How many things in this world have grooves?
“And escalators are safe: their safety the result (I now believe) of a brilliant decision to groove the surfaces of the stairway so that they mesh perfectly with the teeth of the metal comblike plates at the top and bottom…” (65)
Like many in The Mezzanine, that sentence is just the beginning of a shower thought, though Howie seems to have those outside the shower too. More notably, that sentence starts the longest footnote in the book, stretching across 4 pages. The small font size used for footnotes made it easily 5 pages worth of text, and it was only a side topic to the rest of the chapter. Especially considering how it appears relatively early on in the book, my immediate reaction to it was distasteful. However, rereading it, I realized how it served as a perfect example of Howie’s ability to stretch a seemingly uninteresting topic into something so much more.
Howie made connections out of anything, in this case, the grooves of an escalator. He commented on the tactile design questioning whether they were “for traction, or purely decorative” (Baker 65). He compared the escalator grooves to that of the mesmerizing texture of velvet corduroy and the grooves in vinyl records that allow them to work. All three of these objects are otherwise completely unrelated, but the characteristic they share is so unique yet so bland. I doubt anybody but Howie would ever be able to come up with such an obscure connection, and I think that’s what plays into the charm of his writing. Howie then continued to branch off from grooves, talking about “the interaction between the surfaces inflicting the wear and the surfaces receiving it” (Baker 66). He discussed ice skaters forming grooves in the floor of an ice rink, and how that wear is comparable to that of his shoelace which happened to have snapped just a bit prior. Similar to the grooves in the many objects he discussed, shoelaces and ice skates shared something in common that most would overlook.
The topics he discusses are all things we know yet dismiss, somehow making it all the more intriguing. Obviously, shoelaces wear down over time from tugging on them, but who would’ve thought to compare them to the ice rink ice skaters perform on? Is it common to connect the texture of corduroy to an escalator? At face value, these things are all something anybody could hear and agree with, but the way he indulges in these conversations is what makes it so interesting to read. More often than not, I’d put the book down not being able to fully recite what happened, but the journey reading it made up for it. Howie was able to make such meaningless subjects stand out, and it made me question the way I went about understanding things. There are so many senses and characteristics we take for granted after experiencing or seeing them often enough, and it’s refreshing to step back and take it slow, appreciating things for what they are in their most literal form, even if slowing down means a 4-page footnote.
Works Cited Baker, Nicholson. The Mezzanine. New York, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1988.
Distasteful is a splendid way to describe the pages of footnotes. At the start of reading many of them I experienced a deep down dread until I got lured into the world that was Howie's thoughts (which I too would label as shower thoughts). I appreciate the acknowledgement on the return to the shoelaces because I feel that he often came full circle and returned to many topics he had priorly discussed with us via his mind via the writing. How dismissable many of the things he wrote were but how appreciative we must be knowing it's hard to find yourself enjoying a four page footnote, and that when you are it must be grand.
ReplyDeleteI like how you talked about the specific footnote stretching across 4 pages, because I distinctly remember this same footnote as well. Your point of how Howie is able to make connections out of anything is especially relevant to this footnote, where he discusses all the grooves in random objects across his life. I also agreed with your point about not being able to recite what exactly you have read after setting the book down. It seems so simple yet really complicated, capturing the structure of the entire book.
ReplyDeleteI like how you describe these feelings as "taken for granted." It very much stood out to me throughout the entire novel that the sensations and observations described by Howie throughout this book were ones that typically go unacknowledged: the supposedly more trivial ones in the big picture. I appreciate that you talk about taking it slow and appreciating things around you, because this is exactly the sentiment I had after this book. The admittedly incredibly tedious 4-page footnote was an excellent example, because how could you possibly move more slowly and take more time to appreciate things than 4 lengthy pages about grooves?
ReplyDeleteHowie's appreciation for the grooves in the "steps" as an inherent and ingenious feature of the escalator's design is a great example of his aesthetic as applied throughout this book: he's always attuned to the balance between aesthetic design and function, and while I would be really curious to read an extended exploration of the "function" of corduroy grooves in ensuring comfort, or style, or warmth, or whatever, his discussion focuses (of course) of the groovy steps of the escalator. And this is an ideal example of something we can assume everyone has some experience with (everyone reading the book has likely ridden on at least one escalator), but which few of them have every paid any attention to (I too always saw the end of the escalator as vaguely dangerous--a feeling reinforced by the audible multilingual warnings on the moving sidewalks at the airport that the SIDEWALK IS COMING TO AN END). Before reading this book, I too would have assumed vaguely that the steps of the escalator are solid, not a right angle formed with a jointed flat sheet, and the utter precision of the grooves ensures safety--it seems quite unlikely that you actually could get caught in an escalator, despite so many well-intentioned parental warnings. These are things any of us could figure out if we'd just look more closely at how the escalator works, but we rarely do.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Baker's breakdown of how an escalator actually works, I am indeed inclined to agree that it is an impressive and monumental feat of engineering and design, both simpler and more complicated than it initially appears.
I really loved that you brought up specific connections that come up in his several descriptions on various objects. You focused on grooves in different materials, a very specific aspect, yet apparently presenting itself much more than once. I think this shows another interesting product of defamiliarization, and using a "white background trick" where once you have examined the details of multiple mundane objects, similarities show themselves. Once you have stripped down all of the external conditions for the object to appear, you find connections at the root. The similarities are much more zoomed in than some like where it is found or how it is used, and describes small aspects like texture or structure. I really liked your post, great job!
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