I rounded up when I chose a star and felt happier. Writing like that would make me feel like most of my major organs had been removed, like I too were fucked, I guess. I liked how he liked all the "fucked" people in Atlantic Ciy and how they made him feel happy and like he belonged. Maybe I should buy a Synergy? I wanted to laugh but I didn't even smile - I think that was the point, though I'd say that's probably a pretty "fucked" point for a book ("fucked" is a keyword in this book). Reading this has made me feel sleepy and empty. I don't really get excited about nearly identical disembodied proper nouns doing not much and talking about not much in an intentionally undescribed "New York City." But something I like: the stylistic bar is set so low, Tao will inspire dozens of young imitators to open Word and transcibe conversations and Gchats about their Flickr (or Photobucket) accounts. I'm not the target demographic for this book. My facial expression was almost neutral after I finished this book, which was controlled, calm, short, flat, and simple. In recognition of Tao Lin's mention of this review on HTMLgiant, I've decided to temporarily give his novella an additional 'star,' although I won't change the original review 'below': To paraphrase the late, great Dorothy Parker, this not a book to be tossed aside – it is a book to be thrown with great force, preferably at a picture of Tao Lin that one has printed out from the Web and taped to a bean bag chair. This book is such an egregious piece of shit hiding behind what many consider to be hipster culture that it sickens me that people got taken in by it. This book is so foul that I didn’t even have to second guess myself. I can tell you with no small amount of emphatic anger that this is not that, a woman long in her tooth clutching pearls at the antics of These Kids Today. Moreover, this most commonly happens when the middle-aged make the mistake of thinking they have a finger on the pulse of the young when they don’t, walking into new works clutching their own ideas of art, connection and social relevance like so many pearls. Books that speak of a people who may not be our own, or of a culture that is different, or of a people who may be our own but are so morally bereft we can’t admit it, run the risk of being seen as poorly written or inexplicable or exploitative. Douglas Coupland mined his generation so thoroughly that some think he wrote himself into a place of relative irrelevance, and Bret Easton Ellis’s scathing examination of 1980s consumer culture, American Psycho, is one of the most misunderstood books ever. Half the people I know would like to kill Holden Caulfield if he were a real human. Look, people have shit on those who write for a new zeitgeist pretty much since publishing evolved from the Gutenberg Press to a more accessible means of conveying ideas. but she didn't absolutely hate it either. she took shoplifting from next to her bed and put it in her read pile. it can be so beautiful in its uncleanliness" said jay "see you." i think i need to go walk and look at the grungy sidewalk" said lisa that would mesh with the tenor of the book." said lisa. "are you going to review it on goodreads?" said jay interested in some weird hypothetical fame - one that is quirky and not too popular, but popular enough" said lisa but at the same time it felt like a lot of young people i meet. it was the top of a free stack of books i got. "i just finished shoplifting from american apparel. Lisa finished her vegan tofu scramble and coconut water and started a g-chat with jay. Set mostly in Manhattan-although also featuring Atlantic City, Brooklyn, GMail Chat, and Gainsville, Florida-this autobiographical novella, spanning two years in the life of a young writer with a cultish following, has been described by the author as “A shoplifting book about vague relationships,” “2 parts shoplifting arrest, 5 parts vague relationship issues,” and “An ultimately life-affirming book about how the unidirectional nature of time renders everything beautiful and sad.”įrom VIP rooms in hip New York City clubs to central booking in Chinatown, from New York University’ s Bobst Library to a bus in someone’s backyard in a college-town in Florida, from Bret Easton Ellis to Lorrie Moore, and from Moby to Ghost Mice, it explores class, culture, and the arts in all their American forms through the funny, journalistic, and existentially-minded narrative of someone trying to both “not be a bad person” and “find some kind of happiness or something,” while he is driven by his failures and successes at managing his art, morals, finances, relationships, loneliness, confusion, boredom, future, and depression.
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