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Shannon's Reviews > Shopgirl
Shopgirl
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Edit: 欧宝娱乐 just showed me the following quote from Steve Martin: 鈥淪ome people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.鈥� Heh. I'm gonna go ahead and add that to my review here. Also, I am totes against GIFs/pics in goodreads reviews usually (because USE YOUR WORDS) but I will make an exception (b/c RuPaul and Visage): 
OH, what an utterly FASCINATING look into the totally important and equally fascinating stereotypes regarding heterosexual sexual relationships. Everyone in this book could have died in a fire, and I wouldn't have cared. The girl, I hate her. I refuse to believe this girl is smart, everything she does indicates that she is a complete idiot. But the reader is supposed to accept that she is smart because Steve Martin cleverly includes this in the narration by saying something like "She is smart. She reads books". WOW, NEAT. AND SUBTLE! Plus everyone in this book is really shallow and vapid and obsessed with clothes, which I think is contradictory to the claim of any of these people being intelligent at all. Am I saying that people really interested in fashion can't be intelligent? YES, PRETTY MUCH. The narration is ridiculous. BOO.
Also: this book is about a 50 year old rich white guy fucking a young hot 28 year old. And they made a movie out of it and of course, STEVE MARTIN played the 50 yr old. YOUR PLOY IS TRANSPARENT, MARTIN. I haven't seen the movie, but I actually kind of want to. If this story could ever work, I could see it working as a movie. NOT AS A BOOK, Martin isn't a good enough writer to pull it off.
OH, what an utterly FASCINATING look into the totally important and equally fascinating stereotypes regarding heterosexual sexual relationships. Everyone in this book could have died in a fire, and I wouldn't have cared. The girl, I hate her. I refuse to believe this girl is smart, everything she does indicates that she is a complete idiot. But the reader is supposed to accept that she is smart because Steve Martin cleverly includes this in the narration by saying something like "She is smart. She reads books". WOW, NEAT. AND SUBTLE! Plus everyone in this book is really shallow and vapid and obsessed with clothes, which I think is contradictory to the claim of any of these people being intelligent at all. Am I saying that people really interested in fashion can't be intelligent? YES, PRETTY MUCH. The narration is ridiculous. BOO.
Also: this book is about a 50 year old rich white guy fucking a young hot 28 year old. And they made a movie out of it and of course, STEVE MARTIN played the 50 yr old. YOUR PLOY IS TRANSPARENT, MARTIN. I haven't seen the movie, but I actually kind of want to. If this story could ever work, I could see it working as a movie. NOT AS A BOOK, Martin isn't a good enough writer to pull it off.
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Shopgirl.
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Reading Progress
January 13, 2008
– Shelved
January 13, 2008
– Shelved as:
own
Started Reading
February 25, 2008
–
Finished Reading
February 26, 2008
– Shelved as:
festival-of-suck
February 23, 2012
– Shelved as:
books-by-celebrities
Comments Showing 1-29 of 29 (29 new)
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Mick
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rated it 1 star
Mar 07, 2008 05:07PM
i don't know you, but i love this review. thank you.
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I saw "Everyone in this book could have died in a fire, and I..." and read "Everyone in this book should have died in a fire, and I would have liked to watch." Excellent review, anyway.
Thank you Mick. It's a shitty book, eh?The Tort: I like your reading way better. I may change it.
I haven't read the book, but the movie was on tv one Sunday afternoon(I had it on in the background while doing chores around the house). From your description it was pretty much the same. Your review of the book conveys my feelings regarding the movie!
I quite like the bite in your review. I felt the same way about the book.I watched the movie first, though, and I'll say this - it seems as though the director took this bit of vulgar tripe and somehow turned it into something moderately deep, meaningful, and kind of beautiful.
I think you'd like the characters much better in the movie because they were more fleshed out (especially Jeremy), like real people, and the acting was wonderfully subtle. I didn't care as much for the movie the first time I watched it, several years ago, but watching it again recently, I loved it.
I thought the book was more or less garbage, but it apparently paved the way for a really good movie.
I say give it a try; even though apparently Steve Martin also wrote the screenplay, the director clearly took some matters into his own hands and it was nowhere near as about male fantasy/dirty old men/shallow dumb people as the book. :)
It is ironic that you don't GET IT considering your mastery of capital sarcasm."She is smart. She reads books".
i don't get what you think i don't get. please elaborate in a more serious and clear manner. i am not a sarcastic person. you must have me confused with someone else. it's okay, happens all the time.
Steve Martin is the sarcastic person.
alright, steve martin fan-army. steve martin is a genius and i clearly misjudged him, he's like victor fucking hugo.
