It was interesting to read this classic after working through much of the author’s other work. His first book, The Mezzanine is an astonishing achievement that slows down time to detail the events and – in particular – the thoughts that took place in a single office lunch break.
There are super-detailed analyses (with long digressive footnotes) on shoelaces, drinking straws and ice cube trays. Baker really gets inside the mundane reality of objects – almost down to the atomic level – and makes you see them afresh. He finds sensual pleasure in exploring the most ordinary and familiar things.
One brilliant section offers four reasons why you should feel less upset about the death of brain cells as you age. Another astounding passage describes the ways that “staplers have followed, lagging by about ten years, the broad changes we have witnessed in train locomotives and phonograph tonearms, both of which they resemble”.
Whether delighting in the joys of perforation or contemplating what people do while alone in lifts, this novel (which isn’t really a novel at all) amounts to a terrific rendering of consciousness.
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