{"id":164153,"date":"2023-05-01T10:53:08","date_gmt":"2023-05-01T14:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=164153"},"modified":"2023-05-01T11:07:06","modified_gmt":"2023-05-01T15:07:06","slug":"the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Dead Silence of Goods\u201d: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Interior of the Wal-Mart supercenter in Albany. Photograph by Matt Wade, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. Licensed under CCO 3.0.<\/p><\/div>\n

The first and only time I went to the Walmart in Iowa City was surreal. When I was in high school, my parents\u2019 business-oriented small press had published a book called The Case Against Walmart <\/em>that called for a national consumer boycott of the company; the author denounced everything from the superstore\u2019s destruction of environmentally protected lands to its sweatshop labor to its knockoff merchandise. So by the time I made a pilgrimage out to the superstore at age twenty-one, I hadn\u2019t stepped in a Walmart for nearly a decade, and it had acquired this transgressive power\u2014the very act of crossing the threshold was as shameful as it was thrilling. Immediately, I sensed the store\u2019s anonymizing power: outside, I was nearby the Iowa Municipal Airport, en route to the Hy-Vee grocery store; inside, I was anywhere. I didn\u2019t know what I expected, but it was wonderful, and terrible, and weird, and empty, but also full of stuff. In the real world, I was allergic to animals, but I found myself hypnotized in the pet aisle: snake food, dry cat food, wet cat food, Iams, I am what I am. Each shade of paint chip in the Benjamin Moore display bouquet was more erotic than the one before. Primrose Petals, I Love You Pink, Pretty Pink, Hot Lips. Everything was too bright, oversaturated, illuminated in fluorescent Super Soaker\u2013level high beams. I wasn\u2019t high; I didn\u2019t need to be. I barely saw another human, but the accumulation of things constituted many lifetimes of living. I was in a mass graveyard\u2014a place defined by, as Annie Ernaux puts it, \u201cthe dead silence of goods as far as the eye could see.\u201d<\/p>\n

From November 2012 to October 2013, in Look at the Lights, My Love\u2014<\/em>published in 2014 in France and in 2023 in an English translation by Alison L. Strayer\u2014Ernaux recorded her visits to the Auchan superstore in suburban Cergy-Pontoise, an hour northwest of Paris. Like all of Annie Ernaux\u2019s works, Look at the Lights<\/em> plays a formal sleight-of-hand in the best way, with the feel of a dashed-off journal but the felt experience of a deeply philosophical meditation on the nature of shopping, voyeurism, late-stage capitalism, class, race, and desire.<\/p>\n

The Auchan superstore, the locus of Ernaux\u2019s book, is a nesting-doll \u201cself-contained enclave\u201d within Trois-Fontaines, a conglomeration of the city\u2019s public and private institutions: post office, police station, theater, library, etc. Ernaux describes the apparently normal, bustling village of Trois-Fontaines as a trompe l\u2019oeil town, a privately owned corporate center that shuts down at night. \u201cThere is a vertigo produced by symmetry,\u201d Ernaux writes, \u201creinforced by the fact that the space is enclosed, though open to the daylight through a big glass canopy that replaces the roof.\u201d I\u2019m reminded of the indoor mall in Caesar\u2019s Palace in Las Vegas\u2014the Forum Shops\u2014with its sky-painted ceiling reminiscent in zero ways of the Sistine Chapel. The roof cycles from light to darker blue in an accelerated yet elongated version of time: days are thirty minutes, but there are no weeks or years.<\/p>\n

Trois-Fontaines touts itself as having every service that people need, and then many that people don\u2019t. In addition to the flagship Auchan superstore, there are: salons, pharmacies, a daycare, cigarette vendors, wheelchairs on loan, free bathrooms. And yet, Trois-Fointaines has no life of the mind: the bookstore and caf\u00e9 closed long ago. Though Trois-Fontaines has the appearance of a bustling small community by day, because it\u2019s privately owned, the center\u2019s sealed off after business hours: \u201cwhen you walk by it late at night,\u201d Ernaux observes, \u201cafter getting off the commuter train, its silent mass is more desolate than a cemetery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Look at the Lights<\/em> doesn\u2019t lay out a quasi-legal case against Auchan, nor is it a snarkily supercilious theoretical takedown of mall culture. Rather, Ernaux faces the harder emotional truth: you can hate everything the superstore stands for, and you can feel somewhere on the dull spectrum of bored to mildly uncomfortable when you enter, but ultimately, the superstore offers a real opportunity to feel the edges of your own anonymity, one you don\u2019t get anywhere else. There is a certain vulnerability in admitting that you want to lose yourself and that you might find yourself among a collection of objects you didn\u2019t realize you needed. There is an illicit pleasure in aimless browsing on this scale: like running, or swimming, or lying dead in corpse pose, there\u2019s a relentless surrender to bodily experience. Caught in a list of endless stuff, you don\u2019t have to choose, or think; you can just be.<\/p>\n

Floating through the aisles in Iowa Walmart, I couldn\u2019t stop listing things\u2014camo baseball cap, Dustbuster, toilet brush\u2014muttering a late-capitalist rosary: hail Big Mouth Billy Bass full of grace. Ernaux\u2019s book\u2019s eros lies in its lush lists, where we get to luxuriate in details. Yet Ernaux immediately recognizes the necessity of restraint in both recording and experiencing, so that you can enjoy without tipping into reckless abundance: at \u201can island of loose Italia grapes in bulk,\u201d she notes, people eat only one or two, \u201cwith a sort of collective sense of permission whereby individuals limit themselves to a few grapes and are further kept in check by others\u2019 eyes upon them.\u201d Auchan is a tempered Eden. As in shopping, the book\u2019s pleasures lie in visual observation, but even simple descriptions have a certain sharpness under the unending lights of her gaze. This is reality in high definition; everything has edges. Yet the superstore is this weird combination of a blur and hyperfocus. On a macro level, Ernaux floats through the space; she\u2019s alone, and she\u2019s observing people and objects as though suspended in jelly, accumulating objects for a future version of themselves that will never exist here. We\u2019re always searching for the self we live outside the superstore.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a great moment when another shopper asks, \u201cAre you Annie Ernaux?\u201d By this point, Ernaux has published nearly twenty books and is known as something of a public figure. \u201cI can\u2019t get used to the question,\u201d Ernaux writes. \u201cShe is surprised to see me here. She hates Auchan and almost never comes here. I tell her that I come often and don\u2019t mind it.\u201d Perhaps the fan is trying to appear embarrassed to be caught in such a basic space, projecting that Ernaux would be above it; Ernaux reassures her that she comes often. But once she\u2019s been outed as herself, she has to go down to the main floor \u201cbefore I can recover my tranquility as an anonymous customer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The superstore, in its simultaneous blur and hyperfocus, allows Ernaux to both see social ills in vivid detail and turn them into a strange subcutaneous layer removed from reality. Ernaux is making a kind of catalog, but this is not as simple as it seems. She wonders whether to describe someone as \u201ca Black woman\u201d or \u201can African woman\u201d or simply \u201ca woman,\u201d though she knows, per Toni Morrison, that to erase defining features will implicitly \u201cwhiten\u201d the woman, to \u201ctextually deny her visibility.\u201d Ernaux doesn\u2019t address, here, the act of gendering in this description\u2014should she write female presenting<\/em>? Stick with person<\/em>, which might immediately imply male? Or would person<\/em> in a shopping context suggest female, in which case, it would be more crucial to mark a figure as explicitly male?<\/p>\n

