Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine
This essay examines how Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine shifts engagement with the details of the material world consistently onto the axis of temporality and how, in so doing, it fashions a theory of periodization in which historical and social trends and events are relegated in importance. Asking...
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| Format: | Article |
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Johns Hopkins University Press
2011
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1508/ |
| _version_ | 1848790620612591616 |
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| author | Thompson, Graham |
| author_facet | Thompson, Graham |
| author_sort | Thompson, Graham |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | This essay examines how Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine shifts engagement with the details of the material world consistently onto the axis of temporality and how, in so doing, it fashions a theory of periodization in which historical and social trends and events are relegated in importance. Asking how the detail or moment might both alter an understanding of the general and spread time to infinite proportions, The Mezzanine casts doubt on the process of periodizing by way of metonymy and synecdoche and offers instead a contingent and improvised version of the 1980s. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T18:15:31Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-1508 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T18:15:31Z |
| publishDate | 2011 |
| publisher | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-15082020-05-04T20:24:37Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1508/ Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine Thompson, Graham This essay examines how Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine shifts engagement with the details of the material world consistently onto the axis of temporality and how, in so doing, it fashions a theory of periodization in which historical and social trends and events are relegated in importance. Asking how the detail or moment might both alter an understanding of the general and spread time to infinite proportions, The Mezzanine casts doubt on the process of periodizing by way of metonymy and synecdoche and offers instead a contingent and improvised version of the 1980s. Johns Hopkins University Press 2011 Article PeerReviewed Thompson, Graham (2011) Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine. MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, 57 (2). pp. 300-317. ISSN 0026-7724 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_fiction_studies/v057/57.2.thompson.html doi:10.1353/mfs.2011.0048 doi:10.1353/mfs.2011.0048 |
| spellingShingle | Thompson, Graham Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine |
| title | Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine |
| title_full | Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine |
| title_fullStr | Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine |
| title_full_unstemmed | Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine |
| title_short | Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine |
| title_sort | periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in nicholson baker's the mezzanine |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1508/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1508/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1508/ |