Date Purchased: January 18, 2010
Date Completed: January 31, 2010

I really wanted to hate Shoplifting from American Apparel. I wanted to hate it the moment I saw it on the book list for my Contemporary Literature class. I really wanted to hate it when I paid full price for it, and was certain I hated it when I visited Tao Lin’s website.  So I had managed to convince myself that I hated this book before I ever laid my hands on it or opened it up.  All of this after I began repeating a mantra to myself I had picked up from the film version of A Bridge to Terabithia, when Zooey Deschanel’s character says you should keep an open mind and anything could find it’s way in there.  I had by this point corrupted that idea into one being that I had to keep out certain things because if I didn’t then I would quickly find myself turning into a shallow and pretentious hipster of the worst kind, which I was just certain was what Tao Lin was.

Boy, was I wrong.  I really enjoyed this book.  I like it an awful lot and believe Tao Lin is a very talented writer.  He is a minimalist in his approach to prose in this book and at first it seemed like I was reading a string of Facebook status updates.  The main character Sam had a catchphrase, or maybe it was a mantra, which was “I am fucked.”  He complains a lot, is pretty whiny, and steals from American Apparel to look sharp for a book reading.  The book touches rather ingeniously on the topic of race; Lin being an Asian-American is sensitive to this topic but not in the way you’d think.  The only time he describes the races of others is when he is in jail awaiting a bail hearing.

For a character who seems like such a lost cause, Sam has plenty of attention from women.  While his physical features are never clearly described, he has got to be a handsome man.  Of particular interest was the way Sam seemed to work hard at being alone and lonely.  He has such an intense focus on his misery until he is around one of his various female friends; it is at these points when Sam opens up a bit, throwing stuffed animals in the air, playing games, flirting his heart out that he seems most human.  Of course he closes himself off as soon as he realizes it to go back to being miserable, but the depiction by Lin is so honest that Sam never comes across one-dimensionally.

I have my quibbles with his book, especially with how unsympathetic Sam was depicted; I guess a kid living for free in various parts of New York, who can afford a diet of organic vegetables, trips to Atlantic City and Florida, and all the time in the world to complain to friends on Google Chat and go to the NYU library for hours to write (rather than sit behind some crummy desk for 9 hours a day to earn subsistence wages) doesn’t make my heart bleed.  But Tao Lin’s creative playfulness with prose construction and the juxtaposition of the themes of loneliness and the complications from togetherness made for a great read.

Date Purchased: Received as Christmas present on December 16, 2009
Date Completed: January 10, 2010

I bought this book for my good friend Eric in 2008 for his birthday (or maybe it was for Christmas, I can’t remember) and I distinctly remember his excitement after reading it and it launching a love affair between him and its author, Joe Posnanski, a sports writer for Sports Illustrated and the Kansas City Star.  We discussed on multiple occasions the simple act of him lending me his copy for me to read, but every time the topic was brought up he had already lent it to one person or another; his father on one occasion, another acquaintance of his, and so on.

I began a new job at the end of November in 2009 and as one of my first official acts of employment, promptly filled out a Wish List for the office’s Secret Santa, and listed this book in the very first spot.  As luck would have it, I received the book on the morning the gifts were exchanged (and what a morning that was—I had the misfortune of drawing the ulcer-inducing wish list of my new boss who wanted very obscure presents: a detailed map of both Central America and of Hungary.  I found both of these items at Barnes & Noble and even bought a handsome gift bag to deliver the present in, bragging a bit to myself how good of a job I had done.  Of course on the morning of the gift exchange, with everyone sitting in the lobby before the Christmas Tree and pulling the gifts out to give to one another, this is the point when I remember the gift bag sitting next to my front door.  Great first impression!  I will never forget the look on my boss’ face when all of the gifts had been exchanged and he looks sheepishly at the bottom of the tree, looks at each of his employees, shrugs a bit, and then goes back to his office.  The brave person that I am strategically doesn’t say a word when the rest of the staff asks who had the boss, choosing instead to approach the office manager privately to explain the situation.  She then suggested that I drive home to retrieve the gift, which I do, and deliver to my boss, who is thrilled to no end—over maps, I still don’t understand—and then we go to our Holiday Lunch and enjoy a splendid afternoon.  Needless to say I love this job).

So getting back to the author, Joe Posnanski is truly a gifted writer; he has the uncanny ability to convey complex thoughts in clear, easy-to-understand English.  He also has an impressive attention to detail and a knack for writing about the most interesting part of his subject, be it a baseball game, a specific athlete, or a random thought.  One of my favorite tics of his is his use of in-text footnotes, found predominantly on his blog, which are a great insight into how his mind works.

The conceit of The Soul of Baseball is simple enough: he spent a year traveling around the country with the legendary Negro Leagues player and manager Buck O’Neil and then wrote a book about his experience.  Of course the book turned into a beautiful narrative about how one should live his life rather than a description of everything he did on his journey.  One passage in the book in particular has stayed with me, when Buck gets into an elevator in New York City with a sheepish, sad-looking woman and proceeds to ask her for her name and tell her about himself, tells her that she is beautiful and reminds her why life is wonderful.  I am not ashamed to admit that this made me a bit teary-eyed.  This is the whole book.  Maybe it would be easy to dismiss the book as sentimental but that would be a mistake; Buck O’Neil is one of the wisest men I have encountered and this book is simply a must-read for anyone who already loves life to the rest of us who are always in need of more encouragement.

It also contains some of the best stories I have read about the game of baseball and of jazz music, two things that really go perfectly together, like bacon and eggs, whiskey and ice, and good times and friends.