Shoplifting From American Apparel

by Tao Lin

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.”   From 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.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, Novella, The United States Of America, American, Poetry

112 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2009

About the author

Tao Lin posts on Substack and lives in Hawaii.

Reviews

[Lisa]

lisa finished her vegan tofu scramble and coconut water and started a g-chat with jay.

"i just finished shoplifting from american apparel. have you read it?" lisa typed

"yeah" jay said "what did you think?"

"i don't know. it was the top of a free stack of books i got. it was short."

"so it wasn't your favorite?" said jay

"no. but it wasn't my least favorite either. i mean it was awkward. it felt dated. so web 2.0. but at the same time it felt like a lot of young people i meet. disconnected. bored. aloof. interested in some weird hypothetical fame - one that is quirky and not too popular, but popular enough" said lisa

"are you going to review it on goodreads?" said jay

"maybe - but i won't give it any stars. that would mesh with the tenor of the book." said lisa. she looked out her window. saw it was hazy outside. she didn't want to do the dishes.

"ok. i think i need to go walk and look at the grungy sidewalk" said lisa

"right. it can be so beautiful in its uncleanliness" said jay "see you."

lisa closed g-chat. she went to find an iced coffee. she took shoplifting from next to her bed and put it in her read pile. she was still confused. she didn't love the book. but she didn't absolutely hate it either.

[Anita Dalton · Rating 1 out of 5]

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. Truman Capote demeaned Kerouac. Half the people I know would like to kill Holden Caulfield if he were a real human. 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. 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. 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.

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. This book is so foul that I didn’t even have to second guess myself. 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. 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. You can read my entire review here.

[Lee Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

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':

My facial expression was almost neutral after I finished this book, which was controlled, calm, short, flat, and simple. I'm not the target demographic for this book. 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. Reading this has made me feel sleepy and empty. 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). I liked how he liked all the "fucked" people in Atlantic Ciy and how they made him feel happy and like he belonged. It's probably fun to write like Tao. Writing like that would make me feel like most of my major organs had been removed, like I too were fucked, I guess. I rounded up when I chose a star and felt happier. I like Tao's blogs and online stunts. I feel like maybe this book is an extension of those activities, like all his online stuff is the real art and the book is an empty physical product he somehow compels you to purchase? I wonder what he'll write about when he's older? He's 26. Is that still young?

[christa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Of all the vapid crap in all the vapid world over, this is the vapid-est. I have not been able to get that word out of my head -- vapid! vapid! vapid! -- since I finished Tao Lin's vapid "it" novella "Shoplifting from American Apparel." A task completed over the course of an hour and a half that would have been better spent watching "16 and Pregnant."

True story: I read more than half of this in the cafe at Barnes & Noble and knew I hated it. But I still bought it because I wanted to be able to loathe something physical. And I wanted to finish it, so I would have more reasons to not like it. Joke's on me: Lin profits from my wrath.

Our hero Sam is a bored New York City writer/organic vegan restaurant worker who sleeps until 3 p.m., then IMs Internet friends on Gmail. These are gripping back-and-forths that frequent digress into "I'm so fucked." "I'm so fucked, too." "He's so fucked." Sam seems to like iced coffee, vegan dining, and his ex-girlfriend Sheila, although it's hard to tell. This entire story? chronology? Twitter stream? is written in an eerie See Dick Run monotone. What passes as witty conversations seem to be of the "had to be there" variety. Sam is horseshit at shoplifting, the two times he does it he lands in the clink. Friends enter and exit scenes and new ones replace them but act exactly the same.

All the while, Sam has some sort of cult following of people who actually want to hear him read his words in public and talk about being fans of his work. Then things get super fun on a trip to Florida where everyone gets crazy and does antics.

There is part of me that hopes this book is some sort of elaborate bit of social satire. Like maybe, just maybe Lin is making a statement about blind worship, consumerism, and herd mentalities. Maybe Lin is sitting at home using Hotmail and Bing, craving gas station coffee and Olive Garden, laughing at his friend -- the one who took blurbs from the reviews of people who didn't like this book and tried to refute their claims. I'm not convinced Lin wouldn't do this: he's allegedly given readings where he repeats the same sentence over and over and over; he papered NYC with Britney Spears stickers. Why not write a blase novella, and then mock people who like it in the name of art? Don't get me wrong -- even if that is what's going on here, I'd still hate it.

