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By Todd Hasak-Lowy
| Wednesday, April 01, 2015 - Off the Sh
Editor’s Note: Todd Hasak-Lowy is the author of four novels,
including his newly published first YA novel, Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You. It’s
written entirely in lists. We tried to break him of the habit, but we were
unsuccessful.
1. The entire novel details its narrator’s thoughts during a
single escalator ride, and everyone should read at least one novel about
one escalator ride during one’s lifetime.
2. It’s only 135 pages long, but that’s an awful lot of pages
for a single escalator ride. That’s really the number one reason to read The Mezzanine, to
experience Nicholson Baker’s prose as it microscopes deep, deep down into
all manner of things we didn’t think much mattered in the first place:
shoelaces, popcorn,
straws, ice cube trays, vending machines, and, yes,
escalators.
3. My favorite essay to read with my literature students is
Viktor Shklovsky’s “Art as Technique.” In this essay, Shklovsky introduces
his concept of defamiliarization, of describing a thing that the reader has
stopped noticing in a way that helps the reader see it anew. To, in other
words, defamiliarize this
thing. Or, as Shklovsky marvelously puts it, “t... READ
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