Staff Blog
LIT REVIEW: Anna Jane Grossman’s Obsolete
posted by Lauren Seibert
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| Abram’s Image, 192 pp., $15.95, Sept. 1 |
She’s witty, she’s poignant, and she’s somehow in touch with both the young, mod set and the more mature generations of years past. In Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By, Anna Jane Grossman gives us a collection of short, humorous essays on things that no longer exist or are gradually fading away. Grossman, a journalist who’s been published in everything from The New York Times to Marie Claire, clearly draws from her skills as feature writer and social commentator to produce these hilarious, sharp, well-researched little pieces on more than 100 alphabetized subjects.
Sometimes Grossman writes literally — in her listings of bellhops, girdles, high-diving boards, for instance — but more often she is sardonic, with topics ranging from dying of old age and eating for pleasure to phone sex, body hair, nuns and getting lost. But whether technological leaps or shifting social norms and attitudes have caused these changes (or result from them), handfuls of everyday objects, ideas and practices continue to head out the back door. Some, like pay phones and Rolodexes, are nearly gone for good. