Eat When You Feel Sad [Paperback]

Zachary German (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 2010

All the sad young pop-culture-saturated hyperliterary men mope their way under our skin, one deadpan, declarative sentence at a time

Eat When You Feel Sad is a novel about Robert. Eat When You Feel Sad is a novel about a generation. Robert was born in the 1980s. He was born in the United States of America. In Eat When You Feel Sad, Robert feeds his cat, watches television and drinks beer. In Eat When You Feel Sad, Robert gets mustard on his clothes, rides a bicycle and talks on Gmail chat. Eat When You Feel Sad takes place in cars, houses, and apartments. Eat When You Feel Sad takes place in a school, a community center, and several Chinese restaurants. Eat When You Feel Sad is a selection of scenes from a life.

Eat When You Feel Sad will be found on a short shelf of short literary novels that includes Bret Easton Ellis's Less than Zero and Tao Lin's Eeeee Eee Eeee--where young people seek their own reflection, and face reality with humor and hope.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

German's debut novel follows protagonist Robert, an emaciated vegan, through the always relevant trials and tribulations of growing up. German's writing is comprised entirely of short, staccato sentences: "Robert is riding his bike. He's wearing a sweater. There is a red light. Robert stops riding his bike." Through this stylized writing, readers follow Robert from a suburban childhood of listening to records, smoking pot and stealing from a bookstore to his first sexual experience with girlfriend Alison ("Robert and Alison have sex. They finish having sex."), and finally a move to a nameless city and the unavoidable struggle to find himself. Robert tries kissing guys, making carrot juice, and plenty of drinking and getting stoned, but doesn't ever find what he's searching for. The complications of life seem to fly by him with little consequence. The book has many charms, even though German's minimalist style of writing-clearly mimicking his main character's view of life-can be a bit daunting. The deadpan delivery does add humor to Robert's daily routine, and the unromanticized life of a twenty-something hipster is a refreshing change of pace from the usual way that such creatures are portrayed.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Moving, funny, emotional, and—in a revolutionary way—both highly-readable and avant-garde, Eat When You Feel Sad excites me very much in terms of literature and also life itself.”
—Tao Lin

“Zachary German’s nimble, catwalking, archeological, surface dwelling, emotionally unpaved prose is a thing of total wonder and my favorite drug, language-based or otherwise. Eat When You Feel Sad is so bright and pleasurable and full of excellence, it’s positively serene.”
—Dennis Cooper

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Melville House (February 9, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933633859
• ISBN-13: 978-1933633855
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.4 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #817,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Zachary German was born December 17 1988 in Somers Point, New Jersey. He dropped out of high school in 2006 and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His story, "letting me out (first part)" was included in Dennis Cooper's "Userlands" anthology in 2007. In 2008 Zachary moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he lives currently. "Eat When You Feel Sad" is his first book.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars so hot, March 3, 2010

By 

David Fishkind (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eat When You Feel Sad (Paperback)

this book is good. after reading this book i feel less like committing suicide and more like preparing a meal with kale. this book actually inspired me to write a novel in the exact same style, which i then deleted, feeling satisfied.

this book has mad readability. i sat down and read it in one day. some parts i read during lectures when i got bored. i never felt bored when reading the scenes. strong pacing and movement. a true 'page-turner.'

this book has funny references, strong moments of dialogue, good music, powerful interactions, and a completely original, endearing, and pacifying style.

one of the more emotional books i've read lately.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Positive Review, February 28, 2010

By 

Miles Ross "chopped mushroom" (new york) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Eat When You Feel Sad (Paperback)

This book gave me the sense that I could do more things that I like doing. This book did not make me want to change who I am. This book is important due to its philosophical weight and its position amongst contemporary independently published fiction. Critical success seems to be coming for this book. German's character, Robert, is a self-aware caricature of an organism set starkly against a world of penetrating and evasive emotional crisis. The story of Robert is told with a metaphysical exactness that exists on its own, strangely divided from the surface of its language. German's effort is swift and has the mark of an early genius struck by natural talent. I feel that his work to follow will have little chance of disappointing anyone. Should his process not be as unaffected as it seems for EWYFS, few people will notice it as fault, and, in fact, might increase his ranking as one of America's up-and-coming sensations.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not thrilled, November 2, 2010

By 

Jason Sweeten (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Eat When You Feel Sad (Paperback)

At first, the way he writes is exciting because it's complicated and different. Then it just gets tiring. And then the plot never goes anywhere. And then you just want to finish it to be able to move on to something else.