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Title: The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker ISBN: 0-679-72576-8 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 16 January, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.12 (33 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Unparalleled observations of every-day details
Comment: What's so phenomenal about Baker's debut is the combination of his outside awareness (allowing him to witness his nearly subliminal every day thoughts), and the infinitely fine detail with which he is able to describe them in writing. The result is a terrifically engrossing exploration of life's smallest and most self-intimate moments: the breaking of a shoelace (why one and not the other?), the drifting float of a plastic straw in a can of soda (why do plastic and paper straws act differently?), and so on.
Baker not only observes these every day thoughts running through his head, but provides fully fleshed musings on the pathways they ride through one's brain. It's an amazing technical feat that provides page after page of laughs and knowing nods. This isn't just a book of fiction with footnotes, it's a book of fiction with footnotes that essentially supplant the mainline text. In doing so, they make conscious some of the ideas that we usually consider only in the privacy of our own heads.
Rating: 5
Summary: Baker smilingly builds a world out of an escalator ride.
Comment: In this short, funny, and thoughtful novel, Baker portrays a fully-examined life in a single escalator ride.
As the narrator rides up from the ground-floor to the mezzanine where his office is, his thoughts seem to free-associate over issues & incidents, each stylishly-rendered in Baker's precise & wondrous prose.
But, as wide-ranging as the narrator's thought-flow is, the book is actually a tightly-controlled (even contrived) construction that never fails to delight. (After all, how long can one escalator-ride be?)
A genius at squeezing sensuous prose from the smallest detail, Baker is a brilliant stylist and thinker who has created a miniature masterpiece, a small book with a lot on its mind.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Mezzanine
Comment: Many-a-times cliches are just what we want to hear. For in love, war, and banal & mundane but not always/often inconsequential small talk banter, a well turned cliche can be just the right phrase, whereas some highly evolved, original quasi-obscure Samuel Johnson or Oscar Wilde'esque proverb is more likely to furrow eyebrows and possibly evoke scorn. "The Mezzanine' is Baker's first, a brief gimmick novel as the NYT Book Review puts it; captures the essence of everyday corporate life with stylistic flair.{footnote: they consider 'Ulysses' the ultimate gimmick novel}
The narrator, Howie, leads a tour of his world through the course of an afternoon. Through his eyes the trivial has seldom been so interesting and captivating. His piercing skills of observation are to be admired, testament to Baker himself. Howie playfully combines tidbits of wisdom and wit, the sums of which build and grow so by the conclusion of Chapter Fifteen it is difficult not to be subtly impressed. Baker teaches the reader to think like he does.
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Title: Vox by Nicholson Baker ISBN: 0679742115 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 26 January, 1993 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Fermata by Nicholson Baker ISBN: 0679759336 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 24 January, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Room Temperature by Nicholson Baker ISBN: 0679734406 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 03 April, 1991 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: A Box of Matches: A Novel by Nicholson Baker ISBN: 0375502874 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Size of Thoughts : Essays and Other Lumber by Nicholson Baker ISBN: 0679776249 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 25 February, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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