Shopgirl
Steve Martin, 2000
Hyperion
160 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781401308278
Summary
From the comic genius of Steve Martin comes a contemporary fable of life an love from the point of view of a shopgirl behind the glove counter at Neiman Marcus.
Mirabelle, a semi-glamourous young woman who is making her way through the romantic jungles of Beverly Hills/Los Angeles, is an aspiring artist who prides herself on her clothing aesthetic. Unfortunately, she doesn't always have the best taste in men. When she meets a young Turk named Jeremy, whose idea of a great second date is a visit to the Laundromat, she sees him through a haze of prozac and other anti-depressants, and through the prism of her own poor self-esteem.
But then she meets Ray Porter and thinks he could be her Knight in Shining Armor. In fact, he does turn out to be a worldly, rich gentleman who is a kindly and even exciting lover, but he never really takes Mirabelle seriously. T
ogether, Mirabelle, Ray, Jeremy, and a few other suporting characters populate this insightful piece that is sometimes quirky, sometimes comic, and sometimes languid as a summer day. (From the publisher.)
The 2005 film, adapted from the novella, stars Steve Martin, Clare Danes, and Jason Schwartzman.
Author Bio
• Birth—August 14, 1945
• Where—Waco, Texas USA
• Raised—Orange County, California
• Education—B.A., University of California, L.A.
• Awards—2 Emmy Awards; 2 Grammy Awards;
Life Time Achievement–American Comedy Awards
• Currently—lives in Beverly Hills, California
"If Woody Allen is the archetypal East Coast neurotic, Steve Martin is the ultimate West Coast wacko," Maureen Orth wrote for Newsweekin 1977. At the time, Martin was a star on the standup comedy circuit, known for his nose glasses, bunny ears and sudden attacks of "happy feet." More than 20 years later, the idea that the two are counterparts still seems apt: Like Woody Allen, Steve Martin has gone from comedy writer and performer to scriptwriter, director, playwright and book author. But while Woody Allen's transformation from angst-ridden intellectual into Bergman-inspired auteur was something fans might have anticipated, who would have guessed that the wild and crazy guy with the arrow through his head harbored a passion for philosophy, art and literature?
Early years
Growing up in Orange County, California, Martin worked afternoons, weekends and summers at Disneyland, where he learned to do magic tricks, make balloon animals and perform vaudeville routines. By the time he was 18, he was performing at Knott's Berry Farm while attending junior college. He was a bright but unenthusiastic student until a girlfriend (and her loan of Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge) inspired him to transfer to Long Beach State and major in philosophy. There, he delved into metaphysics, semantics and logic before concluding that he was meant for the arts. He transferred again, to the theater department at UCLA, and started performing comedy in local clubs. Truth in art, he later said, "can't be measured. You don't have to explain why, or justify anything. If it works, it works. As a performer, non sequiturs make sense, nonsense is real." (Aha -- there was a philosophical impulse behind those bunny ears.)
Career
After a string of successful T.V. comedy-writing gigs, Martin got back into performing, and a few years later, he was landing spots on "The Tonight Show" and guest-hosting "Saturday Night Live," where he performed his famous King Tut routine. His first album, Let's Get Small, won a Grammy and was the best-selling comedy album of 1977. His first book, Cruel Shoes, was a collection of comic vignettes with titles like "How to Fold Soup" and "The Vengeful Curtain Rod." And his starring role in The Jerk kicked off a highly successful film career that includes more than 20 hit movies, including Roxanne and L.A. Story, both of which Martin wrote and directed.
Early on, critics classed Steve Martin with comedians like Martin Mull and Chevy Chase—goofy white guys whose slapstick comedy had no overt political message, though it might have a postmodern touch of self-critique. But Martin kept scaling the heights of absurdity until he'd reached an altitude all his own. Beginning in 1994, he took two years off from movie acting to concentrate on his writing. The result was Picasso at the Lapin Agile, a surreal comedy about Picasso and Einstein that won critical and popular acclaim: "More laughs, more fun and more delight than anything currently on the New York stage," raved The New York Observer.
Though Martin went back to the movies, he also kept on writing, turning out several more plays and a series of ingeniously demented essays for The New Yorker and The New York Times, many of which are collected in book form in Pure Drivel. Then, in 2000, he surprised readers with his bestselling book Shopgirl, a tender, insightful novella about a Neiman Marcus clerk and her two suitors. These days, Martin is recognized as a "gorgeous writer capable of being at once melancholy and tart, achingly innocent and astonishingly ironic" (Elle). He's also been tapped to host ceremonies for the prestigious National Book Awards. It seems the man who once defined comedy as "acting stupid so other people can laugh" is in fact one of the smartest guys ever to emerge from L.A.
Extras
• As a stand-up comedian on "The Tonight Show", Martin was demoted to guest-host nights for a while because Johnny Carson didn't think his act — which could include reading from the phone book or telling jokes to four dogs onstage — was funny.
• After he became nationally famous as a comedian, Martin joked that his new wealth had allowed him to buy "some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks, got a fur sink ... let's see ... an electric dog-polisher, a gasoline-powered turtleneck sweater ... and of course I bought some dumb stuff, too." Actually, Martin is a serious art collector whose purchases include paintings and drawings by Roy Lichtenstein, Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso and David Hockney.
