{"id":61453,"date":"2013-10-17T15:57:07","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T19:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=61453"},"modified":"2014-12-17T12:52:08","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T17:52:08","slug":"alienation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/17\/alienation\/","title":{"rendered":"Alienation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/hostileshirt.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-61454\" alt=\"hostileshirt\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/hostileshirt.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"695\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/hostileshirt.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/hostileshirt-258x300.jpg 258w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I spent far too long staring at this T-shirt, number thirty-seven in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/alannaokun\/ways-to-proudly-wear-your-love-of-books\" target=\"_blank\">BuzzFeed\u2019s gallery of literary paraphernalia<\/a>. I mean, I understand the basic concept: the wearer is reading, and would prefer not to be bothered. The garment is in the grand tradition of hostile tees, alongside such classics as \u201cDo I LOOK like a fucking people person?\u201d \u201cFuck You You Fucking Fuck,\u201d and \u201cYou read my T-shirt. That\u2019s enough social interaction for one day.\u201d The genre is itself inherently tragic, combining as it does a desperate desire for human connection with a self-protecting defensiveness. <em>This<\/em> shirt adds to these the element of cognitive dissonance. Save in rare instances when the wearer is, indeed, engaged in reading\u2014and which fact would presumably be self-evident<em>\u2014it\u2019s simply not true<\/em>. Or maybe they mean <em>reading<\/em> in a metaphorical, or psychic, sense.<\/p>\n<p>If you encounter this shirt in the wild, you will want to know; your brain will teem with questions, your instinct will be to get to the bottom of the mystery. But of course, per the shirt, you can\u2019t. You\u2019ll walk away. And you\u2019ll both be lonely and confused and left without closure. But maybe the richer for it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent far too long staring at this T-shirt, number thirty-seven in BuzzFeed\u2019s gallery of literary paraphernalia. I mean, I understand the basic concept: the wearer is reading, and would prefer not to be bothered. The garment is in the grand tradition of hostile tees, alongside such classics as \u201cDo I LOOK like a fucking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1580],"tags":[12053,53,12050,12051,12052],"class_list":["post-61453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fashion-style","tag-alienation","tag-reading","tag-shirts","tag-slogans","tag-wit"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Alienation by Sadie Stein<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 17, 2013 \u2013 I spent far too long staring at this T-shirt, number thirty-seven in BuzzFeed\u2019s gallery of literary paraphernalia. 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