"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 Tamara Shopsin grew up in Shopsin's, and
Arbitrary Stupid Goal is her new, 'no-muss memoir, ' is at once charming and sorrowing, a magnificent time-capsule containing the soul of a drowned city. –Cory Doctorow,
Boing Boing Shopsin is Bukowski-esque in her blunt yet poetic language, in her ability to build a world that you can feel in your bones, in her depiction of its characters. –Amanda Kludt,
Eater A taut, warm, fully immersive plunge into the West Village of the '80s and '90s –Jeff Johnson,
The Awl Shopsin's mom and dad, proprietors of a beloved Greenwich Village market, gave the key to regulars for after-hours shopping emergencies. Here their author-cook-designer daughter shares memories of those days, accompanying her stories with charming illustrations that conjure a bygone New York. –
People
[Shopsin] weaves a marvelous patchwork quilt of stories about a Manhattan that doesn't exist anymore . . [
Arbitrary Stupid Goal is] an artistic ode to a way of life that people now living in New York City might never experience. –
Publishers Weekly (Pick of the Week, Starred Review)
A warm evocation of a quirky life and exuberant times. –
Kirkus
