It was quite a debut. When Nicholson Baker chronicled, in The Mezzanine, a single lunch break in the life of Howie, a young office worker, he was hailed as a modern Proust. Eschewing narrative in favour of a virtuosic, minimalist exploration of life's trivialities, the book has Howie marvelling at the engineering of an escalator and worried about the best way to put on socks. With its enjoyably digressive footnotes, this short but hugely inventive novel helped point the way for the audacious styles of writers such as Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace.

Twenty-three years on, The Mezzanine retains much of its power and humour. Howie is appalled but intrigued when one of his shoelaces snaps just before lunch  the other had broken the day before. Surely, he thinks, his shoe-tying routine couldn't have been so "unvarying and robotic that over hundreds of mornings I had inflicted identical levels of wear on both laces". It sets him thinking about the other seemingly unimportant elements of daily life: why straws float; which queue to stand in at a convenience store; and, most amusingly, the correct office lavatory etiquette.

The Mezzanine may sound a bit ridiculous, but it's actually a very human book, full of insights into how we behave among our co-workers. The snapshots of Howie's eccentric mindset slowly reveal a girlfriend, cherished childhood memories, a father who appears just as obsessive as he is (only about ties). Baker is brilliant at making even the smallest observation seem important.

In many ways, The Mezzanine feels just as relevant as it would have done in 1988  with one obvious exception. Most people, these days, wouldn't sit on a bench drinking milk pondering the meaning of life during their lunch break. They'd prod at their smartphones and check Facebook, digressions that can't hold a candle to Baker's.