My Thoughts on The Mezzanine: Stream-of-consciousness
Hello everyone! I'm Sloane and I have quite a lot of thoughts on The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker: specifically, the character's unique writing style, as displayed through an intricate interweaving of seemingly mundane occurrences (that appear slightly disconnected at first glance) into overarching themes at the end of each chapter. What do I mean by this? To understand how his writing style weaves different components of the narrative together, we must explore his parallels to stream-of-conciousness writing. While The Mezzanine is definitely not a true depiction of stream-of-conciouness by any means, it draws from certain elements, such as the inner-monologue nature of Howie's mind, and also the long paragraphs and sentences diverging into different thoughts as they develop. I like to imagine it as a tree of ideas, each branching into more and more sections until they accumulate at their own individual points. Traditional stream-of-conciousness will not include punctuati...