Writes J. Howard Rosier in "The Indignity of Grocery Shopping/In her latest work to be translated into English, Annie Ernaux examines the malaise of the modern supermarket" (The Atlantic).
"In the latest of her books to be translated into English, Annie Ernaux, the 2022 Nobel laureate in literature, takes the big-box store as her subject.... Though she’s not without empathy, Ernaux is brutal in her appraisal of other customers.... Everyone has a place in the store, so long as they know their place in the store. Ernaux spotlights the considerations that people—especially those on the margins—make when engaging in the mundane, necessary action of grocery shopping... Contrasting a stray shopping list left in a cart with one’s own, as Ernaux does, might strike some simply as nosiness; but seeing oneself in another’s choices is radical in its quiet way...."
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72 comments:
Talk about anxiety, all these important stories locked behind paywalls! The ever-fascinating scene of First-World Problems that most people would die to have.
The "indignity" of being able to have your nutritional requirements met. Good God, we have reached end times for Western Civilization, when abundance and a life undreamed of by every king and pasha throughout history is considered oppressive.
Decadence doesn't begin to describe that mindset, which of course is infecting elites first. Forget farce. This is tragedy.
Grocery shopping in France must be different.
I photograph grocery lists left in the cart I pick up
2016
2018
doesn't happen often.
I have a friend that tells a story of being invisible to the automatic door sensors at the grocery store. He finally had to tailgate behind another shopper to enter the store.
Do people really pay (the Atlantic) for such belly-button gazing??
,,, but seeing oneself in another’s choices is radical in its quiet way …
A quiet radical? Now there’s an oxymoron for you!
"Ernaux spotlights the considerations that people—especially those on the margins—make when engaging in the mundane, necessary action of grocery shopping"
Coke or Pepsi? Chips or beer? Frosted flakes or raisin bran? Ah, the indignity of choice! The malaise of cheap food! The temptation of abundance! The dilemma of self-restraint vs. obesity! People on the margins having access to all of it, in a way undreamed of by any ancestors--imagine the anxiety!
Yet another feminist projecting her inadequacies on everyone else.
I expected that this navel-gazing drivel would be written by some wet-eared Millennial who isn't old enough to remember what *any* shopping was like in the 1970s but no, this broad is *82 freaking years old*!
Everybody ate the same damm processed cheese because that's all there was on the shelf back in the day. It is becoming more and more obvious that the people who like to think of themselves as the eye-leets of the world are just really really pissed that the economic miracle of the post-WWII Global Order gave the proles access to the same products and experiences that were once reserved for them and their hangers-on. They really don't care that it has gone to shit on their watch when they aren't actively trying to tear it down with all their fake existential crisises.
The cheese tag has a double meaning.
The poor suffering of the elites. Why do you want to buy the cheese? You’ll eventually have to cut the cheese.
hmmm?
supermarkets
gourmet grocery store.... The prices are so out of her budget
does ANY ONE else see a disparity here? Maybe (JUST MAYBE!) a supermarket and gourmet grocery store;
Are NOT the same thing or place? Anyone following what i'm saying?
IF you can't afford a gourmet grocery store.. where The prices are so out of her budget..
Maybe you should not shop there. At the Quillins grocery in West Union ia, Jacks Frozen pizza's were 3 for $9 this week; and Diet Pepsi was two 12 packs for $10
there were lots of sales,
hot dogs were 79¢ for a package of 12.
If you can't afford food.. Try buying FOOD, not gourmet crap
"Annie Ernaux examines the malaise of the modern supermarket"
After traveling the world and seeing much of how people in other countries shop for food, I both agree and disagree with this premise. Modern American supermarkets offer a spectacular array of goods at - and this is the most important - a very high quality and safety level you won't find hardly anywhere else (thanks to American's litigious nature). The only other place you will find this outside the West is Japan.
But as far as ambience, diversity of products, and freshness you will be hard pressed to find better than an open air market in Chang Mai, Bertioga, or Singapore. Those markets are a feast for the senses and an experience in and of themselves, just make sure you wash everything and inspect it when you get it home. Also make sure it's really dead if it's an animal...nothing quite like phantom noises coming from the kitchen sounding like a midget wrestling a plastic bag to give you WTF moment.
This writer may not have to suffer the indignities for much longer. When a civilization has the time and tendency to complain about things, such as the modern supermarket, that it should be grateful for, then it's probably headed for a fall.
"after all, this is the place where we trade hard-earned money for sustenance."
Apparently, J. Howard Rosier hasn't heard that paying for groceries with hard-earned money -- or even government handouts -- is no longer obligatory.
Oh, for fuck's sake.....
Lots of countries don’t have supermarkets. Could always try one of those.
