Other people in The Mezzanine?
The Mezzanine is different from most novels in a lot of ways, but one way that I think makes a big difference is that Howie is the main and only character in the whole story. Even though many books are centered around a singular character and we only ever see their viewpoint, The Mezzanine takes it to an extreme degree. Howie doesn’t really have any meaningful conversations with or thoughts about anyone except for occasionally L., and even then we never learn much about her. It feels like there simply aren’t any other characters in the story and Howie is the only person in his entire world. Not only is everything he says about other people seemingly trivial and fleeting, which is not too surprising considering the rest of the book, however he also seems less invested in it than any thoughts he has about milk cartons or shiny objects or shoelaces.
The few times Howie interacts with someone, for example with Tina or the janitor, it seems slightly unnatural. He spends a very short time describing them or introducing them to the reader, has a short conversation, then quickly segways into a longer description and exploration of social conventions, or the mechanisms of the escalator, or whatever else catches his attention at that moment. I don't think we ever get any kind of reflection or reaction specifically to the conversations, which is surprising considering the amount of detail and deliberation Howie puts into almost everything else. This could simply be because he sees these people almost everyday, and the conversations have become too much of a regular thing to react to or comment upon. However if this is true how come he spends so much time talking about other things he probably sees on a daily basis - like the function of the different vending machines he passes every time he goes to the bathroom? The one person he mentions repeatedly is L., and even then she's just randomly interjected into his thoughts about other things. For example, the first time he mentions her by saying, "The fourth of the eight advances I have listed [...] came when I learned in college that L. brushed her tongue as well as her teeth." (Baker 19). This is done so matter-of-factly that I wouldn't have assumed she was anyone special if he hadn't specifically pointed out he was going out with her a few sentences later. She's never really described, and he doesn't go into depth on any of their conversations or her thoughts. We don't even get to learn her full name. He seems to show more excitement for perforation than he does for her.
So why does The Mezzanine spend so little time on other characters? Is that just the way Howie thinks, spending page after page describing the minute details of milk packaging, but not even bothering to state how he met L., when he sees her, what he likes about her, or anything that would illustrate who she is? This could be true, and if it is it makes Howie seem slightly self-absorbed - yet when Howie compiles the list of the things he thinks most about throughout a single year L. sits on top. As a side note, he states that he thinks about her 580 times, which doesn't seem like a lot - he thinks about her less than twice a day? Either way, he says that he thinks about her more than anything else - followed by his family, so it seems weird for these people to take up so little time within the book. The book is framed as future Howie reflecting on this one day in the past, and so could easily be skewed to Howie's thoughts about seemingly trivial things around him instead of more normal thoughts about people. If the point of this book was to push the boundaries of a novel and focus on exploring thoughts that would be normally seen as mundane, Baker didn't really need to have Howie think too much about other people, something that is more commonly written into novels.
I agree- I think it might be a deliberate choice so as to picture him as completely in his own head, rather than concerned at all with the thoughts or actions of others. His relations with others fall to the side as he dwells only on the intricacies of the world around him
ReplyDeleteNice post, this made me really think about Howie's perspective in the novel. In my opinion, this "tunnel-visioned" narrative by Howie is one of the realest I've read before in a novel. To some degree, don't we all feel like the "main characters" in our lives? Maybe we have some people that are important to us and that make into our thoughts occasionally, but when you think about it, most of our lives are spent thinking about ourselves (Or this may have just been me indirectly outing myself as "slightly self-absorbed" as you put it).
ReplyDeleteI never really thought about this, but it definitely feels strange. I agree with Collin that people generally have a "tunnel-visioned" view of themselves, but I think this novel really goes to the extreme. Personally, I spend a lot of time thinking about how other people affect me, both negatively and positively, and how I affect other people. The way Howie's thoughts are presented, it almost seems like he isn't at all affected by other people, like he's in a bubble inhabited only by himself. This seems a bit hypocritical, however, since we know Howie changed his tooth-brushing habits because of L. The fact that he isn't at all affected by other people makes him seem alienated from the world. For a novel that seems to explore what it means to be human, Howie doesn't seems to spend enough time acting and thinking like an actual person.
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