Another true story: I started reading "Less Than Zero" by Bret Easton Ellis in the same sitting. Strip these two tales, and they are similar concepts: 20-somethings wandering here and there, leaving a trail of pop culture bread crumbs. Yet Ellis doesn't inspire ire. He makes me giddy. Nostalgia is a better brand of vapid. I prefer bored twits from the 80s to bored twits from the 2000s.

This book actually made me mad, and then more mad because I let it make me mad. And this book made me really glad that I don't have any friends younger than 30. It also made me hate the Internet, cult followings, bloggers, and vegans, readers, and emo anything.

[Matthieu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why?

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I watched a few minutes of Tao Lin’s interview on The Paul Leslie Hour (which is up on YouTube), and the dude speaks EXACTLY how I imagined his characters to sound – exactly how I imagined he would read his own book.

This shit is funny. Laughed out several times, which is more than I can say about most books. The new age nihilism that’s more solidified in later novels by other authors (I’m thinking of Moshfegh with My Year of Rest and Relaxation) seems to get its start here. It’s written in the spirit of Beckett and Waiting for Godot, with a lot of randomness and not a lot of pointed imagery. Cool to see the emphasis on certain brand names in writing as well – someone hops on Gmail chat, adds people on Myspace, etc.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this because I have liked Kafka and Camus and have heard this is a new century hipster version of existentialist angst and alienation. It feels more like arrogance than alienation, actually. Does it capture the "current zeitgeist" in some way? Maybe. Like Kerouac with the Beat generation? Hmm. I doubt it.

I like the title a lot! I like a lot of hipster art titles like Dear Jenny We are all Find by Jenny Zhang and Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee by Megan Boyle, blogpost lit for a generation of self-absorbed diarists. So funny that whatever comes out of our heads is worth writing down, so this is, like, ironic! It's a commentary on our self-absorbed times! Or maybe it just is a shallow person writing stuff down and is just like anything we might write down, it is every day common mundane stuff and don't get all hung up about it, it's just what it is, so deal with it. Or not. It's a free country, dude, you don't have to read t!

Is Lin the chronicler of the new lost generation? The Brett Easton Ellis (yikes) of the new century? Maybe. But is he really a spokesperson for anyone? He wouldn't say so, would he? Or maybe he would want that. He drinks coffee in vegan cafes and gets caught shoplifting a couple times and actually goes to jail, this stand-in for the autobiographical fiction author Lin whose name is Sam. I guess this could be seen as a little funny. Droll/amusing. I kind of prefer to think of it as a scam, actually, but will keep my mind open to seeing how others help me see it. I mean, I didn't like Ellis, either, and a lot of people hated On the Road and the Beats as sort of pretentious self-absorption, and I liked that especially when I was young (but still largely do). It could just be twenty-somethings will say to me, "you just don't understand" us, and our "talking' 'bout our generation," dude. But hey, I tried, dude.

[Andy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm a fan of gritty realism, and i've got no problem when a book doesn't go anywhere. It's not that I don't "get it", it's that the author doesn't. If taken as satire, the references are painfully out of touch and come across like the misplaced name-dropping of someone who hangs out in the city on weekends but doesn't really know his way around.

If the book is actually to be taken in earnest, it reflects the privileged, vapid reality inhabited by the class of "slumming" pseudo artists who want the dubious credibility (?) and edginess of stealing form American apparel, without sacrificing their ability to go home and play on expensive macbooks (both are true of the main character). If this was meant as commentary on that lifestyle, i'd be all for it, but even in that attempt, it fails -- it simply isn't smart or scathing.

As to the tone itself, I'm actually a big fan of mumblecore, when it reflects something meaningful and intimate. Sadly, the dialogue in this book falls somewhere between a particularity boring conversation with my friends and one with an aging wannabe older than the author or the main character, dropping the wrong names in an attempt to seem with it.

Ouch. Really, just ouch.

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a feeling that this review will be insulting, so perhaps people emotionally attached to either this book or eat when you feel sad should perhaps just look at the star rating not the rest of the review. Thanks.

I like this book, I like a lot of books, sadly me liking thing tends to translate into me having opinions which easily slides into direct criticism. Things I hate are safer I tend to simply digress or not care enough to say anything.