• Martin's marriage to the actress Victoria Tennant ended in 1994. But it was his subsequent breakup with actress Anne Heche that really broke his heart, he hinted in an Esquire interview. "I spent about a year recovering, and searching out myself and asking why things happened the way they did. I wrote a play about it, Patter for the Floating Lady. Oh, I shouldn't have told you that. I should have said I made it up." (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Shopgirl, Martin's elegant, bleak, desolatingly sad first novella, is in every sense his most serious work to date.... Martin's humor has always been about people who do not realize they are absurd. In 'Shopgirl that sense of absurdity is larger and more encompassing—something closer to an existentialist idea of the absurd, of life as defined by a tragicomic absence of purpose.... The novella has an edge to it, and a deep, unassuageable loneliness. Steve Martin's most achieved work to date may well have the strange effect of making people glad not to be Steve Martin.
John Lanchanster - New York Times Book Review
His writing has sometimes been sweet, sometimes biting, occasionally intellectually boastful- but it has always been funny.
Wall Street Journal
Shopgirlreads as smoothly and pleasurably as the novels of the late W.M. Spackman, whose An Armful of Warm Girl easily won the prize 25 years ago for best title of a novel about foolish 50 year-old men.
Los Angeles Times
Steve Martin, who over the years has bravely transformed himself before the public eye from brilliant stand-up comedian to genial actor to writer... [has written] a hilarious but intense first novella...which is all about happiness and how to get there... One of the nicest things about this novel is the way it effortlessly bridges generations.
Vogue
Who'd have thought Martin, known (aside from his acting) for his smart, snarky New Yorker pieces, would pen a tender love story?...Martin's shift from public follies to private frailties registers as courageous and convincing.
Entertainment Weekly
Movie star Martin shone in the comic essays of last year's Pure Drivel, but can he write serious fiction? His debut novella gives fans a chance to find out. Shy, depressed, young, lonely and usually broke, Vermont-bred Mirabelle Butterfield sells gloves at the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus (nobody ever buys); at night, she watches TV with her two cats. Martin's slight plot follows Mirabelle's search for "at least romance and companionship" with middle-aged Ray Porter, a womanizing Seattle millionaire who may, or may not, have hidden redeeming qualities. Also in and out of Mirabelle's life are a handful of supporting characters, all of them lonely and alienated, too. There's her father, a dysfunctional Vietnam vet; the laconic, unambitious Jeremy; and Mirabelle's promiscuous, body-obsessed co-worker Lisa. Detractors may call Martin's plot predictable, his characters stereotypes. Admirers may answer that...these aren't stereotypes but modern archetypes, whose lives must be streamlined if they are to represent ours. Except for its love-hate relations with L.A., little about this book sounds much like Martin; its anxious, sometimes flat prose style can be affecting or disorienting, and belongs somewhere between Douglas Coupland and literary chroniclers of depression like Lydia Davis. Martin's first novel is finally neither a triumph nor a disaster: it's yet another of this intelligent performer's attempts to expand his range, and those who will buy it for the name on the cover could do a lot worse.
Publishers Weekly
The action moves quickly, yet the narrative takes its time to develop, which is a very skillful bit of writing business. Martin's literary fable of a novella is disarming, particularly for those who come to it expecting the biting, zany humor of Pure Drivel (1998), but it may mark a new direction in a noteworthy writer's career. —Bonnie Smothers
Booklist
Martin was wise to make the book little more than one hundred pages. His brevity saves Shopgirlfrom becoming tedious, and his deft styling and nice descriptions keep the story flowing along.... [like] a shallow hypnotic dream that pulls you through to the end without leaving you feeling ripped off for the few hours invested. It's a quick and harmless read that shows the potential of a writer who shouldn't be satisfied spooning out irony for the New Yorker set.
Steve Wilson - Book Magazine
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Shopgirl:
1. How would you describe Mirabelle? What is she like? At what stage is she in her life? How is her job, selling gloves—"things that nobody buys anymore"—suitably ironic for her?
2. What is Jeremy like? How would you describe him? Were you rooting for him (or not) as a potential boyfriend?
3. What draws Mirabella and Jeremy together if, as the narrator says, "at this stage of their lives, in true and total fact, they only thing they have in common is a Laundromat"?
4. Is Ray Porter a good man...or not? How would you describe him?
5. Ray is honest about what he wants—that "he can have [Mirabelle] without obligation." Ray believes that "they will both see the benefits they are receiving" from one another. Can a good relationship be built on such an understanding?
6. Mirabelle and Ray have The Conversation; afterwards both take away different versions—he believes Mirabelle understands his intent of seeing other women; she believes Ray "is bordering on falling in love with her." How does that difference in understanding occur? Has it ever happened to you?
7. What was your feeling when Mirabelle became involved with Ray? If she had asked your advice, what would you have said?
8. Does Mirabelle love Ray? Or does she love the idea of Ray—his wealth, his paternal protection?
9. How does Ray feel toward Mirabelle? Do his feelings ever change?
10. This is a classic love triangle: older man, younger woman, and younger man. Yet Martin presents something different. Can you put your finger on what it is?
11. When you first read the book, were you surprised or disappointed that it wasn't funnier? Were you expecting a humorous book from a former stand-up comic?
12. Follow-up to Question 10: Even though this isn't an uproariously funny book, there is still a good deal of humor. Find a few of your favorite lines and read them out loud.
13. Lisa is one of the funniest characters in the book. Do you find her so? Why does she set up the competition with Mirabelle?
14. Was Jeremy's transformation believable? Do your feelings about Jeremy change?
15. How does Martin paint the L.A. scene—the things people are looking for, aspiring to? In what way might the novella be described as a gentle satire?
16. Is the ending satisfying? Or were you hoping for another outcome?
17. Watch the movie. How do film and book compare? Which do you prefer?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)