During our discussions in class, a question that's come up several times is what Virginia Woolf would think if she read The Mezzanine. Does it fit with her idea of what a modern novel should be? It does in some ways, but in others it seems to go against it. In the essays we read in class, Woolf rails against novelists that are preoccupied with the material world and attempt to use people's external features and social status to craw a picture of their character. The Mezzanine is nothing if not materialistic. However, I think that Virginia Woolf, (perhaps once she got used to the technological debris of the 1980s), would approve of the book.
Woolf complains about the authors of the 19th century, saying they force characters into situations that are too clean, too perfectly story-like to feel anything like real life. I haven't read any of the specific authors she complains about, but I've read modern books that are similar and I know what she means. The characters are sacrificed to follow the plot. Characters that don't seem to have thoughts about anything but the situation at hand/their love interest/their motivations in the story are easy to read, but not very interesting or real. The Mezzanine is basically the complete opposite of that. It shows the thoughts of one character without editing them to some larger purpose, and it's definitely not afraid to show real, everyday life without any epic quests or dramatic love triangles.
In class, people wondered whether Virginia Woolf would have a problem with The Mezzanine's extreme focus on material objects and trivial social pleasantries. I don't think that would be the case. The materialism Woolf complains about is authors using external things to describe characters, trying and failing to look in from the outside. The Mezzanine's approach is the opposite, looking from the inside out. We see the material world through Howie's extremely personal voice. Furthermore, Howie adds human interest to objects that normally seem cold and impersonal, such as paper towel dispensers and shoelaces. Part of his joy comes from imagining the designers, testers, and engineers that created them, and the thoughts that must have been running through their heads.
Virginia Woolf's complaint about books of her time was that they lacked character because they were too focused on appearances. In The Mezzanine, there is no lack of character - Howie brings character to everything in the world around him, and shows his own in the process.
That's very interesting. I was actually thinking about this while I was writing my Baker pastiche. I believe it was in Woolf's critique of modern fiction that she said reading fiction should be like talking to another person and getting on an intimate/closer level of understanding with them. In The Mezzanine, Baker basically narrates one persons thoughts as you mentioned above, so you do get to understand Howie at a pretty deep level.
ReplyDeleteI love your point about Baker letting us view Howie from the inside out, as opposed to the writers Woolf criticized. I think Howie is a very realistic and relatable character, however I appreciate Woolf's characters more than Howie on an emotional basis; they experience more diverse and intense emotions (such as fear, love, extreme self-consciousness, depression, loneliness) that allows me to connect to them more. While we encounter some of these emotions in Howie, it is always filtered through the description of some mundane object, and therefore nothing in The Mezzanine can really make an emotional effect. There's certainly no lack of character in Howie, but I think Woolf's characters are still quite different, and more realistic at least by her definition of emotional depth (although as you argued, perhaps details and everyday objects can make a character more real than overplayed emotions).
ReplyDeleteYour last paragraph sums up your idea really well, I think. Showing character through such an unconventional manner as Baker did would certainly fit Woolf's suggestion for a new kind of writing 20th century novelists should create for themselves.
ReplyDeleteI liked your post a lot. I think you were spot-on about the materialistic side. True, The Mezzanine is materialistic, but it is a celebration of how our lives have changed from material objects. It is about the character's reaction to the material goods. But, most of all, it is a portrayal of life--real life--one of the most stressed ideas in Woolf's speeches. So, I agree wholeheartedly that Woolf would approve, if not enjoy, The Mezzanine.
ReplyDeleteI'm in complete agreement with you and Matt here. I especially enjoyed how you pointed out the way that Howie brings character to the objects all around him, manifesting himself as a reflection while also bringing in other quasi-characters in the form of the engineers behind the creation of those objects. The connection to Howie is rather different from what Virginia Woolf does with her characters, but I think that both novels provide a very good model of what she recommends.
DeleteThis is an interesting post. I can see how Virginia Woolf might enjoy The Mezzanine since it does focus more on the character without being burdened by a plot. However, I could also see her rejection of the novel's concept. I think a problem Woolf would find with the The Mezzanine is that it is so mechanical and disconnected from the character's personal life that we never truly understand Howie and his emotions in the present. Yes, I agree Woolf would enjoy the novel and see the similarities in the format and presentation, but I think that she would disagree on the way Baker brings life to his character simply because Howie's focus is almost completely external while Clarissa has more internal focus on life.
ReplyDeleteYes, I don't think that what Woolf means by "materialism" in her essay is quite the same as what Baker is up to in _The Mezzanine_. Woolf is referring to the late-Victorian/Edwardian narrative convention of detailing a character's material circumstances in extreme detail (as in her parody of how Bennett would have narrated Mrs. Brown), talking "about" them and their surroundings without penetrating their interior world or letting them speak for themselves at all. In Baker's novel, we have a character/narrator who very much speaks for himself, and whose interior world is very much shaped by his relations with material objects--these don't position him according to some social scale, but they have been and remain a part of the "texture" of his life. In this sense, the highly subjective relationship with material objects is much more in line with what Woolf is about.
ReplyDeleteAnd also, simply the idea that an unremarkable person on an ordinary day can be the subject of "literature" is common to both of them.