Like the Soviet model better? I don’t.
…and you had a choice about the inflation. You probably did not choose wisely…
Next time Annie should try Frisco.
The 33 checkout lanes displayed in the Atlantic article are a thing of the past. It takes a cashier to operate each station and to bag groceries speedily in order to stay ahead of long lines at check-out. Now you get a half dozen manual lanes and 27 DIY machines to cut down on labor.
Bob Dylan was on-the-money:
Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon, for the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who that it's namin'
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times, they are a-changin'
Grocery shopping will be a lot less stressful when the only available items are varieties of bugs.
A day's work and hard-earned capital.
The indignity of ordered chaos in the modern supermarket.
"The indignity of Grocery Shopping." Please. So it's not enough to have access to a wide variety of food and other goods that are sold to the consumer in free transactions where, if the prices aren't right, there is, literally, another array of food and goods available for purchase where the prices might be better. But Rosier thinks the transactions must offer dignity.
It's staggering to think how our ancestors would react to having these opportunities brought before them: "Dignity? To heck with that! Those rotisserie chickens both smell and look delicious. $7? Gimme two!"
Sensing a theme here today (ignoring Tara Reade although I could probably weave a connection) starting with the alien observations of humans not knowing there purpose, the Gallup dissatisfaction with the state of the US, yours and Meade’s May mowing endeavors and now the the grocery shopping thing.
As for the grocery shopping- Dual income family here both working from home where I do all the cooking and hence all the grocery shopping. I used to really, really enjoy it as I love seeing something in produce or meat sections and developing a menu in my head, although I’m also getting general victuals. I used to be able to shop for the week but with supply chain issues, anything fresh is marginal so I now shop multiple times a week. Not nearly as enjoyable but still fun.
I’ll often see something I hadn’t cooked in awhile and make it a repeat for a bit (the latest has been roasted pork tenderloins) or with a recent span that included the wife’s birthday, our anniversary, Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, I’ve gotten outside the routine.
Not sure about anxiety; parking is a pain but with a large 4x4 pick up, I always park at the back and usually next to the cart drop off (yes… I return carts!). But I do experience a tad bit of depression over the fairly staggering price increases due to inflation. We are upper middle income but even the considerable price increases on staples bite into discretionary spending. The what and the way I *prefer* to cook has definitely changed and in some cases exceeded the break even for going out to a higher end restaurant.
Can’t get past the paywall so my comments are general. On the one hand the book is probably a fascinating commentary on something most think mundane yet unavoidable; on the other, it’s likely immaterial except to the types that like to read the Atlantic and and validate their biases towards the deplorable
"Contrasting a stray shopping list left in a cart with one’s own, as Ernaux does, might strike some simply as nosiness; but seeing oneself in another’s choices is radical in its quiet way...."
Sounds like somebody needs to find a better hobby.
"People on the margins having access to all of it, in a way undreamed of by any ancestors--imagine the anxiety!"
Not to worry, governments all across the world are working to remedy that. The access, not the anxiety.
From the article:
"Though she’s not without empathy, Ernaux is brutal in her appraisal of other customers.... Everyone has a place in the store, so long as they know their place in the store."
More like brutal presumption. She's imaging what life would be like in the collective community gardens. Low social credit score? Low quality produce for you.
The great comic Lord Buckley was complaining about this back in the 50s Supermarkets made you do all the work.
Especially pushing the cart
https://youtu.be/mEPWCx-KmjU
John LGKTQ Henry
How many types of lettuce do we need, anyway?
"I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain my big box store to a woman who rises and shops among the wide array of choices I provide and then questions the manner in which others enjoy it."
Too many labels force excess judgments that induces a state of forward-looking stress... and breathe.
I believe that lefties demonize supermarkets because they must justify the rotten shopping choices in the urban areas that they have convinced themselves to love. They are like abused spouses in their failure to visualize and seek a better way to live.
I used to work with a lovely Russian refugee who could not get over the abundance and freedom of the normal suburban supermarket.
I just wish I could "like" comments on here! I really enjoy reading them and would like to express my gratitude!
this is the nobel prize winner who excused the assasination of an Americann army officer,
This article reminds me of the time Bernie, surveying the stock in the personal hygiene section of a supermarket, asked "Why 29 brands of deodorant? Who needs more than one or two?"
People like this article's author and Bernie would have been ecstatic shopping in a 1972 Romanian state store, but it would be unwise for them to try to convince shoppers there or in Havanna, Caracas or Port-au-Prince or any other third world shithole of their great good fortune to enjoy the consumer experience characteristic of all socialist states.
I'm not sure I've ever seen sliding doors at a supermarket.
Euro stores are weird. I'll take a rural 7-11 anytime. With pop dispenser and lots of ice.
