Arbitrary Stupid Goal

Author: Tamara Shopsin

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General Fields

  • : 30.00 NZD
  • : 9781250183910
  • : picador
  • : picador
  • :
  • : 0.3
  • : July 2018
  • : ---length:- '20.8'width:- '13.5'units:- Centimeters
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : Tamara Shopsin
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  • : Paperback
  • : 1
  • :
  • : English
  • : 974.7/1043092 B
  • : 336
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Barcode 9781250183910
9781250183910

Local Description

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STELLA'S REVIEW:
Tamara Shopsin has written a personal and lively memoir about growing up in New York in the 1970s, specifically, about growing up in Greenwich Village in the shadow, or more precisely in the arms, of The Store. The Store was famous in spite of itself, and still is an iconic New York institution. What started solely as a grocer became a restaurant of repute in the 1970s, a place with its very own style and culture and a centre of the conversation, happenings and relationships of a neighbourhood. Tamara’s father Kenny Shopsin was a New York personality running The Store with his partner Eve. The five children grew up on the street and in the restaurant - on the sawdust floor, beside the freezer that gave electric shocks, in the arms of regulars, and under the feet of customers. Each had their shop chores and all chipped in as needed. Tamara Shopsin’s memoir is a homage to New York City, a New York that she sees as under threat from developers, increased housing prices and homogenised culture. It’s a homage to her eccentric father who had his own style, constantly changing the vast menu (especially if a dish became too popular) and making crazy customer rules - rules that made his place even more attractive to some and completely repellent to others: no phones, parties of no more than four people (don’t even try to sneak in with a three and a two and then pretend it is a coincidence), and no copying what someone else has just ordered. You could be a friend for life or blacklisted by putting a foot wrong with Kenny. The book is a homage to friends, family, and the importance of neighbourhood. Shopsin recalls the famous and the ordinary, drawing out the stories of those closest to her, particularly her father’s friend Willy, who in his unusual way sees them all through some sticky situations. There is a fascinating account of the development of the crossword puzzle and Margaret Petherbridge’s role in this at the New York Times. Kenny sometimes submitted puzzles and kept up a correspondence with Margaret over numerous years. There are numerous asides and insights making reading this memoir a delight. Arbitrary Stupid Goal is arranged as small pieces loosely connected, pieces that scoot from present day to a Tamara of age five and back, into times before her birth and retold stories. Over the course of the book she shapes a conversation that gives you an insight to her and her siblings’ childhood, the bohemian nature of The Village, the quirks of her father's cooking practices and temperament, the significance of the seemingly ordinary, and the importance of place. The Store was a meeting place that attracted celebrities, eccentrics and local, a place that accepted people for who they were but brokered no quarter for fakes or demanding clientele. In fact, Kenny feared success (and having to work too hard) and shrugged off reviewers and interviews, even going as far as to tell guidebook publishers that the restaurant had closed or that The Store was now a shoe shop. Tamara Shopsin’s writing style is quirky and idiosyncratic. She writes from the point of view a middle child, a keen observer with an agile mind, the point of view of a woman still very much connected to the place that made such an impact on her. Tamara Shopsin cooks weekends at The Store and is passionate about its legacy and the New York City she believes in. Touchingly personal and endlessly fascinating, this is a memoir which moves from hilarious to tragic and back again in a half a breath.  

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Review:

"Tamara Shopsin's illustrations are instantly recognizable: economical, seemingly simple and straightforward, but always working on a few different levels. Tamara the person is similar: quiet but charming and warm and tough and determined. Now it turns out her prose is the same way: funny and playful but revealing, and making us see the world we thought we knew with fresh eyes." --Christoph Niemann, author of I Lego N.Y.

"Tamara Shopsin's new memoir is hilarious. Just in like the West Village itself, you zigzag along on a fun adventure, never knowing who you are going to meet. What a fun read!" --Amy Sedaris

"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

"Tamara Shopsin's memoir is a funny and absorbing portrait of the city in a grubbier, less corporate incarnation. If you believe, as she does--and I do--that New York is, 'matter-of-fact, the best place on earth, ' then read this book. And if you don't believe that, after you read this book, you will." --Roz Chast

"Tamara Shopsin's new book, Arbitrary Stupid Goal, is a little like a meal at Shopsin's, her family's restaurant. It's got a bit of everything, in a way that shouldn't rightly work but does. . . . [Arbitary Stupid Goal] is the consummate insider's account, a treasure trove of lore, legend, and anecdote, the closest thing to an official history that The Store is likely to get . . . Arbitrary Stupid Goal doesn't wallow, and it doesn't sulk. It is full of the spry, witty spirit of the old Village, the neighborhood's magical realness."--Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker

"Arbitrary Stupid Goal is a scrapbook of a memoir, littered with Shopsin's illustrations and her husband and frequent collaborator Jason Fulford's photography, a labyrinth of memories, bits of family lore, scraps of trivial knowledge, interludes about Shopsin and Fulford's travels, cameos from The Store's many notable customers: Jeff Goldblum, John Belushi, Joseph Brodsky. It's one of those meandering, difficult-to-pin-down books that's all the more charming for being so stubbornly resistant to genre or traditional expectations of narrative."--Julia Felsenthal, Vogue

Refreshingly quirky . . . Rest assured that Arbitrary Stupid Goal is actually neither arbitrary nor stupid. --Heller McAlpin, NPR

Author Biography: Tamara Shopsin is a well-known cook at the distinctly New York City eatery Shopsin's, a New York Times and New Yorker illustrator, and the author of 5 Year Diary and What Is This?, as well as the coauthor of This Equals That and Mumbai New York Scranton. She lives in New York City with her husband.

Description

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.