Memories Hidden in Footnotes*

*The Subconscious Nature of Memories in The Mezzanine and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Other than cancer, Alzheimer’s is the most feared disease in the United States. People are terrified of losing their memories. They have a legitimate reason to be terrified: we live inside of our memories, from day to day and moment to moment. In The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker demonstrates how memories form the basis of our existence. It is through memories1 that Howie,2 who does little more than stand upon an escalator, appears as a living, breathing individual.3 It is through memories that a single escalator ride transforms into an entire novel.4 It is through memories that a mere body becomes a human being. Baker illustrates how memories work, allowing the reader to watch as Howie leaps from one memory to the next in an endless stream—these memories defining and providing context for every single one of his actions. Ultimately, the narrator can’t control the flow of his memories,5 many of which are out of his conscious grasp; Baker indicates that a large portion of memories are subconscious. Subsequently, even when people seemingly “lose” their memories, as portrayed in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, they still act according to deepset recollections. Joel, Clementine, and Mary, whose memories are erased, continue to behave under the lingering influence of their erased memories. In the movie, and in life itself, the loss of memory is not as simple as a light switch going off. It is not just a disease known as Alzheimer’s. Rather, it is a complex phenomenon beyond any surface level explanations. Indeed, the memories that one “loses” remain embedded within the subconscious and continue to drive actions. Ultimately, these texts provide solace. They celebrate the power of memory as something larger than the connection of synapses within the brain. Baker, through the form of The Mezzanine itself, illustrates how we live inside of our memories. The novel, in real time, consists of a single escalator ride. In “memory time,” however, it manages to eclipse 135 pages, containing the entire lifespan of the narrator, along with countless random observations about today’s society.6 Throughout the process, Baker employs a heavy dosage of footnotes, such that reading the novel—wandering from footnote to footnote—feels very much like traipsing through memories.7 In one footnote, Baker spends three pages discussing footnotes.8 It begins, “In one footnote, for instance,” and, after empty ramblings about random traits of philosophers, circles around “(to get back to the point of this footnote)” (121). The writing style is wordy, with long sentences frequented by parentheses and phrases like “for instance.” Throughout the footnote, the writing conveys little substance, instead offering obscure observations about one philosopher after another: for instance,9 “Wittgenstein, as well, [Howie] read in some biography, loved to watch cowboy movies” (121). The “as well” is an unnecessary phrase. The entire sentence is an unnecessary comment, about a philosopher10 watching cowboy movies. However, time and again, Howie’s memory wanders to random things, to “some” unnamed biographies he’s read, to a wide range of experiences he’s had, to memories that have built up in his subconscious. In this same footnote about footnotes, Howie explains why so many people love footnotes: They [know] that the outer surface of truth is not smooth, welling and gathering from paragraph to shapely paragraph, but is encrusted with a rough protective bark of citations, quotation marks, italics, and foreign languages, a whole variorum crust of “ibid.’s” and “compare’s” and “see’s” that are the shield for the pure flow of argument as it lives for a moment in one mind. (122)This elaborate, eloquent sentence summarizes how we live inside of memories, how “for a moment”—every single moment—the tangled memories of our past become the “rough protective bark” defining our thoughts. The Mezzanine is a story about these memories, represented as footnotes; nothing physically happens, except for that which runs through the narrator’s mind. Correspondingly, during an interview with the Paris Review, when asked whether The Mezzanine is “just a giant, overcompact mystery novel,” Baker responded, “It’s a novel about the mystery of what life actually is—life when there is no corpse to propel people along and make them lock the door and say, We’ll all stay here until we figure it out!” (Paris Review). Like the novel, life is a story that, above all else, consists of thoughts and memories and references to other thoughts and memories.11 Many of these references, Baker implies, are subconscious; throughout The Mezzanine, the narrator jumps from memory to memory in a seemingly random flow, beyond human comprehension. In the first chapter alone, Howie steps onto the escalator, is unable to recall what’s inside of his bag,12 thinks about running errands, wonders whether or not he wants a straw, goes on a long tangent about the history of straws, asks for a bag, discusses the pros and cons of using paper bags,13 and expounds on the benefits of having a free hand. Howie seems to have no control over where his mind takes him. He concludes the chapter, at last, with the realization that if he arranges his various bags in the right way, he can hold all of them in one hand, a realization about which