The Mezzanine fails as a book, for me, because it is simply a mirror,
and great fiction, good fiction even, acts not as a mirror, but as a
lens. The Mezzanine is a book of mirrors; it presents, and that is
where it stops. There is no movement in the book because it is simply
presenting-- it is all nouns and adjectives, no verbs. The trivial
things in this book remain trivial because baker is not doing anything
with them. His book is not a treatise on material culture, it does not
look into Howie's life for evidence of the "nature, purpose, quality,
and scope of everyday life," it simply presents that life, unexamined,
to us. In short it does not *do* anything. I admit that the everyday
objects and practices of our lives deserve enquiry, but I want to see
what judgements, conclusions, and theories arise from such an enquiry.
How many of us would get a good grade on a paper when the thesis was
that "mundane objects are thought about a lot by people?" Look at the
sites e-mailed by Mr. Unsworth and you will see people trying to do
something with the idea of thingness. Questions like "what does it
mean that one end of technology is objects in the world?" "How can we
relate objects to culture as a whole?" and others. These people are
doing good work, examining their culture's involvement with objects and
things. Baker presents the situation uncritically, and, call me
old-fashioned, but i still think that the unexamined life is not worth
living.
Carter
Todd-- does this help to understand why I find this book trite?