Tuesday, June 14, 2011

#7 The Mezzanine Nicholson Baker

Jacket Copy: In his startling, witty, and inexhaustibly inventive novel, best-selling author Nicholson Baker uses a one-story escalator ride as the occasion for a dazzling reappraisal of everyday objects and rituals. From the humble milk carton to the act of tying one's shoes, The Mezzanine at once defamiliarizes the familiar world and endows it with loopy and euphoric poetry. At first glance, The Mezzanine appears to be a book about nothing. In reality, it is a brilliant celebration of things, simultaneously demonstrating the value of reflection and the importance of everyday human experiences

My Take: That's bullshit. This book is really just about nothing. It's kind of cool for the first 50 pages... but after that it just gets oldddddd.

Similar to: If you want to make a (big big) stretch, you could compare it to Nabokov's Pale Fire, James Joyce's Ulysses, Tristram Shandy (i wouldnt know, but the NYTBR compares the two books). But really, there isn't any other book even remotely similar to this one (thank god), so, yeah.

1 comment:

  1. A book about nothing? So i guess its not as good as a show about nothing then?

    ReplyDelete