The Mezzanine

by Nicholson Baker

I concluded recently,1 I needed simply to continue to think more new thoughts at the same daily rate until I passed the age of forty (23 + 17 = 40), and I would finally have amassed enough miscellaneous new mature thoughts to outweigh and outvote all of those childish ones—I would have reached my Majority. It was a moment I had not known existed, but it quickly took on the stature of a great, shimmering goal. It is the moment when I will really understand things; when I will consistently put the past to wise and well-tempered uses; when any subject I call up for mental consideration will have a whole sheaf of addenda dating from my late twenties and my thirties in it, forcing down the primary colored pipings from “when I was eight” or “when I was little” or “when I was in fourth grade,” which had been of necessity so prominent. Middle age. Middle age!