I too love your review. Total agreement. Garbo was saying that Steve Martin was being sarcastic about her being smart due to her book-reading habit. However, I think Steve Martin was just being "witty" and was making fun of the idea that book-reading makes a person smart while still claiming that she was smart. In other words, any sarcasm in the expression is sarcasm about the idea itself - he still seemed to want to convey that she was smart.This is more obvious when you hear Steve Martin read it aloud, as I did, in the audiobook version.
Summary: Mirabelle Buttersfield is a silly girl but not as silly as Steve Martin for saying she's not silly.
Good point Michael! I still think everyone is giving Martin too much credit for this sarcasm/not sarcasm/self-aware sarcasm/whatever. I think he is clever... in a comedy-man way. I don't think he is a good fiction author. In my opinion. If he was not Steve Martin, famous dude, I don't think anyone would be eager to publish this book.
I think you missed a good deal of the subtext.
I think you are giving the subtext too much credit.
Agreed. You can read into a text more than is actually there, and make it something better than it is. (Which is a wonderful aspect of the human psyche, so I'm glad you enjoyed the book, Amanda.)
Don't give up on Martin yet- I really liked The Pleasure of My Company much more than Shopgirl.
I loved this review but it makes me want to read the book even more. I guess I have to see if it really sucks for myself. And it's Steve Martin, no matter how pretentious he seems to be as a writer.
I agree with Evan before he started backtracking out of politeness. You seem unwilling to see these characters as anything but their stereotypes, whereas Martin has shown us a peek into the souls and insecurities that have formed them, making them so much more than that. Because you dislike what the characters represent, you discount them altogether. Your prejudice--as shown in your unwillingness to accept fashion-conscious people as intelligent--does not allow you to see deeper. So while I don't mean this to be condescending or inflammatory, I do think you rather missed the point. Which is understandable, as i think this book may only particularly resonate to certain people who have had certain life (and especially romantic) experiences; or, at least, people who are particularly open to the idea that those with different experiences than their own are not by nature interior . Moreover, Steve Martin's anything but pretentious, Patrick. He keeps his voice very simple, actually--as mocked in the example of "She's smart. She reads books." etc--and that's part of what I loved about it. The simplicity allows a vulnerable honesty I very much appreciated. In that way, I do not believe the movie will be as good, because his voice was so much of what iliked about it, but I look forward to seeing it, nonetheless.
That being said, the book was by no means perfect. Jeremy's transition into her Mr. Right at the end didn't quite do it for me. It seemed a bit forced. He still seemed like a phony. But it was still a great read.
Simplicity does not automatically equal vulnerable honesty, and definitely not in this story. Martin presented flat, stereotyped characters. Many readers seem to project more onto the characters, but it isn't actually the narration and storytelling's credit. Also, being "simple" in tone does not mean something can't also be pretentious drivel.
I thought it was very bad. You didn't think so. Okay. Obviously a lot of people's perception of books has to do with their taste, and I'm fine with people enjoying this, or enjoying anything I don't enjoy. Buuuut, nothing about this book is "great" by any stretch of the imagination. That is absolutely a misuse of the word "great". There are many great books and things in the world. This doesn't qualify.
An addition: pretentiousness is equally tied to complexity and simplicity. There is no direct relation.In the case of Shopgirl, it is pretentious because it acts as if the simplicity will lead to something meaningful, but it does not. Peanuts (the comic strip) was able to use simplicity to talk about big issues, but Shopgirl uses simplicity to remove the meaning from the big issues, while wishing it were making an insightful point about them instead.
EDIT: Wow, this review was written in 2008 and we're still discussing? 欧宝娱乐 is a funny place. (I like that things tend to go this way.)
Michael you are exactly right, your above comment is what my review would have said if I was capable/desiring of being polite and concise. And also I just updated my review now and responded to your comment 3 years later. IT NEVER ENDS. GOODREADS 4 LIFE.
I couldn't agree with you any more on this one!
Surely I鈥檓 mistaken. An adamant queer advocate demanding acceptance goes on to say people interested in fashion aren鈥檛 鈥渟mart.鈥� Then goes on to mention the man is white. Like that matters in the plot! Surely, I鈥檓 mistaken...
You said it better than I did.
Congratulations. You managed to expose yourself as racist, heterophobic, prejudiced (the fashion thing), women-depreciating, and the obvious irony/sarcasm of smart comment shows you didn't even get it. Well done!
I love Steve Martin as an actor and comedian, I. think he's absolutely hilarious. I have never read any of his books, and I probably never will. I don't want to destroy what I know and love about him, with weird/mediocre books, of which there are far too many in the world, and life is too short to read shitty books. BUT, your review...is sublime!!!! The fire comment had me laughing out loud so hard, I wanted to throw up!!! Fantastic!!!
