“We feel snowed under by ‘stuff.’”Īs he set out to research and then write it, he had the book’s skeleton already formed in his mind or, as it were, in his bones. “The theme of the book had been simmering in the depths of my soul for years and years,” says Berton, editor-in-chief of The Hamilton Spectator. And so we, in like manner, shop until we have so much we have to vomit out some stuff, or “deshop” as Berton calls it, but only so that we can shop again. The Romans ate until they threw up so they could eat some more. The book, among other things, induces the feeling of gleefully reading what you think is someone else’s Visa statement and then realizing, no, it’s your own. We go shopping when it’s hot and buy swimming pools, when we’re hungry and buy too much food, or new mattresses when our muscles ache and a hot tub when there’s a sprain. Stories of the obscure and not so rich - we Pavlovian peons who answer even small discomforts with a triggered impulse to shop. Stories of the habits of the rich and famous, such as Frank Stronach buying a 12-storey high statue for $55 million. “Shopomania” is rife with stories and examples that Berton has judiciously gleaned from the all-too-well-documented (and surveillance camera-ed) zombie march that we do through malls, boutiques, yard sales, auctions, car showrooms and real estate open houses, pursuing our “obsession with possession.” These stories leave us laughing with derision and gulping with self-recognition at the same time. Shopping is an often creepy funhouse mirror that throws back images of the shopper that are distorted, grotesque, even frightening and, yes, comical.ĭo we recognize “us” in the portrait this book presents? We have to. Or maybe we just don’t want to believe it. If it weren’t true, no one would believe it. It is certainly a good thing that “Shopomania” is non-fiction. Is it, can it be - what did Martha Stewart used to say? - a good thing? That is the question around which Paul Berton’s new book “ Shopomania” exuberantly spins.
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