Why the hell would ANYONE click on a link to that garbage?
To think someone wrote this drivel and someone else edited it and then another someone actually decided to print this.
Exactly who are these people?
Annie's currently working on an autobiography in which she details the 17 distinct personalities she's had living inside her as a result of the traumatic experience of having to decide which haricots verts to purchase at the local farmer's market.
Ever since the fall of the Roman Empire, it's been just about impossible to find honeyed hummingbird tongues. Just about every other food has gotten progressively cheaper and better during my lifetime. I can't understand what she's bitching about....I find my supermarket trip as reassuring and comforting as a baby finds hiss trip to his mother's breast. I don't even need a shopping list. I can rely on muscle memory to guide me to the proper choices. My only recommendation for improvement is that supermarkets should install vomitoriums for when they have sales on processed foods.
One of my sailing friends used to call Whole Foods, "Whole Paycheck."
The malaise of abundance. Socialism is the cure for that.
https://twitter.com/Ogiel23/status/1663742408020971521?s=20
The 33 checkout lanes displayed in the Atlantic article are a thing of the past. It takes a cashier to operate each station and to bag groceries speedily in order to stay ahead of long lines at check-out. Now you get a half dozen manual lanes and 27 DIY machines to cut down on labor.
Not at HEB in Texas, but then Texas is a right to work state that doesn’t artificially inflate minimum wage to price out human labor from entry level jobs. Maybe if you supported free markets; you would have nice things too.
I love grocery stores and supermarkets, and I look forward to visiting them in other places here and abroad.
She's an asshole.
Thanks, Joe Biden!
"Meantime life outside goes on
All around you"
"... its high stakes can also provoke anxiety—after all, this is the place where we trade hard-earned money for sustenance.
(a) not sure getting paid for writing this kind of drivel counts as "hard-earned money..."
(b) for the vast majority of human history, food meant chasing down a wild animal at great personal risk, killing it, skinning and dismembering it while fighting off the vultures and whatnot, building a fire to cook it, and eating it; in more recent history, it meant clearing a ton of land, plowing it, planting seeds that had been gathered for most of our agricultural period by hand, finding some way to water it and/or praying for rain, weeding it, protecting it from wildlife, harvesting it, storing it so that hopefully there would be some only slightly-rotten bits left late in winter, and milling it into wheat to then make into bread. Now somebody else (whom is treated with utter disdain by the likes of The Atlantic) does all that for you.
(c) wait 'til she discovers that the somebody else doing that for her is almost always a man...
I’m sure the indignity can be blamed on racism, white privilege and/or climate change. Alternatively we might just conclude that the author of this screed in mentally Ill.
I'm glad I'm not going to suffer the indignity of reading it.
Everything, everything is all wrong. Life a misery. I need a gauloises
Oh, bugger off, you English major half wit. The real price of food (not to mention quality and variety) is lower than at any time in human history. The modern American supermarket would have seemed like a dream to someone living 100 years ago. For most of human history, people lived in terror of starvation.
Now we worry about malaise. God help us.
I liked walking home from work and picking up a baguette and a fish, and some vegetables on the way home. No inventory in the fridge to rot out. But now I work at home, so, call in a delivery from Pete's once a week, and get over age salad and fat filled "choice" steaks delivered!
Drive to the store, go to a restaurant??? Ha Ha Ha I need both my car and my life. This is Chicago.
I'll be off to Texas, Az, or Florida in a few years. Madison sounds good but I still remember Fassnacht's death long ago.
MichaelK - I define being "well to do" in the USA as being able to purchase cheese at Whole Foods without horror at the price.
I go to three different stores - one for meat that hasn't been watered; one for fruits and vegetables that haven't been dropped and bruised and gluten free bread; and one supermarket for everything else. I've worked in retail and I don't think American customers get put in a rigid hierarchy based solely on buying power. In this country there's millions who have no idea what they are looking at because they're immigrants and millions more who have the whole system figured out in relation to a husband/wife and children. Who knows what they really think? And there's rude - the curse of retail in America - to throw in the mix.
Europe is still pretty hierarchical; I think they'd be judgy if we were digging roots and eating insects.
"Ernaux is brutal in her appraisal of other customers..." So basically the upscale version of 'Making Fun of the WalMart Weirdos'?
Thirty years back, we were visitd by a couple from Latvia. Their country was then still under the Soviet yoke, so they were eager to learn what America was really like.
We showed them the sights, took them to nice restaurants, and all that, but what they really wanted to see was a typical American supermarket. We took them a half-mile up the road to our local Roche Brothers Market.
They were staggered, by the sheer variety of food, especially the meats, poultry and seafood, and the fresh fruit and vegetables from all over the world on display...and for sale.
