Shoplifting from American Apparel

Last night, I took a break from Proust to read 'Shoplifting from American Apparel,' the 2k9 novella by Tao Lin. It was slightly jarring to the extent that both works, though loosely autobiographical and by/about writers, fall at opposite ends of a certain kind of spectrum: if Proust writes about memory, emotion and the careful dissection of one's entire past in order to place it into some kind of order, Lin's work resonates with the aimless, aloof currents of a year or two of one's youth, that mostly directionless period in life when you can afford the luxury of completely surrendering to the chaos of modern life. Lin -- or 'Sam,' his alter-ego -- wanders around (both in New York City and Gainesville, usually holding an 'iced coffee'), he meets up with people who may or may not be friends, he watches bands and goes to clubs, he gets arrested for shoplifting a few times and does 'community service,' he spends time on his computer, he kisses girls but never seems too interested in sex (he seems very non-heterosexual in this respect), he spends a lot of time with his laptop. If Proust presents his entire life in the form of a seven-volume epic, Lin offers his in the flickering, washed out, kaleidoscopic images of a hallucinogenic drug trip. Stylistically, Proust's prose is -- obv -- lush and dense, whereas Lin offers short, choppy sentences that feel almost like a stream of consciousness (or perhaps, in keeping with the book, a series of blog entries).

None of this should be taken as a criticism of Lin's work (or Proust's); both seem entirely appropriate for the frames in which they are constructed. Much the way the sight of the George Washington Bridge can offer pleasure in very different kinds of weather, I found myself appreciating both writers' ability to describe small, seemingly insignificant moments with the kind of humor and detachment that had me frequently marking 'LOL' in the margins. Most intriguingly, both are obsessed with class, albeit again in very different ways: Proust is interested in the movement in and out of the French aristocracy at the start of the 20th century, whereas Lin is concerned with what might be called 'the Gawker aristocracy,' or the world of New York social media circa 2k5-2k8, in which the highest currency is internet traffic and no action is performed without implicitly asking whether or not Gawker 'will link.' With both writers, you are left with the sense that by describing these worlds, they are implicitly (or explicitly, in the case of Proust) criticizing or satirizing them, even as the writers actively participate and long for inclusion and acceptance. 

Both works resonate with a sense of melancholy that -- as Lin testifies on the inside cover -- is a function of the passage of time, and the always difficult process of growing older, no matter how much one might like to pretend otherwise.

Comments

[Brian]

Probably the only time these two books have been directly compared to each other? This was illuminating.

[Matthew Gallaway]

Thanks, Brian! I think thats probably a fair bet...