Rate this book

Ut å Stjæle Fra American Apparel (2000)

by Tao Lin(Favorite Author)

3.18 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

review 1: I liked this novel(la) well enough. I don't understand those who love its barbiturate affect so much that they find it's worth raving about. It's very much a then-this-happened then-that-happened kind of story. About an Asian-American hipster-writer named Sam unsurprisingly like his author. Sam is unlucky in love and the worst shoplifter ever (arrested twice in less than 100 pages). He meets Moby. He goes to Atlantic City and Gainesville, Florida. He doesn't learn anything. He doesn't doesn't teach us anything. His experiences are, perhaps, the opposite of unique or interesting. Well, maybe I didn't like it quite well enough.
review 2: Reads like a classic Tao Lin book, or at least how people currently consider him and his style. Funny, deadpan, painless to rea... mored, but also difficult to tease an intention out of. There is an intentional flatness to it, where everyone's interior lives are obscured and so all we're left with is a sequence of actions that seem mildly desperate. The dominant sense I got from the book is of people, a lot of people, trying very hard to connect with each other but having a hard time finding common ground. This consistently shows up in the patterning of conversations, in which the main character will struggle to converse or react to conversations, with his default behaviors being to say something that is not really related to what is going on or what his conversation partner said. If his partner responds to this, he might then make a general statement and then say something else that is unrelated to either of the preceding statements. As time goes on, he starts encountering more people with a similar style of interaction, so that it seems like they are on opposite sides of a table and are trying to throw things across to the other person. They're rarely able to throw something that can be caught, or the other person can rarely catch it, so they just keep throwing things until someone gets bored and walks away.Interrelated is the B plot, which is about being a well-known but still struggling author. The way he talks about this is interesting, and it comes in three modes: shoplifting, working a mediocre job, and being slightly famous to some people. I found the latter most interesting, as the last quarter of the book is about a trip to Florida where the main character finds himself presiding over a small group of people who want him to like them, and who he wants to like, but he has a hard time figuring out what to do and ends up mildly abusing his power and prolonging mildly uncomfortable situations, where nobody knows what to do or say because there is no specific or natural reason for them to be interacting in the first place, aside from some ill-defined desires surrounding companionship, fame, success, and... transcendence of the quotidian. To get back to the voice though, I think its main goal is create a sense of disconnect and desolation, where nothing seems to quite fit together or make sense. I guess it expresses depression? I feel like I need to reread the book, like there is something I'm missing. less

Download links for: Ut å stjæle fra American Apparel

Advertising