Rating: 
Summary: Minutiae
Review: After reading Checkpoint, I couldn't resist finding out how Nicholson Baker's books are when he isn't contemplating the death of a president. The Mezzanine demonstrates why reviewers were willing to pay so much attention to his more recent work. For 135 pages, Baker creates compelling reading from an almost plotless situation; in the most literal sense, the entire book transpires as the narrator rides an escalator from one floor to another. But in that ride he makes observations about, well, everything: drug stores, mens room etiquette, shoelaces, milk in bottles vs. milk in cartons, cigarettes being thrown from car windows, and, in an overwhelmingly ironic footnote near the end of a footnote-filled book, footnotes. In making these observations, the narrator captures the life of an office worker at the start of a career, wondering about why the company functions as it does and about the meaning of his place within the company, but also--and more importantly--about the whole host of mundane details that surround this world of work and the life for which that work provides subsistence. You'll shake your head a few pages in, yes, but soon you'll be nodding, agreeing with observations that are so familiar, so obvious, that you can't believe you've never made them until now. A bit dated by the advent of e-mail and the internet--no one sends paper memos back and forth, removing and reinserting staples in an endless loop from department to department, when they can simply CC: the involved parties--this is nevertheless a classic.
Rating:
Summary: The Aesthetics of Material Technology, Right At Hand
Review: Fortunately I didn't give up reading this-novel? before I grasped its true point. This let me enjoy its uniqueness. Surely not a novel. But no, not even "creative non-fiction." Instead, a study in Baker's own unique vision.. I'll label it "The Aesthetics of the Everyday Technological." The, ah, novel is prose-poetry. A hymn to the crafted artfulness of mundane objects, processes, experiences...The plot is minimal. He ascends an escalator one day at work. Big deal. But the plot is only the line on which he strings his beads of close observations of the "usual." It's androgynous; he marries assertive technical description of objects and processes, with sensuous flowing aesthetic experience of them. So herein he gives us enlarged glimpses of soda straws; ice cube trays; perforations; paper vs. hot-air hand-drying in lavatories; paper vs. plastic coin rolls; and more. Oh, and a footnote about footnotes. Plus he can give us a salvo of juicy examples to illustrate experiences. (1) Disruptions of the expected: as in missing a top step, pulling out a Band-Aid thread, drawing a piece of tape, trying to staple a thick memo. (2) "How beautiful graded surfaces are as a class:" as in not only the escalator grooves, but also "the grooves on the underside of the blue whale that must render some hydrodynamic or thermal advantage; the grooves left by a rake in loose soil or by a harrow in a field; the single groove that a skater's blade makes in the ice; the grooves in socks that allow them to stretch, and in corduroy, down which you can run your ballpoint pen; the grooves of records." (3) The "renewing of newness"-as in "whether it was the appearance of another identical Pez tablet at the neck of the plastic Pez elevator... or the sight of one parachutist after another standing for a second in the door of an airplane before he jumped... or the rolling-into-position of a pinball after the previous one had escaped your flippers... or one sticky disc of sliced banana displaced from its spot on the knife over the cereal bowl by its successor... or the uprising of yet another step of the escalator... " So Baker revels in the aesthetics of the technical. But is all this decoration, art? Worse, is it even mature pleasure? Baker says that this renewing of newness "was for me then, and is still, one of the greatest sources of happiness that the man-made world can offer." But isn't this delight in the diurnal, sort of minor, even decadent? Isn't it even what's called "camp"? (In the sense of giving more attention to the less important than is warranted?) During a deep study of coffee mugs, including corny old-fashioned ones, Baker denies this. He says he theoretically disapproves of camp, but then camp "has long been superseded and in the limbo of its demotions can be glibly disparaged." But hold it. Later on, he notes that when you quit a job, things reverse. Big crises recede ("the problems you were paid to solve collapse"), and instead, you remember the small surfaces. The nod of the security guard, the escalator ride, the things on your desk, the features of the corporate bathroom, "all miraculously expand: and in this way what was central and what was incidental end up exactly reversed." Sounds campy to me in its topsy-turvy re-valuation. But perhaps the incidental becomes not just reversed, but also revered. This is surely the book's final charm for me. Perhaps it is perhaps Baker's unique achievement, subversive but satisfying. Tables are turned; away from ponderous plot or principles. Let's enjoy the techne and the aesthetics of surfaces. I can disclose that I read this book at a recent time of stress and weariness. It was then just the thing for me. I found it good fare, "comfort food with a gourmet sauce." So, Baker's inspecting vision honors objects and processes, honors existence.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating details, but what's the point?
Review: Imagine Andy Rooney writing a novel, and you might come close to what this book by Nicholson Baker resembles. Because nothing really happens here. The protagonist goes to lunch to buy some shoelaces and returns, riding up to his office on the mezzanine level on the escalator. All of that (uhm, what there was of it) is just an excuse for a wide range of introspective discussion about modern life. The strange thing is that this "novel" is readable, and when it touches on some common aspects of human experience, it is downright disarming. Take, for example, the description of the corporate washroom. Within a few pages Baker merges the history of paper towels and the human psychology of the urinal (most specifically, the difficult task of starting with a co-worker nearby). And, truly, I don't think I will ever be able to ride an escalator again without thinking of this book. In this case, and in several others, Baker turns the minutia of daily life into objects of great meaning. But the sum of all that piggling over detail does not quite congeal. I got the feeling that Baker wanted to make a statement in the end-- possibly about how lives are made up of those silly little details and not the heroic exploits found in novels. Nice sentiment. Needs work.
