Reading Response: Shoplifting From American Apparel

          Tao Lin’s novel, Shoplifting from American Apparel is about the life of Sam, a young writer who lives in New York City. The novel is told through the third person narrative. The setting is mostly in New York City with some scenes in Florida. The author uses the events in Sam’s life to reflect on society. Similar to us, Sam lives in the world of technology, social networking, and texting.  The purpose of the internet and social networking is to interact with other people and bring society together. However, this seems to be different for Sam’s case. He uses social networking as a tool to create relationships and block himself from interacting with other people outside the world.  Even though he has many friends and is in many relationships, Sam lives in loneliness, insecurity and holds a meaningless life. Sam says, “Do you sometimes look up from the computer and look around the room and know you are alone, I mean really know it, and then feel scared” (17). The way Sam spends most of his time is wasteful. Even though he is a writer, he doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time writing. His time is mostly spent on sleeping, drinking soymilk, vegan foods, Gmail chat, shoplifting, and going to jail. 

          In my opinion, Sam has a weird personality. There are many scenes that portray his weirdness. One of them is when he is curious about the smell of burning hair and uses Kaitlyn’s hair to experiment on a candle. Another scene is when he forces himself to fall sleep again after 20 hours of sleeping just because he was bored and did not have anything to do. Also, he still decided to steal the shirt regardless of someone watching him in the American Apparel store.Another criticism of society Lin brings up is the use of brands and logo names. Throughout the novel there are many brands and logos that are mentioned. These included Kmart, Duane Reade, American Apparel, Starbucks, McDonalds and NYPD. People are obsessed with logo names. There is a scene when a drunken guy claimed that he got punched at Starbucks and then changed to McSorley’s. However, he actually beat a homeless person in Tompkins Square Park. The drunken guy uses Starbucks and McSorley’s names because he wants to look cool as one of them is a famous coffee company and another is an oldest Irish tavern in New York City.

           Lin’s Shoplifting from American Apparel, Warhol’s the philosophy of Andy Warhol, and Mohammad’s “Excessivism” have a similar relationship between their works. One of the thing that I have noticed that Lin has writing style similar to Warhol as both of them write in simple writing styles with everyday words. Lin also has writing style similar to Mohammad as the events in both authors’ works tend to jumping around and have discontinued events. One of the themes that similar to all three works is the illustration of postmodernism and satire in today’s society. One of them is the obsession with things, brands and logos. We live in the society where people buy things because of their brands. People tend to choose to buy or use famous logo names than no brand things. This is similar to Sam’s situation as he risks his life for a brand name shirt and earphones which led him to steal and be put in jail. I do agree that people are obsessed with brands. Every day I see many people use brand named shoes or carry brand named bags. Even in Lehman College, I still see people drinking Starbucks drinks in class even though they are more expensive than other drinks.