Anyhow, let's begin with a serious digression, I was discussing gilles deleuze with my friend jonathan, although I didn't tell him who we were discussing. This occurred directly after a discussion of James Joyce and David foster Wallace. The deleuze we discussed was about Proust. Basically that Proust was a collection of disjunctive pieces lacking a coherent whole mushed together. Jonathan agreed with this and like Proust as opposed to the other authors whom I mentioned whom he is not fond of. My theory on this is that Proust while working with the random pieces maintains a sense of literary integrity that is not present in Joyce. Basically if they played the game where you keep the balloon from touching the ground Joyce would drop the balloon a lot, Proust would make the balloon magically levitate while he made a sandwich. My point is not that either is better although I prefer Joyce's methods. My point is that if zach german is Joyce than Tao Lin is Proust. If I could not get attacked for equating these people with famous classical authors I would appreciate it, thanks. Lin's book maintains a sense of literary integrity which German can't juggle. While this doesn't really contain a serious conflict or traditional plot points it does carry a sense of a literary arc. You constantly feel that you know where you are in the story, whereas, in the German book I felt I constantly lost my sense of time. Although in both time seems to be moving faster than it should.

I think that Tao Lin is basically the transition point between German and traditional literature. Meaning he is probably actually more creative, as the point of change tends to be more interesting than the actual change. Unless the change is BS Johnson and he proceeds to kill himself, but that is another story.

Both this book and the German book share a sentence, "I just want to be crying in someone's arms." this is obviously on purpose, I meant contextually the sentence is completely different. Basically nothing around it matches. In the German it reads as a desire for a person, here it reads almost as a desire for emotion. The German book is almost entirely about what thing could make him happy. The Lin seems more about the attempt to interact with the world. The sentence in that context makes it seem like the act of crying is as important as the arms. This related to a difference in emotional content. German is direct description. Not unlike spot ran. Emotional content is entirely absent, the closest he gets is the desire for emotional content. Tao Lin allows for undifferentiated emotional content. I mean it is certainly there, but it occurs in these weird amorphous blobs of "emotionality". perhaps the desire to cry is a desire for a pure emotion. Let's go back to my 80s idea from my German review. This is what became late eighties stoicism. It reads as a confusion and inability to label affective states, perhaps a slightly schizophrenic projection of emotional states. Basically they appear to occur outside Sam, whereas, for German they appear to not occur.

The level of detail is intensely different and probably directly affects the judgment of literary integrity. Lin is very detailed and tells his reader entire conversations as opposed to German's "Robert and Tom talk". you commonly know exactly what is going on, which weirdly you commonly don't in German's book regardless of him detailing every time Robert walks up stairs or goes through a door.

Now that this entire review only is accessible to people that have already read German let me make some comments about Tao Lin. Although I could tell this was autobiographical it didn't feel like Sam had to be Tao Lin although from other reviews it seems it was that character. It read fast. Nothing felt different at the end than the beginning. I kind of like the vapid gchat (although not as much as I liked german's commentary about how much Robert didn't want to talk to the person). I mean it is a novel of life. You won't leave it changed. You won't think Tao Lin is a genius, sorry. You will leaving having been told a story about a person. And here is a secret most people do not lead terribly interesting lives. Tao Lin is not an exception to this.

[Alejandro Saint-Barthélemy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book and his main character are 50% Tao Lin poking fun at hipsters, 50% Tao Lin himself (which I think happens in most of his books [for example, he is well-aware of the detachment and messed-up notion of the "self" that Paul has in "Taipei" due to the addiction to the internet, and yet Tao Lin is "the internet author" personified]). 3 examples to illustrate this theory:

1) Organic food: hipsters believe in buying such food as a revolutionary act, when it is merely a quick way to feel good about oneself without really making any actual impact in the world (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzz6O...). Tao Lin probably just likes the taste and healthiness of organic products, so he shares the love for organic food with hipsters but probably without taking it seriously, despite his comment on stealing from American Apparel to have money to spend in vegan restaurants as his way to establish his moral preference. 50%/50%.

2) My favourite part: the poetic daydreaming lines in which he pictures himself with money enough to sleepwalk through life: playing on-line games, listening to music through amazing speakers, unlimited organic products and zero worries. Meditative, braindead, autopilot. It all sounds as sincere as sarcastic to me.

3) The first pages: when he mention the writer, taken care by stripper girlfriends, who writes "masterpieces" that don't sell well. I can hear Tao Lin himself and him making fun of self-important contemporary writers at the same time.

