a book
Arbitrary Stupid Goal
Tamara Shopsin · 2017 · 336 pages
One of The New Yorker's Books We Loved in 2017
"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.
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Austin Kleon
“This is another illustrated story of a childhood, although a very different one, depicting 1970s Greenwich Village and Shopsin’s upbringing with her brothers and sisters in their parents’ grocery store and restaurant. The ‘arbitrary stupid goal’ of the title is a bit of the unconventional practice and wisdom of her father (the legendary Kenny Shopsin), which is sprinkled throughout the book. Reading ASG gives me the same jolt I get when I read something like Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions: ‘I didn’t know a book was allowed to do this!'”↗