Shopping In Space

by Elizabeth Young, Graham Caveney

Over the last ten years America has produced the most innovative, radical, fresh fiction in the world - fiction that is an accurate reflection of contemporary urban life and the sensibilities of a new generation. Books like Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City and Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero have caused controversy, been immense popular and commercial successes, and made their authors as famous as pop stars. But once these books became hits the media dismissed the writers and their work as mere products of hype. There has not, in America, been any serious critical discourse on what the work means.

Now two young British critics, Elizabeth Young and Graham Caveney, offer an incisive, provocative commentary on these writers, who, they argue, represent a significant shift in contemporary American literature. Starting with the work of McInerney, Ellis, and Tama Janowitz and continuing through that of Mary Gaitskill, Michael Chabon, Dennis Cooper, Lynne Tillman, David Wojnarowicz, and others, Young and Caveney utilize a combination of cultural analysis and literary criticism that reveals these books to be illuminating critiques, not merely products, of a society shaped by consumer capitalism and media saturation. This, they argue, is the fiction of firsthand experience - it arises from within postmodern culture and, in content as well as style, demonstrates an absolute mastery of the semiotic codes (pop music, television, advertising) that compose our society.

Shopping in Space is an important book of literary and cultural commentary. E. M. Forster once said that what literature can do that objective history cannot is render "the buzz of implication" of an era. This fiction - of urban depravity and moral decay, of sexual excess and simulation - certainly render the buzz of our times.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction

280 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1992

About the author

Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
Elizabeth Jesse Young was a London-based literary critic and author, who wrote principally on cult writers for a range of British newspapers and magazines. In particular she championed transgressive fiction, for which she received some criticism in the press, not least for her defence of A. M. Homes' The End of Alice, which dealt with themes of paedophilia from what was seen as an uncomfortably neutral perspective.

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Young received a Calvinist education in her parents' native Scotland, before discovering at the age of 11 the works of Nelson Algren, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. The enduring fascination with the Beats was to stay with her. Before becoming a literary critic she worked in Compendium Books in Camden Town and was noted for her Goth appearance. In addition to literary criticism, Young's attraction to the counterculture saw her pen articles on drugs, music and pornography. She also appeared as Ray Gange's girlfriend in Rude Boy, the 1980 film about a roadie for The Clash.

Young acted as a champion for the US cult scene, with authors such as Bret Easton Ellis, Dennis Cooper and A. M. Homes receiving regular praise in her reviews. She also promoted the early talents of Poppy Z. Brite. In 1992, she and Graham Cavaney published Shopping in Space: Essays on American 'Blank Generation' Fiction (Serpent's Tail), which dealt extensively with the US literary underground, from Joel Rose to grindhouse movies. In terms of UK writers, she acted as an enthusiastic supporter of the talents of Stewart Home, Alasdair Gray, Alan Warner and Irvine Welsh.

In 2001, Young died from Hepatitis C. Later that year, a selection of her reviews and articles were collated in a volume published by Serpent's Tail, Pandora's Handbag, for which friend Will Self penned the introduction.

Reviews

[Meike]

Read the essay on Dennis Cooper (which deals with Closer and Frisk) and enjoyed how Young relates his works to Georges Bataille, Marquis de Sade, and Jean Genet, but overall, it remains a little shallow.

[Rachel Louise Atkin]

If my soul was taken out of my body and turned into a book then this would be it.

Edit: just read this in full and think it’s so brilliant for my research area. It’s my absolute favourite essay collection and I love the writers as well as the novelists they discuss. Just perfect.

[Cecilie Larsen]

Jeg har kun læst enkelte kapitler til mit speciale omkring "American Psycho", men de var værd at læse! Young skrev en af de første analyser af "American Psycho", og hun kommer med nogle interessante observationer i hendes analyse af værket.

[Abby]

Did definitely skim through this, mostly because I haven’t read many of the authors and wouldn’t have appreciated the analysis. Did love the chapters on Bret Easton Ellis and the ‘Ultravixens’ chapter though.

[tobias]

didn’t read the whole thing but i’ve decided i read enough to count it towards my reading goal

the american psycho chapter is one of my favorite bits of literary criticism i’ve had to read this semester hence the 3 stars

[Wendy Liu]

a really nice unexpected find at the last bookstore in la

[Alison]

I bought this book at a used book sale in the auditorium of the student center at my old University. I think I paid a quarter for it, maybe fifty-cents. I bought this in the mid-nineties, at point too soon for 80s nostalgia and prior to the brief revival of Bret Easton Ellis as fodder for film in the late 90's/early 2000s.

The best thing about this book is that it led me to Catherine Texier, Dennis Cooper and Mary Gaitskill (and their very, very naughty books about not always pleasing sex with bad people). Also to the now-much-more-famous Michael Chabon, whose "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" is still one of my favorite first novels.

Otherwise, this book is largely inessential.