The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker is a novel that gives the reader a thorough insight to a man's thoughts throughout his day working at an office. The man, Howie, seems like an average man living an average life yet the way he thinks is aberrative. Howie thinks in a method called defamiliarization which goes into great detail about objects someone would normally not even think about. One instance of his extensive description of mundane details is Howie’s detailed explanation of a door handle in chapter 3. “What a beautiful invention!—the door handle, first of all in itself, which through use of the cylinder of the spindle caused the relatively modest pressure of your arm to multiply as force on the latch, retracting it against the bias of the spring that held it out. And then the smoothly hemispherical escutcheon plate that covered up the works: what a clean, well-formed world lay in store behind this door, a world of practical and effective shapes and design decisions, no less c...