And as Ernaux continues to return to the store, and inventory not just its stuff but its people, she notices the deeply ingrained segregation, even in this supposedly egalitarian space. \u201cThere are people, entire segments of the clientele, who will never meet,\u201d she writes. \u201cOver the past fifteen years, it has not been the presence of \u2018visible minorities\u2019 that I notice in a given place but their absence.\u201d That disjunct extends to the store\u2019s workers: \u201cWe get told off more and more, it\u2019s getting worse and worse,\u201d a cashier tells Ernaux. \u201cIn the language of mass distribution,\u201d Ernaux notes, \u201cthe \u2018prod\u2019 of the cashier is the number of items scanned per minute. Three thousand per hour is considered a good number.\u201d The cashiers have no autonomy. The superstore sells the dream that we are all the same, and yet, its very stratification on all levels highlights how much we pull ourselves apart.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Even as people shop more than ever, tides have culturally shifted away from brick-and-mortar monoliths. Malls and superstores are bleeding out; Bed Bath & Beyond is the latest to join the great Bankrupt Beyond. Arguably, this is not a tragedy. And yet, there\u2019s still something in the superstore\u2019s emptiness that is unlike any other kind of space; it\u2019s deeply problematically selling everything, and it reifies hierarchies, but it\u2019s also weirdly equalizing, its flatness and singularity of purpose. \u201cUpon leaving the superstore,\u201d Ernaux writes, \u201cI was often overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness and injustice. But for all that, I have not ceased to feel the appeal of the place and the community life, subtle and specific, that exists there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The holidays exemplify that promise and mirage of this place. December is the superstore\u2019s time to quite literally shine: \u201cOn the inclined moving walkway,\u201d Ernaux writes, \u201cunder the glass roof, we ascend toward the lights and garlands hanging down like necklaces of precious stones. The young woman in front of me with a little girl in a stroller looks up and smiles. She leans down toward the child. \u2018Look at the lights, my love!\u2019\u201d But when you exit the store, you revert back to the world outside the self-contained universe, the world beyond couture and counters and contours\u2014if you escape the store at all.<\/p>\n

Look at the Lights<\/em> was written pre-pandemic. By the start of 2021, many long dormant shopping centers had been transformed into vaccination sites. But even as this development felt in some ways like the dystopian end of the superstore era, it also seemed appropriate that the mall become a site of hope, a magical jolt that could transform us into the next phase of our lives. Abandoned mannequins with exquisitely sculpted torsos and no faces watched us get our arms jabbed, in the hope of shopping for something other than our current lives.<\/p>\n

