The Mezzanine and Modern Technology
Nicholas Baker’s The Mezzanine is one of the boldest books I have ever read. While most books rely on characters, action, comedy, and romance, Baker instead confines his entire book to a singular, mundane plot: riding up an escalator. However, Baker's brilliance is in using the escalator as a way to express his thoughts on aspects of life that the protagonist finds interesting. The protagonist, Howie, treats ordinary physical items such as shoelaces, paper straws, perforated paper, and corporate bathroom fixtures not as irrelevant objects, but as marvels of human design and intuition. When examining why both of his shoelaces broke within two days of each other after years of wear, Howie notes, "Apparently my shoe-tying routine was so unvarying and robotic that over those hundreds of mornings I had inflicted identical levels of wear on both laces" (Baker 17). Baker uses extensive footnotes and obsessive details to transform an unremarkable corporate evening into an in...