I'd rather read this or any other Tao Lin's book any day of the week than the old-fashioned doorstopper, 500 page-long, Pulitzer Prize, bestseller story about nazis (Hitler sells better than any other dictator) with a heroic orphan (of course), an old man with a young soul (OFC) and a blind (OFC), jew (OFC), girl (OFC), who experiences the nazi horrors (OFC) and escapes (OFC) to the coast (OFC) with a big (OFC) secret (OFC) that my wife has on her night table, recommended (of fucking course) by some talentless literature professor.


P.S. The biggest problem with this empty book is that it demands to be read, since it has connected words inside; the first full-length NeXTmodernist novel (CRAZY for LOVING YOU) is a step beyond in this department, since the title is the only sentence which can be found inside.

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was in the cult section of my favourite bookshop and upon reading the title I knew I had to get this book. Yes, I guess this makes me hip or some other label.

I now know more about the author because I loved this novella so much I had to wiki him. He made a documentary on the mumblecore film movement and this is a fact that sheds a whole new light on the structure of Shoplifting From American Apparel. This is a mumblecore novella.

There is something so real and awkward and funny about the characters in this book that you can't help but keep turning the page. It's easy to criticise the author for taking a narcissistic, simplistic, unstructured approach like many have done but that simply ignores the fact that Tao Lin is a very talented writer as it takes a lot of skill to make the most mundane and ordinary aspects of life appear mundane and ordinary in written form. I challenge anyone who complains to try copying this style of writing for their own life and see how far they get.

There are a few obvious comparisons I could make to other writers but then that seems to have been done already, what is clear however is that in capturing the ennuie of 21st century life in written form for this book Tao Lin has evolved the style and concept to it's next level. Whilst the Gen X authors are writing novels that are unnessecarily bigger and more complex this is a fine example of where the contemporary literary novel should be heading.

[Sentimental Surrealist · Rating 1 out of 5]

So Tao Lin. His books are set up to look all guileless and devoid of all flash and tricks, these short declarative parataxical fragments without any sort of adornment at all: "I woke up. I looked out the window and saw the sun. I looked over to my alarm clock. It was 6:02. I got out of bed. I walked over to my dresser and put my pants on. A coin fell out of my pants. It was a dime. I got sad or something." That sort of thing for a good hundred pages, writing we've all been trained to see as bad, as artless, but that's supposed to be the charm, except it has a superficial ring to it, this air that it's all been calculated, just one goddamn too many "or somethings" and "and stuffs" and "with a sad expressions" for Lin to be a charming outsider, for him to be a sort of Daniel Johnston figure for contemporary literature. So then you have to figure he's aware of this, that that's the point, that the clever readers are supposed to know the guilelessness is actually a facade, that it all has to be clear that we're well aware he's well aware that we're well aware that he's well aware that what might at first appear like charming amateurism re both his prose style and his vacuous characters is in fact another one of these coolly calculated commentaries on the contemporary malaise that wasn't even insightful when Ellis decided his shallowness would mirror ours, and I mean for a hundred pages of these characters who go to shows and take drugs and talk on the internet and have sex and go to prison and don't care about or reflect on or even really react to any of it (anyone who says "it's all going on under the surface" would, of course, be the butt of Lin's joke here), and it all just gets so hard to care at the end of the first page that the remaining ninety-nine become excruciating. And when I consider recent allegations against Lin, and more importantly his reaction to those allegations, I have to end this with a Norman Mailer paraphrase: "How glad one is that this writer is without talent!"

[Mike Kleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short book. The ending is really good. Tao Lin also, is a good writer. He will make you think about the way you think. He will make you realize that everyone is different and awkward really doesn't mean anything since we all end up having our "moments"... If you think about it.

But in simple terms, Tao Lin's SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL is interesting to read and fascinating in concept. I say this because Lin uses a style of writing that is both precise and minimal. In a recent interview, he even said he will spend months looking at the same sentence, over and over, each day omitting words, until he arrives to a point where he is satisfied. Many beginning writers will attempt to adopt this writing style, which isn't easy. It looks easy, but minimalist writing is arguably more complicated and possibly, more frustrating than writing in the usual descriptive prose that is found and read in many modern texts today. Minimalism not only takes away, but it also adds much more with 'silences'.

Lin, who has only used this style in SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL and RICHARD YATES proves he can do much more. EEEEE EEE EEEE and BED both adopt a different style of writing, which I appreciate. Furthermore, Lin's essay-style is completely different.

