The Three Metamorphoses of Shoe Tying
The book “The Mezzanine” by Nicholas Baker is as bare bones a coming of age novel as one can conceive, and that is distinctly the point. The story follows a man named Howie explaining a lunch period at his job. While we don’t know what his job exactly is, or if he truly enjoys it (though he does quit, as we find out later), from this singular lunch hour stems myriad stories of his childhood, his partner, and how his life came to be as a worker on the Mezzanine. Baker, I believe, uses Howie as a means to show that the typical ‘coming of age’ novel is not meant to solely be for teenagers; coming of age, to Baker and in The Mezzanine, is the idea that one learns to tie their own shows as life progresses, and that being able to break away from conventional show tying (of styles of life) is vital to development as a character. Often, this does not come at a specific age. Very early on in the novel, we learn that Howie's shoelaces have broken off of his shoes, prompting him to buy a ...