Rating:
Summary: Baker smilingly builds a world out of an escalator ride.
Review: 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: 
Summary: Modern meditations...
Review: It's great (and rare) to discover a writer with a truly unique & authentic vision, and a command of craft that makes every sentence fun to read. If you haven't read Nicholson Baker, I highly recommend THE MEZZANINE for just those reasons. His novels are short and plotless, but rich with their narrator's meditations on the minutiae of contemporary life -- don't look for grand scenes or extended dialogues here; Baker's narrators are preoccupied by shoe laces, escalators, drug store receipts, antique door knobs...and their observations are so on-point, their preoccupations so authentic, that Baker's prose is laugh-out-loud funny.
THE MEZZANINE is Baker's first novel -- I would have given it 4 stars but for the excessive footnotes, which I think most readers will find distracting. But overall, a terrific novel -- particularly if you spend your weekdays working in office buildings.
Great stuff.
Rating:
Summary: The Mezzanine
Review: 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. Also: One of his other novels, 'Vox' became famous because Monica Lewinsky gave a copy to Bill Clinton. She received 'Leaves of Grass' by Walt Whitman in return.}
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.
Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable Mens Room Riff
Review: Remember Sniglets? They started on "Saturday Night Live" and eventually entered book form. They were invented words that described something there isn't a word for, but should be. For example, an "essoasso" is the guy who cuts through the gas station parking lot to avoid a red light. I loved Sniglets as a kid in the 80s, and now that I've read "The Mezzanine" as an adult, I love it too. Nicholson Baker takes those little things we all think about, like vending machines, and discusses every corner and nook of them, often with copious footnotes that are pages long. It was like reading a transcript of my own trains of thought, but written in a scientific way that I could not even fathom - yet it was very easy to understand. Oh, and it's all uproariously funny. Baker tries again in "Room Temperature," only it's more focused (on his baby girl). If you like "Mezzanine," give "Room" a try, but this is the real gem.
Rating:
Summary: It's like expanded Sniglets
Review: Remember Sniglets? They started on "Saturday Night Live" and eventually entered book form. They were invented words that described something there isn't a word for, but should be. For example, an "essoasso" is the guy who cuts through the gas station parking lot to avoid a red light. I loved Sniglets as a kid in the 80s, and now that I've read "The Mezzanine" as an adult, I love it too. Nicholson Baker takes those little things we all think about, like vending machines, and discusses every corner and nook of them, often with copious footnotes that are pages long. It was like reading a transcript of my own trains of thought, but written in a scientific way that I could not even fathom - yet it was very easy to understand. Oh, and it's all uproariously funny. Baker tries again in "Room Temperature," only it's more focused (on his baby girl). If you like "Mezzanine," give "Room" a try, but this is the real gem.
Rating:
Summary: A book about nothing? No, a book about everything.
Review: The undeniable appeal of "The Mezzanine" is almost impossible to explain to anyone who hasn't read it. Try it, sometime; tell someone "It's a 150 page book about what a guy thinks about as he goes up the escalator to his office." Not exactly an easy sell. But it's a fantastic read. This is not just "some guy" who's sharing his interior monologue, it's a guy written by Nicholson Baker. That means he's funnier than you, smarter than you, and his meandering observations are bound to be entertaining. His neuroses are interesting, his thought processes bizarre (but no more bizarre than mine or yours). So if the "plot" of the novel is "a guy goes up an escalator and sits down in his office," what is the novel about? It's about all of the tiny little thoughts that fly through our head, day in and day out. This is significant because these "unimportant" thoughts are our *lives.* All of these idle wonderings are what make us human and what makes each person an individual. So walk a mile in Baker's head, and know him and yourself better.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Worth Having.
Review: This is a love story, although of an uncommon sort: it's about a thinking being's love for his ability to observe, process, and think about the world. With a sort of democratic voraciousness, he gives equal consideration to anything that presents itself to him; everything is inherently interesting because of the opportunity it gives him to use his brain. At bottom, the narrator is awed and delighted by his thinking self, and what appears at first glance to be an obsession with trivia eventually reveals itself to be the exuberant play of an inquisitive mind. Not all of the topics will resonate for every reader - I can't say I've personally given much thought to shoelace wear - but many of his observations and comments will send prickles of pleased recognition down the spines of readers (particularly those with office jobs) who have noticed, and thought, the same thing.
In committing his everyday thoughts to posterity, Mezzanine's narrator reassures us about the value of our own idle speculations; he shows that it's not so much what we think about as how we think that makes the difference between trudging dully through life and experiencing it fully. Is it a gimmicky premise? Well, sure. But it's also clever, insightful, and a pleasure to read. And, if nothing else, it will make you feel better about the slow, scenic trips you've taken on your own trains of thought. Pick up a copy! Also recommended: The Losers Club by Richard Perez
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