Read SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL. It should only take a couple hours.

[Emma Sea]

After five pages I really wanted to stop, but the lassitude of the characters infected me, and suddenly putting the book down was more effort than I could manage.

I both loathe it, and find it a kind of genius, in the same think.

The CD ended and everyone went outside the house to go see a Japanese band at a bar. Someone said the bar wouldn't let them bring in beer.

"We can put them in our pockets, " said Sam with his beer in his pocket.

"There's nowhere to put it on me," said a person in tight clothes and grinned.

They stood on the street drinking beer in the dark while looking at each other. Sam looked at the sky to see if there were a lot of stars. There seemed to be a normal amount of stars.

**

They sat on a large area of grass by a crocodile monument and Sam put the "Yes on 4" sign in the ground and opened his MacBook. There was no internet access without a password. It was sunny and maybe 70 degrees. Sam lay on his back. Jeffrey lay on his stomach. Audrey lay on her back. "Where is Gina," said Sam.

Rinse. Repeat.


Unratable.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a weirder version of Lost in Translation. It depressed the hell out of me too and made me wonder if half my generation isn't just a bunch of worthless narcissists who want to stare in the mirror, twist their hair into the most ironic curls, masturbate and play listless Elliott Smith covers on their acoustic guitar while smoking handrolled cigarettes and thinking of their 3rd grade crush. Yuck.

Three stars because it did such a good job capturing millennial cool culture. If it had a sense of a humor I would have liked it more. It's like Brett Easton Ellis without a plotline or any sense of transgressing anything. It almost sums up modern boredom and ennui perfectly so I can't decide if thats a good or bad thing but it left me feeling tired and sad and a kind of despondent about people that age. I think if I read this and I didn't have to be the same age as the people in it I may have liked it more.

[Marcus · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought about writing a review in the style of this book. Then my sentences would be short. My sentences would be short and I'd seem completely apathetic about writing the review. I'd also probably choose the most mundane parts of the book to write about. I would not try to be interesting.

I read this book mostly on my iPhone. I read it in an app called Oyster. I was sitting up in bed when I read it. After I read it, I had some organic milk with organic cereal. I watched a TED talk and thought about Breaking Bad. I wasn't thinking about the book anymore because it just wasn't worth thinking about.

[tao_lin3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this book. I can read this book in any mood and enjoy it, I think.
The words all have meaning that my brain can process. After I read the words I feel emotions. Each sentence makes me feel emotion.

I will read this again later on and probably more times later on.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tao Lin is one of those performance artists who does stuff in one person shows; usually to a small audience. This time he wrote stuff, Shoplifting from American Apparel. I presume he intends for a small readership. The people at Art of the Novella had gotten criticism about only publishing the obvious and not helping the “less accessible” lessor knowns. So they use the same nifty small sized editions to run the Contemporary Art of the Novella Series. I’ll not state that Tao Lin is inaccessible only that he has minimal interest in writing an interesting story

Shoplifting is I guess a slice of life. We follow the protagonist, Sam as he slouches through his life. He has a job, but hardly works, he thinks of himself as a poet and I think gets somethings published. We never get a sample of what he writes. He has friends, including girlfriends. Sometimes he sleeps with a girlfriend, sometimes they just pal around. Sometimes he is a couch surfer. Sometimes he has or shares an apartment. A lot of vegan food gets eaten.

Mostly stuff happens. Sam thinks little of shoplifting, but neither does he think much of getting caught, imprisoned and doing public service. He pretty much accepts that his actions bring on that result. He also notices how often others caught doing stuff suffer at the hands of the authorities. He makes no excuses for himself nor is this exactly a manifesto against The Man.

So anyway stuff happens, people say stuff. Vegan food gets eaten. Time passes and we suddenly find ourselves with Sam in other places doing other stuff.

No doubt we are supposed to read into this all sorts of stuff. The moral is: Stuff happens, except when stuff is not happening. Meh.

[Megan Boyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I've read "Shoplifting from American Apparel" 2.5 times, and have intermittently re-read select passages from it (the "Moby meeting"/party where things are confusing and funny, following the "crazy Asian homeless person"/community service, and the last ~20 pages immediately `come to mind'). I first read it in the spring time, ~May 2009 I think, sitting in a park near my apartment until it got dark, then took it inside and finished it in bed. I remember spending a lot of time physically picturing things that happened, feeling like I knew more about Tao Lin as a person.

