Nicholson Baker

 The Mezzanine


"And this was when I realized abruptly that as of that minute (impossible to say exactly which minute), I finished with whatever large-scale growth I was going to have as a human being, and that I was now permanently arrested at an intermediate stage of personal development. I did not move or flinch or make any outward sign. Actually, once the first shock of raw surprise had passed, the feeling was not unpleasant. I was set: I was the sort of person who said "actually" too much. I was the sort of person who sat in subway cars and thought about buttering toast --- buttering raisin toast, even: when the high, crisp scrape of the butter knife is muted by occasional contact with the soft, heart-blimped forms of raisins, and when if you cut across a raisin, it will sometimes fall right out, still intact though dented, as you lift the slice. I was the sort of person whose biggest discoveries were likely to be tricks to applying toiletries while fully dressed. I was a man, but I was not nearly the magnitude of man I had hoped I might be."

(Published by Random House, 1988 Vintage Books edition page 54, originally published in 1986.)


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