So Look at the Lights, My Love<\/em> illuminates both the magic and the hellscape of the superstore. This is a space divorced from nature, its own ecosystem and echo chamber of horrors, where night is day and day is day. Ernaux\u2019s diaries document her entrances and exits from the store, and the writing reveals that she\u2019s stuck there for whole days: if she\u2019s charting who\u2019s in the store from 8:30 A.M. to 10 P.M., she\u2019s been there before sunrise, beyond sunset.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Adrienne Raphel is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can\u2019t Live Without Them. Her latest collection of poetry,\u00a0<\/em>Our Dark Academia, was published by Rescue Press.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFloating through the aisles in Iowa Walmart, I couldn\u2019t stop listing things\u2014camo baseball cap, Dustbuster, toilet brush\u2014muttering a late-capitalist rosary: hail Big Mouth Billy Bass full of grace.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31215],"tags":[22974,23513,67827,68659],"class_list":["post-164153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-books","tag-annie-ernaux","tag-department-stores","tag-featured","tag-superstore"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cThe Dead Silence of Goods\u201d: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore by Adrienne Raphel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"May 1, 2023 \u2013 \u201cFloating through the aisles in Iowa Walmart, I couldn\u2019t stop listing things\u2014camo baseball cap, Dustbuster, toilet brush\u2014muttering a late-capitalist rosary: hail Big Mouth Billy Bass full of grace.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cThe Dead Silence of Goods\u201d: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore by Adrienne Raphel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"May 1, 2023 \u2013 \u201cFloating through the aisles in Iowa Walmart, I couldn\u2019t stop listing things\u2014camo baseball cap, Dustbuster, toilet brush\u2014muttering a late-capitalist rosary: hail Big Mouth Billy Bass full of grace.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-05-01T14:53:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-05-01T15:07:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/walmart.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"685\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Adrienne Raphel\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Adrienne Raphel\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Adrienne Raphel\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/398cc56105f6ccac17b30b402f56872f\"},\"headline\":\"\u201cThe Dead Silence of Goods\u201d: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-05-01T14:53:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-05-01T15:07:06+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/\"},\"wordCount\":1888,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/walmart.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Annie Ernaux\",\"department stores\",\"Featured\",\"superstore\"],\"articleSection\":[\"On Books\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/\",\"name\":\"\u201cThe Dead Silence of Goods\u201d: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore by Adrienne Raphel\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/walmart.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-05-01T14:53:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-05-01T15:07:06+00:00\",\"description\":\"May 1, 2023 \u2013 \u201cFloating through the aisles in Iowa Walmart, I couldn\u2019t stop listing things\u2014camo baseball cap, Dustbuster, toilet brush\u2014muttering a late-capitalist rosary: hail Big Mouth Billy Bass full of grace.\u201d\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/walmart.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/walmart.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":685},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"\u201cThe Dead Silence of Goods\u201d: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/398cc56105f6ccac17b30b402f56872f\",\"name\":\"Adrienne Raphel\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/238236da58b7cb23854d0751167305df7ab19e6627120cf5721c6f70241b0528?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/238236da58b7cb23854d0751167305df7ab19e6627120cf5721c6f70241b0528?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Adrienne Raphel\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/araphel\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\u201cThe Dead Silence of Goods\u201d: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore by Adrienne Raphel","description":"May 1, 2023 \u2013 \u201cFloating through the aisles in Iowa Walmart, I couldn\u2019t stop listing things\u2014camo baseball cap, Dustbuster, toilet brush\u2014muttering a late-capitalist rosary: hail Big Mouth Billy Bass full of grace.\u201d","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\u201cThe Dead Silence of Goods\u201d: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore by Adrienne Raphel","og_description":"May 1, 2023 \u2013 \u201cFloating through the aisles in Iowa Walmart, I couldn\u2019t stop listing things\u2014camo baseball cap, Dustbuster, toilet brush\u2014muttering a late-capitalist rosary: hail Big Mouth Billy Bass full of grace.\u201d","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2023-05-01T14:53:08+00:00","article_modified_time":"2023-05-01T15:07:06+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1024,"height":685,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/walmart.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Adrienne Raphel","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Adrienne Raphel","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/"},"author":{"name":"Adrienne Raphel","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/398cc56105f6ccac17b30b402f56872f"},"headline":"\u201cThe Dead Silence of Goods\u201d: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore","datePublished":"2023-05-01T14:53:08+00:00","dateModified":"2023-05-01T15:07:06+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/"},"wordCount":1888,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/walmart.jpg","keywords":["Annie Ernaux","department stores","Featured","superstore"],"articleSection":["On Books"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/","name":"\u201cThe Dead Silence of Goods\u201d: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore by Adrienne Raphel","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/walmart.jpg","datePublished":"2023-05-01T14:53:08+00:00","dateModified":"2023-05-01T15:07:06+00:00","description":"May 1, 2023 \u2013 \u201cFloating through the aisles in Iowa Walmart, I couldn\u2019t stop listing things\u2014camo baseball cap, Dustbuster, toilet brush\u2014muttering a late-capitalist rosary: hail Big Mouth Billy Bass full of grace.\u201d","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/walmart.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/walmart.jpg","width":1024,"height":685},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/01\/the-dead-silence-of-goods-annie-ernaux-and-the-superstore\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"\u201cThe Dead Silence of Goods\u201d: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/398cc56105f6ccac17b30b402f56872f","name":"Adrienne Raphel","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/238236da58b7cb23854d0751167305df7ab19e6627120cf5721c6f70241b0528?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/238236da58b7cb23854d0751167305df7ab19e6627120cf5721c6f70241b0528?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Adrienne Raphel"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/araphel\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164153"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164160,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164153\/revisions\/164160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}