Mini-book review: Zachary German's "Eat When You Feel Sad"

Zachary German's Eat When You Feel Sad is a slim novel (127 pages) that was published in late 2009 by ultra-trendy Melville House Publishing. Although he isn't referenced by name in the book, the shadow of Bret Easton Ellis looms large over Eat When You Feel Sad. In fact, the book really reminded me a lot of Ellis' debut novel, Less Than Zero, which was published in 1985. Less Than Zero was, at the time, referred to as "Catcher in the Rye for the MTV generation." I guess you could call Eat When You Feel Sad a Less Than Zero for the Twitter generation. Like Zero the book has no plot (or even chapters) and is instead a selection of very brief scenes from the life of Robert, a young vegetarian hipster who (I presume) lives in New York City. And while the book is written in the third person as opposed to Zero's first person, it still resembles Zero's clipped and minimalist style (here's a few sentences from a typical paragraph: "Robert is in his parents' house. He is in the kitchen. He looks at the microwave. The microwave is illuminated. There is a veggy burger patty in the microwave. Robert looks at a plate. There is a bun on the plate. He opens the refrigerator. Robert picks up the ketchup. He looks at a bag of lettuce. He picks up the bag of lettuce. Robert closes the refrigerator"). It almost reads less like a novel and more like a collection of Facebook status updates: indeed, there's a scene where Robert posts a status update on Facebook. Like Zero, the book features a large cast of characters who appear briefly and vanish just as quickly, and these characters are somehow even less fleshed out than the ammoral and hedonistic stick figures who populated Less Than Zero.

There's not a whole lot I have to say about this book because there isn't much in the way of content: just a long parade of scenes featuring Robert watching The Office, checking email on his laptop computer, masturbating to pornography, reading Joy Williams books, playing video games, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beer with his aimless friends, shopping at American Apparel, eating at Chinese restaurants, making playlists on his iTunes, feeding his cat, riding his bike, and listening to music (like Ellis, German namechecks a lot of bands, at least close to 100, mainly indie rock bands like Death Cab For Cutie, Xiu Xiu and Broken Social Scene but also lots of hip-hop musicians like Ol' Dirty Bastard, Jay-Z and Lil' Wayne). Although there are a few scenes where Robert seems to realize the emptiness of his aimless life, for the most part it's hard to work up a great deal of sympathy (or even interest) in him or his circle of friends. I like reading these very short and minimalist modern novels because they don't take a whole lot of time to get through (and one doesn't need to exert all that much brain power in the process). But this book lacks the power of a Less Than Zero, a book where, beneath its shallow surface of passionless sex, pop culture references and 80's music, real horror lurked: serial killers and snuff films and anorexia and drug abuse and abortions and prostitution and child rape (whereas in Eat When You Feel Sad, there's practically no darkness at all, other than characters getting drunk, throwing up, and witnessing a minor car accident). German also seems to be trying to channel Dennis Cooper (whose name crops up twice in the book), but Cooper's characters possess real emotional depth, whereas those in Eat When You Feel Sad are pretty much just names on a page. Like a lot of younger writers, German strikes me as being too obsessed with style and not enough with content. This isn't to say I didn't enjoy this novel: I suppose it could function as a snapshot of today's youth, though I've never met anyone possessing the self-conscious vacuity displayed by the characters in this book. I just wish that German had something more profound to say about his generation.