The charismatic Howie

Nicholson Baker's character Howie in The Mezzannine convinces us to follow him on his escalator ride and through his anecdotes and opinions without being bored. He writes his opinions on the seemingly trivial details of life as well as the big picture often accompanied by a tangent expanding on his thesis. His stories could easily become dry and uninteresting such as how one puts on a sock or the evolution of straws but something keeps each detail ravishing. I account his wonderfully charismatic tone to Howie's intense enthusiasm about all the minutia of life and his comforting relatability factor in some passages versus his questionable idiosyncracies in others.

Personally, as I was getting to know Howie as the novel began, I was sort of skeptical of his seemingly unnecessary vim but I soon realized his odd fervor for the minor things made me want to read on to hear his justificaiton for such excitement. A classic example of enthusiastic Howie is his when he discusses perforation. "Perforation! Shout it out!" Seems like an excess of joy in the little recognized, though often used, invention of perforation... But you can't really dismiss his approval because as you read on, in the back of your nmind, it slowly becomes clear to you that you enjoy perforation a great deal; maybe not as much as Howie, but still a great deal. Over the course of the novel, I wondered if Howie was just making the reader realize the effect of small details on their life or if he was planting an idea and convincing the reader of it. Its an interesting question, isn't it? and kind of weird to think that some random character from a book is making you think differently about the details of your everyday life.

As for the relatability factor, Howie's outer appearance fits the bill. He works a normal office job, faces such average problems as broken shoe laces and who to eat with, he's just generally average. Over the course of the book though, we meet the inner Howie and discover his idiosyncracies that make him different from any other coworker. Howie seems more intelegent and intensely left brained than is normal. A particularly strange anecdote comes to mind when I think of Howie's oddnesses, that one being the story about him peeing through a sanitary napkin...... I really had no clue how to react when I read this passage so I read on attributing it only to deepening Howie's uniquely average persona.

Really, I think Howie was just such a well constructed character that he made the idea work. Similar to Virginia Woolf's idea of character, Howie made the premise work for him, rather than him being a pawn to the plot.

Howie on Aurelius

"Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spice and ashes"


This is the passage that Nicholas Baker so vehemently refuses through Howie. I think Howie is so radically against this theory because, as we learn over the course of the book, Howie pretty much just loves life. The Mezzanine, as a whole is basically combating Aurelius' philosophy on life because Baker's book portrays even the most basic details as meaningful and Howie celebrates the most commonplace, overlooked minutia of life. Baker is pretty successful too... He made the random details of Howie's ordinary life interesting enough to keep a bunch of teenagers reading for 135 pages. So, I guess that's a win. I know he made me (and I'm sure a few others) smile or laugh at an everyday object/situation that I did not appreciate nearly as much as Howie. Even if the book was not interesting to you in particular, it does make you reconsider some of the particulars in life and realize that they effect the way you act more than it seems at first glance. Overall, it makes every part of life seem like it has meaning and takes the triviality out of every detail. I think it is easy to see why Baker is so opposed to the Aurelius quote given his outlook on life.