(Un?)Selective Importance in the Mezzanine
For me, the most interesting part of the Mezzanine was what Howie decided was interesting and important. I think the best example of his unique thought process is his list on page 16, which describes the eight "major advancements" of his life. (The fact that he was capable of making a list like that in the first place was impressive, in my opinion. I wasn't able to think of my own list, which was weirdly frustrating. Everything I could think of was sketchy and abstract, and as soon as I came up with something I'd change my mind almost immediately.) All but the eighth item on Howie's list is routine or maintenance related. He puts a lot of value on these skills that allow him to move through his world a little more smoothly, which I can understand, because he seems better than most people at detecting roughness. The entirety of the Mezzanine shows how interesting (and upsetting) Howie can find tiny details most people would never think about twice. So, it makes sense that his most important personal evolutions have to do with navigating his world of minute detail. When I thought about my own list I came up with things like graduations and birthdays, but his items were much more practical, which goes to show that different people place value on different events.
Another example that shows Howie's mentality is his reaction to the following sentence from Meditations: "Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spice and ashes." He immediately rejects that idea and goes back to his milk, a drink he contemplated for several pages of his relatively short novel. I think a lot of people would find a famous dead guy's thoughts on the significance of mortal life more valuable than anything Howie thinks about on a daily basis, but it's all subjective. One person might dismiss all of human life as unimportant, and one might be obsessed with corporate bathroom etiquette, and neither of them are wrong?
I don't know if the Mezzanine (or Howie) is trying to say that one type of thinking is more important than the other, I think it's just trying to highlight what isn't seen as often. Or in Howie's case he's just living his life. It was just cool to consider what moments in life might be seen as significant from his point of view. He is selective, he just selects different things, and it widened my perspective.
Erin, I find this observation particularly interesting and I think it can relate to the reader as well. In a way, Howie and Marcus Aurelius depict two polar opposites in how they view life. Most readers tend to fall somewhere in between the two, so the novel becomes much more nuanced when you add your own lens to the mix. Also, like you said, it can present a challenge to ones predisposed views, or reinforce them and add more things to their list to over-analyse.
ReplyDeleteEliza btw^
DeleteI do think that Howie's hyper focus on minute details is interesting and definitely out of place to most readers who, like you, would probably consider graduations and birthdays to be the most significant events in their lives. I think that such a focus, in combination with Howie's visceral reaction to Aurelius's writing, shows that Howie does actually consider one sort of perspective or type of thinking more important than another, and I believe that, had he had respect for other ways of thinking, he wouldn't have so unapologetically forced us to read so many of his (to us) inconsequential thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you mean, I too can't really come up with a definite list of my major achievements in life like how Howie does so. I believe this is because Howie really has a different set of values compared to the average person. This is evident when you look at what he puts on his list, including learning how to correctly tie his shoes. Most people wouldn't really see this as all that important and it wouldn't even cross their mind to put it on a list like this but Howie did do that.
ReplyDeleteI am also a bit perplexed by Howie's seemingly arbitrary selection of what is important. Since he is constantly thinking about everyday things, it is difficult to discern why he talks specifically about the things he does. For instance, why did he talk in such depth about paper towels but not the containers that hold them or the trash cans they are thrown into? This aspect of Howie's narration was especially difficult for me to navigate when writing my pastiche because it was hard at times to decide what I would focus on since there is an almost infinite number of everyday things to focus on.
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