Reading it feels like what I imagine it would feel like if the first time you ever played Tetris you were somehow able to `soar' through all the levels and at the end (I don't think there is an end to Tetris) a screen came up that said `Thank you for playing Tetris. Tetris enjoyed being played by you. Tetris and you had a symbiotic relationship where you were assigning each other the purposes of "person playing game" and "game being played" for a while. Without you or Tetris none of this would have happened." That doesn't sound very emotional, but I felt `moved' by the ending.

[Tshiung Han See · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tao Lin is the Jeremy Lin of fiction.

[Imogen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, Tao Lin. Evan was like, "Tao Lin has an Andy Warhol thing going on," which is true. Intentionally vapid in a way that points to the vapidness (vapidity!) of the culture! Smart.

And for the first sixty pages of this little book, I was super pumped about it. "This is great," I thought. "Nobody writes this simply and directly about complicated things." But by the end I was like, "okay, yes, you write simply and directly about complicated things, and the lack of analysis is basically the point, but that is kind of a thin trick. What am I supposed to take away from this, the idea that modern life is bleak and alienating?"

If you read it as a funny book, it is hilarious, especially to people (like me) who have opinions about people like Lorrie Moore. But to read it as a book that's saying something, it's... I don't know, I think the Arcade Fire and Modest Mouse and Death Cab For Cutie are boring. Could we please turn on the scathing brutal distortion pedals in those bands' music, please? I feel the same way about this book: yes, you're interacting with some emotional truths, and talking about them, but... you're more like acknowledging them than talking about them. You're not really going after them.

So yeah. I still really enjoyed it, and would recommend it, but I would feel weird giving it five stars.

Like I did to the Spawn Armageddon Collection. Star ratings are kind of arbitrary, huh?

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

as i see it, there are a few slightly contradictory ways to interpret this book...

one way would be to see it as some kind of updated, facebook-era existential absurdist tome - like kafka or beckett with text-messaging. or you can take the opposite approach, and see it as a twee, miranda july-ish attempt to capture the awkwardness and vulnerability of 20-something vernacular. or you could pull pack a bit, and look at it as a mostly formal exercise in the rhythms of conversational language, with description, emotion, atmosphere and context emptied out in favor of some sort of musical meter, a la kenneth goldsmith. finally, you can take the bait implied by the title, and applaud/condemn lin for capturing the fundamental vapidity of hipster culture. after all, it name-drops the holy trinity of hipster-hater-dom: american apparel, williamsburg and vice magazine.

it's probably a mixture of all of the above, i suppose. and i don't think it does any of the above particularly successfully. stylized nothingness is a well-worn approach to experimental art-making, and i'm not sure lin is really pushing the envelope by incorporating the language of cell phones and social networks. i'm also not exactly the right audience - i'm 35, i've never been all that impressed by existentialism, or "the new sincerity" for that matter, i don't hate hipsters, i don't think people 10 to 15 years younger than me are any more "empty" than i was back in the day and i've had enough life experiences to work out the aimless excesses of my own ennui.

[Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure how to review this interesting, unusual work of seemingly semi-autobiographical fiction. The work follows the mundane everyday life of Sam, an unfocused vegan writer who bums about New York City (and occasionally elsewhere) shoplifting, drinking Synergy brand kombucha, chatting with friends on Gmail, and indulging in painfully self-conscious irony (he jokes about buying a "Spicy Chicken Sandwich from Wendy's," and then not eating it). I have to say, "Shoplifting from American Apparel is one of the most concentrated slices of the life of my generation that I've yet seen put to paper. Lin's distinct style, as short and terse as a Twitter update yet also redolent of modern 20-something culture, deals with banal hipster tropes via a backdrop of almost overdone literacy. An interesting and heady mix that are equal parts vapid and brilliant. A quick and breezy read, I definitely enjoyed "Shoplifting from American Apparel," while it lasted. The novella is definitely a neglected form of literature, and one that Lin owned in this work- any longer, however, and its idiosyncrasies may have caught up with it, causing the work to become nearly unbearably self-referential. In any case, I am definitely interested in reading more of Tao Lin's work to see if I can form a more coherent idea of his style.

[michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

everyone is still sad and vegan and I still don't care

[Cammi · Rating 2 out of 5]

would like to know what exactly i was thinking 8 years ago when i told everyone this was my favorite book

[Charlotte Dann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I find 'flirting with life's purpose' and his blunt style quite alluring and BEE-ish, but this was pretty drab, especially compared to Taipei which was rather charming in its despondency.

[Schuyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's easy to read Lin and conclude that he writes about nothing. I mean, that's what I was thinking half the time. But what is behind the 'nothing'. And what do I mean by 'nothing', because clearly he's writing about something. 'Nothing' is really a representation of the current twenty something generation (of which I am a part) that spends way too much time on their Macbooks (this is a Macbook on which I am typing)and talking on Gchat (of which I am also guilty...guilty? Why do I say guilty?).

The principle character is Sam, and from what I gather, Sam is a representation of Tao Lin, mostly because he said so on the inside book flap. Sam wanders through his life, "goalless", working his vegan restaurant job, going to parties, occasionally kissing girls, and yes, shoplifting from American Apparel (and not being very good at it). So. This is my generation. And I see some of myself in Sam; the goallessness, the ebb and flow of depression, the wandering, the estrangement from others.

Ultimately, SFAP left me feeling worn out. It didn't make me feel less alone because I had found someone else leading a similarly disillusioned life. It didn't make me feel motivated to change my circumstances. It didn't make me feel hope or even despair. It just left me feeling tired and ordinary. I think his writing style had a lot to do with the overall sense of exhaustion. And I can see that's how Lin's environment and life translates itself onto the page. He writes like he is looking at the world through the lens of a robot from a distant planet who happens to find himself moving through modern America. A robot that drinks a lot of smoothies. And not a clunky robot...a robot like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Ya know, like, a highly advanced robot.

I will probably read a little more of Tao Lin to get a better perspective on his writing but Shoplifting From American Apparel gave me a pretty good idea about what I'm in for. And if he ever comes across this review, which it's very possible he might, I say to him, Tao, this is just my weak human opinion. My brain moves slowly compared to your advanced robot brain. Disregard all of the above.

Stop Smiling Magazine has an interview with him. I think I'm gonna go and read that. Bye.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just this morning NPR broadcaster Lynn Neary opined that ebooks and online mobile reading will make writers and readers of traditional books less central to the important intellectual challenges being debated today. Since most ebooks are simply a repackaging of "traditional" books, I question that assertion, but it did make me take another look at Tao Lin's Shoplifting from American Apparel . It occured to me that the style, which hasn't a strong narrative thread but is bits of thought, hints, strings of conversations, emails, phone calls, feints and misdirection, all force us to imagine, devise a "point", and visualize, perhaps in ways that we have not with more heavily burdened fiction. Traditional storytellers create a world, peopled with characters, padded with description and narrative and plot, and may take our autonomy and creativeness from us. Tao Lin has chosen threads for us to follow, and indicates a direction. This particular book has a friendly, hapless main character, Sam, who has his heart in the right place, clearly, but seems to circle the "point" rather aimlessly.

"He stopped grinning and stared at different things while people around him worked. 'I feel tired of life,' he said out loud. 'I don't feel like working anymore.'"

However confused and sophomoric our picaresque hero may be, we find ourselves signing up to follow his tweets.

[Andrew]

I'd read some of Tao Lin's short stories before and was really impressed. The sort of mumblecore, nonchalant style is quite applicable to our day and age and what I think of as my generation (caveat: it is kind of stupid and superficial to ascribe certain qualities to one's own generation, but here we are). I'm not sure how it works across the sustain of a novel. I suppose it was mildly amusing. While I liked the fact that the opening section was all in Gmail chat, he made it kind of boring and false. I suppose the rest of the book seemed more true to the sort of attitudes of early 21st Century slackerdom, but still, meh. Wait until this fucker starts getting sold in the "book" section at Urban Outfitters, and then steal one yourself-- in addition to keeping true to the title, it's also a lot easier to shoplift from Urban Outfitters than American Apparel.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it must be ridiculously hard to write this simply and make it endurable. I actually didn't quite connect with the ending as much as the rest of the book; once he met Audrey it sort of veered off in a different direction than the one it had seemed to be heading in.
I think this might be because I read an alternate ending that he posted a link to on his blog or something, so the character of Audrey and the role she played were foreshadowed and so felt a little less genuine.

It was just so refreshing to read a book written in a style that isn't verbose and lyrical, and that isn't a rich study of the human condition, fundamentally moving and rewarding.
I mean, I think this might be those things, but Lin didn't take 863 pages to do it in.