A unique, engrossing experience for those of us who are always wondering about the minutiae of life. This made me want to read everything Baker has written - but although some of the rest is quite good, nothing equals this. I guess you can't really pull off something like this more than once. ( )

Mezzanine is equal parts, hilarious, neurotic, brilliant and...actually, it may have extra brilliance... In any case, Baker turns thoughts about mundane items encountered throughout his day into something far more entertaining. Highly recommended. ( )

000900

Nicholson Baker takes a place among our most meticulous observers of anyone currently producing fiction. By meticulous, I mean not only minutely close, but microscopically close. Baker engenders a sense of wonder as he praises the absolutely mundane from his vantage in a modern office. He compares a stapler and a row of staples to a railroad, and it's an image that stays with me to this day (I read this book about five years ago). His description and assessment of shoe laces raises that quotidian item to the miraculous.

The story takes us out to lunch and a very, very close (again) consideration of typical takeout lunch, outdoor benches near downtown buildings, the architectural spaces in office building entryways ... I can't recall everything, but nothing is taken up that shouldn't be.

I enjoyed this book so much that I immediately took up (and thoroughly enjoyed) "Vox," a book-length phone sex conversation (talk about a dated piece!)

Nicholson Baker is an intriguing practitioner, well worth the acquaintance. ( )

The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker

I will think of this book whenever I tie my shoes . It is a compressed version of James Joyce's Ulysses, with all the events revolving around a lunch hour.

One of the cornerstones of the book is a quote from Marcus Aurelius Meditations
"Manifestly, no condition of life could be so well adapted to the practice of philosophy as this in which chance finds you today! " P 124

I would recommend this as an interesting view of the thoughts that pass through one's mind - a flux of concepts that come and go. ( )