The Mezzanine

Description

The Mezzanine is the story of one man's lunch hour. Pondering life's littlest questions - why does one shoelace always wear out before the other? Whatever happened to the paper drinking straw - our narrator interrogates the inner-workings of corporate living as he traipses his way down escalators to the first floor and through the mundaneness of office life. Mixing humour with the existentialism that surrounds all our working lives, The Mezzanine is a classic work of modern American literature.

NICHOLSON BAKER was born in New York in 1957. He is the author of eight novels, including The Mezzanine, Vox and Room Temperature (all Granta Books), and five non-fiction works, including U & I (also Granta) and Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, for which he won the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Hugely inventive...Baker is brilliant * Observer * A seriously funny book -- Salman Rushdie The Mezzanine's ambitions are as grand as its obsessions are small, and out of that disparity comes a refined and engaging chatter strung about great jokes. It''s also useful, full of debates about paper towels and putting on socks...Andy Warhol would have loved this book: he would have bought 2,000 copies just for a laugh. Everybody else should make do with just the one * Independent * Baker's brilliant, hyper-stylish comedy of modern manners announces the arrival of a true original. His novel is a triumph of intellectual shock - the shock of the newly seen * Sunday Times * Dazzling, energetic * TLS *