The one thing that I think that I would love more than The Mezzanine would be The Mezzanine from the perspective of Howie's girlfriend, L. Allow me to start off my explanation with this quote:
"In bed I kissed L. good night while she wrote down the events of her day in a spiral notebook," (110)
This is a very promising quote for a couple of reasons. The first of which being that L. could most certainly write her version of The Mezzanine without much trouble at all. From this quote we already know that she's as meticulous as Howie is with her observations about what is around her, and that she has some knowledge of how to articulate those observations. The second main point that I want to get into about why L. should write her own book has more to do with Howie than with L.
Namely, Howie is a straight, white man and is going about his day noticing the most minute details about everything in his life. Things that are not in his life are therefore unimportant to him at that moment because he is obviously thinking about something else. I am a person who would love the same level of scrutiny that he places on objects such as shoelaces and straws and abstract ideas such as unspoken rules about when to leave a conversation, placed instead on the unspoken rules of being a woman in the workplace- or any place for that matter. That isn't to say that Howie doesn't talk about women, but when he does, they're either just another observation, like the women looking at their respective products in the CVS, or they're too close to him for it to be interesting or necessary for him to speculate on, like L. or even Tina.
We talked in class about the "clean background trick". I propose that the clean background that Howie is holding up observations to is, in fact, himself. As a white man with a girlfriend, but otherwise not many friends, Howie is essentially just a blank slate. This might be why a reader would find him so relatable. And despite his incredible specificity with his observations and hypotheses, he is holding up these observations to a man who has no real, discernible characteristics. He acts seemingly however he wants in and out of the workplace, whether that be nearly missing hitting the parking meters with his arm, or playing with things on a secretary's desk while she's on a call. He is but a ghost in his environment and apparently has no real weight on the situations around him.
L., however, might have the ability to have insights past simply this "blank slate", and could very easily pick up on the nuances of why a woman might want to buy a specific item at a CVS, or at the very least discuss why it would be considered unkempt for a woman to pick up something from a male coworkers desk. L. has a lot of the same qualities as Howie, a trait that certainly suits her to living with him and, in fact, suits her to writing a book with as many of the same trivialities as the original book. However, I think that we as a society can move past just simply the thoughts and observations of a straight, white man and even focus on something a little more complex in nature.
