The Mezzanine Nicholson Baker Close Reading

The dignified formality of Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine describes the unusual tolerance the narrator feels for escaltors in his work place. His strange admiration is expressed with metaphors like "the free-standing kind: a pair of integral signs swooping upward" and "a temporary, steeper escalator of daylight" which help make a mental picture of the escalators as well as give an appreciation for the escalators. Baker's scholarly yet straightforward lexicon holds the flowing simile "like the radians of black luster that ride the undulating outer edge" to convey the graceful energy the narrator feels toward escalators.