What sugar-packet manufacturer could have known that people would take to flapping the packet back and forth to centrifuge its contents to the bottom, so that they could handily tear off the top? The nakedness of a simple novelty in pre-portioned packaging has been surrounded and softened and made sense of by gesticulative adaptation (possibly inspired by the extinguishing oscillation of a match after the lighting of a cigarette); convenience has given rise to ballet; and the sound of those flapping sugar packets in the early morning, fluttering over from nearby booths, is not one I would willingly forgo, even though I take my coffee unsweetened. Nobody could have predicted that maintenance men would polish escalator handrails standing still, or that students would discover that you can flip pats of pre-portioned butter so they stick to the wall, or that tradesmen would discover that they could conveniently store pencils behind their ears, or later that they would gradually stop storing pencils behind their ears, or that windshield wipers could serve as handy places to leave advertising flyers. An unpretentious technical invention—the straw, the sugar packet, the pencil, the windshield wiper—has been ornamented by a mute folklore of behavioral inventions, unregistered, unpatented, adopted and fine-tuned without comment or thought.
This passage, taken from one of many wandering footnotes in The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, bears a peculiar stateliness. Many of its great verbs have been freeze-dried into nouns, gerunds, and gerundives (gesticulative adaptation, extinguishing oscillation, lighting of a cigarette), such that the remaining predicates have all the sensory intensity of iceberg lettuce (has given rise to, could serve as, has been surrounded, is not one I would willingly forgo). I’m not sure whether I like it—I’m not sure whether I like astronaut ice cream—but it’s at least interesting.
I did enjoy the second half’s unprefaced list of images, people using the furnishings of modernity in specific ways, and its elegant synthesis in the ultimate sentence. It’s a great technique: first scatter the mind, and then reveal the hidden order. That revelatory sentence has an affecting grace: balance between technical invention and behavioral invention; mute folklore, a fine oxymoron if there ever was one; and three pairs of well-matched words in the final clause (”unregistered, unpatented, adopted and fine-tuned without comment or thought”).
The writing reminds me of a cathedral: carefully architected, its action frozen in so many panels and frescoes. It is conducive to silent meditation.
