The mezzanine
by Nicholson Baker · first published 1988
69% recommend31% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Close, detail-heavy novel about a mid-level office worker's inner monologue during a short escalator ride and errand; recommended to readers who enjoy fine-grained attention to everyday objects and careful prose.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Although most of the action of The Mezzanine occurs on the escalator of an office building, where its narrator is returning to work after buying shoelaces, this startlingly inventive and witty novel takes us farther than most fiction written today. It lends to milk cartons the associative richness of Marcel Proust's madeleines. It names the eight most significant advances in a human life —beginning with shoe-tying. It asks whether the hot air blowers in bathrooms really are more sanitary than towels. And it casts a dazzling light on our relations with the objects and people we usually take for
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For fans of extreme detail, I'd recommend The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker[0]. Iirc, he devoted several pages to the feeling of the curls of a brown paper bag carried in his hand. 0: https://www.amazon.com/Mezzanine-Nicholson-Baker/dp/08021449...
on “Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)” ↗The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker A man goes out to buy shoelaces and a cookie during his lunch break, but the story is packed with insane levels of detail about the objects around us and the narrator's imagination…
on “Ask HN: Books that altered your view of reality” ↗"The Mezzanine" by Nicholson Baker and "White Noise" by Don DeLillo
on “Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.” ↗Nicholson Baker in Mezzanine has a long internal monologue about paper towels vs hand dryers. A good summary of the different opinions that are possible.
on “Hand dryers spray human waste particles all over you, study finds” ↗You will love Nicholson Baker's book "The Mezzanine", and Ian McEwan's book "The Child in Time". Both capture this phenomenon of the relativity of perceived time wonderfully. McEwan's book will just eat at your heart. If you haven't read it I implore…
on “Why A Brush With Death Triggers The Slow-Mo Effect” ↗Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine is a terrific novel about a guy who leaves his desk to ride down an escalator to buy shoelaces and a cookie.
on “Telescopictext” ↗I would heartily recommend "The Mezzanine" by Nicholson Baker. It is an excellent written account of an unnamed mid-level corporate employee riding the escalator to his office after getting some lunch. The large majority of the novel is set inside…
on “Ask HN: What book should I read next?” ↗If you liked the writing, check out the 1988 novel The Mezzanine by the same author (Nicholson Baker). He's also written about Wikipedia (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia...).
on “Fortress of Tedium: What I Learned as a Substitute Teacher” ↗The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. It’s a slim, experimental novel with a narrator who spends every second of the book noticing smaller and smaller details about the world around him—such as the burrs on the underside…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗You may be interested in reading Nicholson Baker's novel The Mezzanine, where he wrote about preferring paper straws. http://weblibrary.apeiron-uni.eu:8080/webdokumenti/6304-ip.p...
on “Starbucks' new CEO will supercommute 1k miles from California to Seattle” ↗I'm a longtime fan of Nicholson Baker's work since I first read The Mezzanine. His close attention to detail and his careful choice of words really impressed me.
on “Covers as a way of learning music and code” ↗I have no problem with that in general. The cereal-eating was focused and vivid (it was Cap'n Crunch), and anyway it was over in a couple of pages. Nicholson Baker's entire novel The Mezzanine is like that, and it's just fine. But so much of my time was spent reading about those people going from A to B to C on their way to D, and for what? There was a similar episode in _Anathem_, which…
on ““The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason”” ↗…Venice -Mann, Thomas Whites -Rush, Norman The Room -Selby Jr., Hubert Book of Numbers -Cohen, Joshua Maggot: Poems -Muldoon, Paul The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia -Vucinich, Wayne S. The Mezzanine -Baker, Nicholson The Museum of Unconditional Surrender -Ugrešić, Dubravka What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches -Schrödinger, Erwin Dictionary of the Khazars -Pavić, Milorad…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗a Douglas Adams quality To me, it has more of a Nicholson Baker's "The Mezzanine" feel to it.
on “The Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest: 2019 Winners” ↗I couldn't help but think of Nicholson Baker's first novel [0]. > The Mezzanine tells this story through the extensive use of footnotes—some of them comprising the bulk of the page—as the narrator travels through his own mind and past. The footnotes are quite detailed and sometimes…
on “The Best Essay” ↗