Post 1
I apologize in advance for the drab theme of this blog. In this blog post, I seek to address the brilliance of Nicholson Baker and his ability to write a simultaneously awful and fascinating book. I think of The Mezzanine as a sandwich, stacked with layers of thought and communication. Its outward appearance (crusty bread) is the mind of the main character, but as you slowly peel off the layers of figurative plastic cheese and lettuce, you discover the gems (perhaps Grey Poupon or Maille mustard in this analogy?) thus communicated through the text. I will show this in the following ways: 1) the ability to simulate the association of ideas in the mind of a character so lifelike that we are led to believe this could, under certain circumstances, just be an odd memoir, 2) a mischaracterization of the main characters behavior and the dialogues experimental style-compensation and completeness thereof, 3) and the assumptions made and the inability to speculate on meaningful aspects of the c...