The Slow Motion Element of The Mezzanine

    In almost all novels, there is some element of slow motion. Whenever the novel is describing certain scenery, for example, let's say the character walks into a room, the novel would take a pause to describe how the room looks like so that you can create for yourself a vague image in your head of how the room looks like. Books and stories are meant to either be listened to or read, and through your listening and reading, you make an image in your head to visualize the events that are occurring in the book. Otherwise, it would be pretty difficult to understand the book, or to keep up with it. The Mezzanine takes this slow motion element in the book, and flexes it. Not only is he using this element to describe the events of this book, he uses it a lot when he's talking about (or rather, thinking about) past events that has happened in his life. Not just past events, but thoughts about the most arbitrary things. He is very introspective about the things that he thinks about, and his introspectiveness helps to expand the slow motion element of the novel.

    Now, something to understand about this book is that if someone reads this book and feels bored or frustrated because of how random his thoughts are, that is because they simply cannot relate to the thoughts that he thinks about. Now, we all have thoughts that are exclusive to ourselves. While a lot of these thoughts may seem bizarre, it's supposed to be a very detailed reflection of our own minds and thoughts. One thought can lead to another thought, and then that other thought can lead to another thought, and so on. While these thoughts can seem random and unrelatable for us, if we were to put our own thoughts on paper in the exact same way and fashion as the author did for Howie, and we made someone read it, they might feel the same way as you feel as you read the thoughts in the book.

    These thoughts that Howie has are very expansive. I think the best way I can explain what I mean is by comparing his thoughts to a video being edited. In a video editing software, there is a feature that can let you slow the video you're editing down. When the video is slowed down, you can see more that the video has to show, because you have more time to view each frame than you did when the video is moving at its normal speed. It's kind of similar to the way The Mezzanine progresses. It's like a movie that has a lot of parts in it where it slows down and stops focusing on what's actually happening in the movie and focuses more on mental, internal topics. Also, in video editing software, there's a tool that lets you trim parts of the video, so that if there's a certain effect you want to add to a certain part of the video, it gets added to that certain part of the video and not to the whole thing. The Mezzanine is not an entirely slow moving novel; at times, the story moves at normal pace, like whenever Howie is having a conversation with someone. But back to the idea of this being an edited slow motion movie, whenever Howie has a random long thought in the form of an essay, it's like the movie slows down, and then an element/video that's going at normal speed gets put over the video, redirecting your attention from what's actually going on in the movie to the element. So, why would I say that that thought is moving at normal speed while the environment/real world is moving in slow motion. It's because thoughts like that, with respect to real time, occur faster than a blink of an eye. The human brain can think about a lot of different things within a matter of seconds. And when we take these thoughts, and slow them down along with the rest of the world, we really get to see these thoughts for what they really are. And when we put these thoughts on paper, we get this very contemplative work of art, which is what I would call this book.

   Sometimes, it's best to take things slow so that you can understand things better. This book is not meant to be sped through; it's meant to be read slowly so that you can understand the meaning of some of the thoughts in this book and the purposes behind these thoughts. The book's theme, I would say, is Howie's realization of these things that he thinks about as the book goes on and as he takes us along for the ride through his introverted thought processes. It's a very interesting book, and it's not like most books you've read, with actual story and character development and the like. This book has other characters, but because this book is told from the mind of an introvert that focuses mostly on himself and his own thoughts, and expands his thoughts as much as he sees fit, it does really make this book unique compared to other novels, which try to focus on expanding plot and characters and such.