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Title details for Arbitrary Stupid Goal by Tamara Shopsin - Available

Arbitrary Stupid Goal

by Tamara Shopsin
Tamara Shopsin
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available

"Arbitrary Stupid Goal is a completely riveting world—when I looked up from its pages regular life seemed boring and safe and modern like one big iPhone. This book captures not just a lost New York but a whole lost way of life." —Miranda July
In Arbitrary Stupid Goal, Tamara Shopsin takes the reader on a pointillist time-travel trip to the Greenwich Village of her bohemian 1970s childhood, a funky, tight-knit small town in the big city, long before Sex and the City tours and luxury condos. The center of Tamara's universe is Shopsin's, her family's legendary greasy spoon, aka "The Store," run by her inimitable dad, Kenny—a loquacious, contrary, huge-hearted man who, aside from dishing up New York's best egg salad on rye, is Village sheriff, philosopher, and fixer all at once. All comers find a place at Shopsin's table and feast on Kenny's tall tales and trenchant advice along with the incomparable chili con carne.
Filled with clever illustrations and witty, nostalgic photographs and graphics, and told in a sly, elliptical narrative that is both hilarious and endearing, Arbitrary Stupid Goal is an offbeat memory-book mosaic about the secrets of living an unconventional life, which is becoming a forgotten art.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 18, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781427292490
      • File size: 112980 KB
      • Duration: 03:55:22

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from June 5, 2017
      Shopsin (Mumbai New York Scranton) weaves a marvelous patchwork quilt of stories about a Manhattan that doesn't exist anymoreâthat of 1970s Greenwich Village, where her father opened Shopsin's General Store. Her narrative reads like prose poetry with the rhythm of a jazz song: much of each page is left blank, as if to emphasize the words she doesn't use; the arrangement of her spare, blunt paragraphs conjures vivid pictures throughout ("Channeling photos of old New York with clotheslines strung from every building, I ran one on a hypotenuse from my fire escape to my farthest window"). Shopsin's narrative is decidedly nonlinear: she bounces among stories of her father's best friend Willoughby; working in her parents' store-cum-restaurant; taking trips with her partner, Jason; and the diverse characters from the neighborhood. Shopsin, who now cooks at the restaurant, doesn't shy away from her city's lows, such as the high crime rate at the time, explaining that her father's store got broken into nearly every week. The seemingly disparate tales come together into an artistic ode to a way of life that people now living in New York City might never experience.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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