The Mezzanine versus Mrs. Dalloway

       While reading The Mezzanine, it is hard to ignore Howie's constant attention to detail abut everything, from something he did five minutes ago to a memory from five years ago. At first when I was reading Mrs. Dalloway, I thought it was going to be very different since it is a much older novel and isn't even divided up into chapters as The Mezzanine is. However, after I started reading Mrs. Dalloway and started comparing it to The Mezzanine, I found that the two novels are surprisingly similar.
        Starting with the differences, The Mezzanine is told in first person, as if Howie is telling the reader his stories, like we are his audience, and Mrs. Dalloway is told in third person. She doesn't know that we're listening in on her every thought. They are also different in the sense that Mrs. Dalloway takes place over the course of one day, and then seems like a short time, but The Mezzanine takes place over the course of about thirty seconds, keeping in mind that almost everything he talks about is a flashback or recent memory.
       Now for the similarities. Mrs. Dalloway takes place over the course of one day, and to most readers, this seems like an incredibly short time to have a one hundred and ninety page novel discuss, but in The Mezzanine, the story takes place over the course of about thirty seconds, making Mrs. Dalloway seem like an eternity. It is the incredible amount of detail that Nicholson Baker and Virginia Woolf put in to their novels to make them both so interesting. Since Mrs. Dalloway was published in the early 1920s and The Mezzanine in the late 80s, it seems like there should be such a difference in the style of writing because the time periods were so different and so were the most popular styles of writing for those time periods.
       Someone picking up one of these novels, after having read the other, might initially think that they couldn't be similar at all, but after beginning to read, I think they would be surprised to find how much they actually have in common.

Virginia Woolf's Unusual Style of Writing

Recently in class, while discussing the scene with the people gathering around the regal-looking car, I made a comment in class about who was narrating, mistaking it for Clarissa when it was really Woolf. I find that Virgina Woolf's style of writing can make it hard for the reader to keep track of whose voice they're hearing. In a traditional book, there would be a new paragraph for each  speaker. However, this is not true in this case, making it easier to mix up who is speaking or thinking. In this aspect, Mrs. Dalloway is very similar to The Mezzanine in that, although Baker does divide the book into chapters, the content of the novel flows together very well and is very connected throughout the entire novel. This makes it necessary to sometimes read more slowly or carefully making sure to catch all details for when any part of the plot (speaker, setting, etc.) is changing. Although Woolf's writing style can be difficult it adds dimension to the book and makes you want to keep reading.

Reaction to Aurelius

Throughout the entire novel, we know almost every thought going through Howie's head, but it takes more than just hearing his thoughts to know who he is. The moment, where he is baffled by the thought that someone could show so much hostility towards life, really gives us a glance at what a complicated character Howie really is. He has all these strange thoughts and memories, that we get to learn about, in the back of his mind, but not a lot of them show much emotion. In this passage, Howie shows the reader that although some of these memories and thoughts are not so good, generally, he has a great appreciation for life and everything that surrounds him. It's not the fact that he disagrees with Aurelius, but it's with what passion he disagrees. Howie is the kind of person that notices every detail from his childhood and can remember everything, whereas Aurelius' quote is basically saying that life isn't that great and nothing is that memorable.

I don't think that the book necessarily had a slow start, because it didn't really go anywhere, I think it just takes a while for the reader to get into Howie's mindset and get used to his thought process. Once I was able to do that, I really enjoyed the novel.