While reading “The Mezzanine” this summer, one particular passage caught my eye, and I think I reread it at least three or four times. It was Howie’s footnote on straws, starting on page four and continuing onto page five. It intrigued me, because of the amount of history it included. I have no memory of paper straws to begin with, not to mention “floating straws,” which required you “to bend low to the table and grasp the almost horizontal straw with your lips, steering it back down into the can every time you wanted a sip” (Baker, 4).
It is quite possible the reason this footnote stuck with me is that it is the first real view the reader gets of the detailed examinations Howie will give every seemingly mundane object. Yes, the first page or so preceding the footnote gives a good sense of Baker’s style, but you have not fully experienced the totality of it until a footnote has been read. I wonder, was it Baker’s intention to start his novel off with such a memorable footnote? If so, he did an amazing job. Only one page into the novel and I was already going online to look up if these straws really existed! [1]
I think Howie/Baker’s footnote, full of facts about the history of straws followed by opinions concerning how things are wrong and how to make things better, really summarizes Howie’s character very well, as well as summarizing the message of the novel as a whole. A (nearly) complete study of paper and floating straws emerging merely from the cashier asking if he wanted one! A small, seemingly unimportant question which required a detailed thoughtful paragraph to answer.
Though when I first read this, I did not really understand how these thoughts could all come to mind in a single moment (though, is this really a single moment? Another topic that would be lovely to discuss), I think I finally understood it when I was at Panera’s last Wednesday. I had ordered a Mediterranean Sandwich with no pepper and no feta, and a cup of water. When I got my water, I put a straw in and instantly had a Howie moment. The straw was nearly twice as tall as the cup, and even then, I found it extremely ironic as I was imagining all of the other kinds of straws I had ever had and how they would have compared to the extremely tall straw in my glass.
[1] I found several interesting facts on the drinking straw Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_straw) that were quite interesting:
(a) The oldest drinking straw was made of gold, decorated with lapis lazuli, and discovered in a Sumerian tomb from 3,000 BCE
(b) Sumerians used straws to drink beer (this article is really interesting, you should take a look at it)
(c) About 500,000,000 (five hundred million) straws are used DAILY in the US alone
(d) Howie would probably really like extendo-straws (also described in the Wikipedia page)
(e) Howie is considered a drinking straw expert, as the Wikipedia page contains links to the pages for Nicholson Baker and “The Mezzanine” as well as writing that “The Mezzanine (1988), includes a detailed discussion of various types of drinking straws experienced by the narrator and their relative merits.”
(f) The paper straw was invented by Marvin C. Stone in 1888 while drinking a mint julep (a cocktail usually containing bourbon, ice, water, and fresh mint)
