Shelf Life

An incisive satirist of literary Brooklyn takes on the American big-box store.

-  Jordan Kisner

Probably all of us have been inside a place like Town Square location #1512, the fictional big-box store that provides the setting for Adelle Waldman’s new novel, Help Wanted. It’s the kind with colorful seasonal displays and wide aisles, the kind that in the ’80s and ’90s came to signify the peak of American commerce: the convenience of being able to buy baby food, a lawn mower, and a plastic Christmas tree all in one brightly lit, airplane-hangar-size space.

It’s surprising, really, that such stores, emblematic of American capitalism as they are, don’t feature prominently in more novels. Waldman’s Town Square seems almost too obviously allegorical. At #1512, empty shelves pockmark the aisles, giving the store a dilapidated feel. “Corporate” (a vague presence) wants store managers to prioritize low budgets above all else, so the managers have concluded that empty shelves are preferable to spending money on workers to stock items. Business has faded, stolen by an unnamed online retail giant. This image of shrinkage evokes the mood of the novel, which takes place in fictional, hollowed-out Potterstown, in upstate New York, its infrastructure now outsize, dating to a time of more prosperity, more people, more life. The big companies that once had local factories have departed for cheaper workforces, and the residents who didn’t leave with them scramble to assemble enough employment to pay their bills.