We went into a few other stores to demonstrate that ours was nothing special. They
were astounded by the distribution system that got foods literally from everywhere to the stores in careful inventory control to see them with minimal waste. For example, bananas in February (vs. NO bananas anywhere ever in Riga.)
So I'm sure they would be astonished to read and affluent whiny white woman's complaints about supermarkets!!! And in the New York Times!!
All I know is that $125 bought me a lot more two years ago in the grocery store. I bought potatoes, celery and chicken legs for dinner. Why? Because that's all I could afford to.
I can no longer find a live link, but it is necessary for that author to find and read Bill Whittle's essay comparing a 7-11 to the pyramid of Cheops.
This is one of the times I'm so glad I read all the comments. Thanks to all of you. Good laughs.
Why the hell would ANYONE click on a link to that garbage?
To think someone wrote this drivel and someone else edited it and then another someone actually decided to print this.
Exactly who are these people?
Sadly, voters.
One of the oddest stores I visited was in Paris.
A step down structure with a guy strolling around announcing whatnot via his wireless mic. Might have been some good deals. Dunno.
I went to King Arthur’s in Norwich once, w/friends. That’s about as gourmet as I’ve ever gotten.
When I was younger, I’d always come home from “town” after shopping w/a migraine. I’m not unsociable, but I’m hyper aware, I guess. Stimuli sensitive. I only get tired, now.
Why do they have to change labels? It’s such a pain looking for the familiar and finding it in another outfit.
And I’ve been shopping for my Mom, too. 2carts- 2checkouts- bagging(remembering the bags!)
But, it’s a small city compared to anywhere else, so that’s a blessing.
Gourmet, huh?
Good for her.
paminwi said...
Why the hell would ANYONE click on a link to that garbage?
To think someone wrote this drivel and someone else edited it and then another someone actually decided to print this.
Exactly who are these people?
5/31/23, 12:44 PM
It's the 'next generation' that believes they have discovered a new thing. Nothing new has been invented for the past 10 years. I often see such articles and have deja vu feelings: didn't we talk about this twenty years ago?
Michael said...
"Everything, everything is all wrong. Life a misery. I need a gauloises"
merde
Moan all you want about shopping ennui, angst and malaise, I say that the success of "Fun Size" Snickers marked the end of Western civilization.
Klaus Schwab would be more than happy to relieve you of the burden of all that choice. The author is tickled to be able to assist him.
Best stories about Supermarkets are: John Updike's short story "A&P" and the song "Lost In The Supermarket" by the Clash.
I did consider that no grocery could survive on me recently. Doing one-meal-a-day and low(ish) carb, I buy ground beef, butter, broccoli, coffee. Most things in the store I consider "poison" in that they are high carb.
But I didn't feel something was wrong with the store or other customers.
Back in the mid-1990s, living in Seattle, I went hard core Adkins, as keto/low carb was known at the time. Once in the smallish neighborhood grocery, I did have momentary fear someone was going to start yelling at me as I walked about with my bacon, butter, and other "bad" things in my basket.
The larger new grocery, near UW, had a big Starbucks in the corner to the right as you came in from the parking lot and a massive bakery on the left. I was almost overwhelmed by the stench of sugar when I went in once when I was hardcore on the no-carb Adkins. To me, that just showed our addiction to sugar that we don't notice it.
John Henry @12:02
"You tryin' to hip me the king of the dip what the lick is?"
Thanks for the mention. The great LB.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and his wife Raisa, arrived in Minnesota on June 3rd, 1990, immediately after a summit meeting with President George Bush. They took him to the Byerly's in St. Louis Park, a grocery store that had everything from dragon fruit and pineapples to crawfish and caviar. Gorbachev's initial impression was that it was a Potemkin grocery store.
One has to be pretty well of to bitch about the horrors of grocery shopping.
"The prices are so out of her budget that she has to give herself a pep talk before buying anything. 'I mean, I work all the time,' she mutters. 'This is why I work, isn’t it? I’m a hard worker. I can buy this cheese. It’s just cheese, I guess.' But it’s not just cheese....""
Yes. The fact that you can't buy everything available is proof-positive that social injustice is real. Or as Marie Antionette allegedly said, "Laissez-les manger la croûte du fromage."
Seriously. I can eat well on ten dollars a day. Extremely well in fact. Everything from homemade ghormeh sabzi to beef pho to sausage arrabiata to Greek salads...
After pondering this a little, I do think there is some indignity while grocery shopping. You experience it if you take the time to read some of the insipid marketing on the packages of processed food. The onslaught of marketing is the indignity. Further, I know more than I care to know about celebrities simply due to the screaming headlines on magazines sold near the cash register.
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