Lozo's Blog

 One thing I saw when I was reading Mrs. Dalloway were the subtle hints that Mrs. Dalloway makes about her happiness. For example, whenever she talks about her husband Richard, she almost always does it in a critiquing manner. Very rarely does she say good things about him. She says that she is comfortable with him (financially) and that he gives her a good life, but the passion is missing. She talks about other love interests in a way that shows that she doesn't love Richard in a true way. She isn't truly happy with Richard.      Another example was when Peter Walsh asks her if she is happy and, just by "coincidence", Elizabeth walks in and interrupts the conversation before she can answer. This is a very interesting touch because that way we don't actually get a definite "yes or no", and we can continue to wonder if she is truly happy. Another place in the book where we see a little hint of this is on page 36, where she says- "She had just broken ...

 A very important subject or theme that I noticed while reading the mezzanine was Nicholson Baker's focus on the importance of little things. Everyone who reads the book notices this at first, but there is a deeper element to this that is very interesting to me. Baker believes that what makes life valuable are not the big things that happen to us (things that we would, for example, tell someone when we are talking about our day), but the small, unconscious things that everyone does. I don't think that he ever in the book talks about something very important that happened in his life. He talks about L (who is obviously very important to him) but not actually any important events. I also think this is why he seems to be so cheerful all the time. When your life seems to have no purpose, some kind of depression usually kicks in. Maybe as a mechanism to do something with your life? Who knows. But Nicholson Baker is completely fascinated with all of these ordinary things that frees h...