordinary. I adore films such as  Lost in Translation  for example, and this book fit the bill to give me pleasure.I was right in what I suspected, I read the book in only a couple of days, as it is very small, 135 pages in the edition I read. It's structure is unique, at least unlike anything I have read, with long, floating foot notes that wander from the source and become small stories in themselves, whilst the main story itself continues on. I was laughing to the point at tears at some of the chapters, especially his lengthy discussion of men's bathroom etiquette in an office situation... hilarious!I would recommend this book to anyone that loves to immerse themself in, as I said, someone else's normality, their every day lives, but an every day life that is not your own. This book submerges you in the mind of the main character, and you feel as though you are along for the ride of one of his lunch breaks - it's really great.Wholeheartedly recommended. Lost in Translation

The level of microfocus is a lesson to all writers about how to really see and how to write about it.

Post-modern, reminiscent of David Foster Wallace, wrapped in a nicely presented short novella. Doesn't overstay it's welcome but it may not entirely blow your mind either.