he states the following: Under microscopy, even insignificant perceptions like this one are almost always revealed to be more incremental than you later are tempted to present them as being. It would have been less cumbersome, in the account I am giving here of a specific lunch hour several year ago,14 to have pretended that the bag thought had come to me complete and “all at once” at the foot of the up escalator, but the truth was that it was only the latest in a fairly long sequence of partially forgotten, inarticulable experiences,15 finally now reaching a point that I paid attention to it for the first time. (8-9)As always, the details count. This is a book that takes place “under microscopy,” riddled with “insignificant perceptions” that only come into existence gradually. Writing about memories is a “cumbersome task”; Baker employs astounding depth in his attempt to portray the subconscious flow of memories, and yet he leaves the reader as mystified by memories as she is at the beginning of the novel.16 Indeed, the narrator himself, regardless of the multitude of tiny revelations he experiences, remains mystified. After trying and failing to chart “the relative frequency of his thoughts over time,” Howie reflects, “Thoughts [are] too fluid, too difficult to name, and once named to classify, for my estimate of their relative frequency to mean very much. And there [are] way, way17 too many of them” (127-128). The inability to keep track of so many memories18 is a mere addition—an afterthought following a period—to all of the other factors19 that place memories in the realm of the subconscious.20 Although subconscious, these memories drive our actions. In fact, because they are subconscious, they continue to drive our actions even after we seemingly “forget” them. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Joel, Clementine, and Mary, whose memories are erased, continue to behave according to deepset recollections; the movie’s nonlinear script, dim lighting, disorienting camera angles, and spastic transitions give the impression of literally traipsing through Joel’s subconscious memories,21 until naturally arriving at his actions. The movie begins at the end, dropping us next to Joel after he has “lost” his memories. Unaware of his past, we do not yet understand the significance of his disorientation (signaled by the quiet, somewhat unsettling soundtrack, and by the softness of his voice), nor do we recognize the implications of him running into Clementine, first on the beach, then in the diner, then at the train station, then on the train (0:03). We instantly sense, however, an inherent chemistry between the two, the camera angle bouncing back and forth between them during their spur-of-the-moment conversation on the train (0:06). Joel, who skips work on a whim, seems to run into Clementine by some sort of inexplicable fate; only over the course of the movie do we learn that his actions and his attraction to her are actually a result of his subconscious memories. He’s known her for two years, and it isn’t a coincidence that he’s drawn instantly to her again, that they behave and converse almost as if they are merely resuming a slightly awkward relationship. Indeed, when they sit down at the diner, the close-up camera shots make it appear as though they’re sitting at the same table, until a slow pan reveals that they’re four tables apart; their separation exists only on a surface level—more deeply, subconsciously, they still know one another (0:04).22 The title sequence (Joel’s and Clementine’s reunion or first meeting, depending on the viewer’s perspective) lasts for a full eighteen minutes. The closing sequence, during which Joel reawakes in the present, last for roughly ten more minutes. Thus, the movie sandwiches Joel’s “lost” memories—his subconscious—between his real-time experiences; his “lost” memories are there all along, remaining at the very core of his existence, defining his behavior at both the beginning and the end. The Mezzanine and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind may seem depressing—demonstrating how little control we have over our memories, how we live based on a subconscious we can’t comprehend—but they are ultimately hopeful. At the conclusion of The Mezzanine, Howie arrives “at the very end of the escalator ride” (135). In that moment, he revisits a wide variety of thoughts that have surfaced throughout the novel.23 The range of these thoughts is overwhelming, but the continued presence of them is reassuring: despite our inability to map our memories,24 they remain embedded inside of our subconscious, making us who we are. In the final moment of the novel, before the cycle of the escalator continues, Howie waves to the maintenance man, who raises his hand in return, the two individuals sharing a moment of human solidarity, simultaneously adding to their own collections of memories. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ends on a similar note, one of silent human happiness. Right before Joel loses his last memory of Clementine, right before he walks away from the beach house that is rapidly disintegrating with her inside of it, she asks, “What if you stay this time?” (1:31). He can’t stay, not physically, but his memory does stay, subconsciously, and as the final screen fades to whiteness, to an uncertain future, Joel and Clementine (reunited) are running merrily on a snowy beach, the site of so many of their happy memories (1:44). Works Cited