Mr. Mitchell asked a little while back how Woolf would react to Howie's interpretations on his surroundings. Howie's life view looks at things that exist in this world and defamiliarizes them in the eyes of his audience. This idea seems to be the opposite of what Woolf has mentioned is what represents the 20th Century Novel. However, many of them are just rewritten slightly to accommodate for Baker's style. Character, for example, is not fleshed out in the traditional "Woolfish" form.
The idea of character is exposed through the fact that this is not in third person. We get direct access to Howie's mind, and in this way, Howie himself actually exposes his own character through his talking about his experiences. Through the way that Howie describes everything around him, it displays his natural tendency to see ordinary things in his environment seem interesting. This develops the character of the main character which is exactly what Woolf was looking for.
Another way that this book reflects how Woolf wanted books to look is that it records the "atoms as they fall" on the world. Howie does an incredible job of recording this, not in the traditional way, but also in new ways that most can't see. He very carefully goes over every insubstantial detail and makes it substantial. In this way, Baker through Howie actually does hit many points that Woolf made in her essays.
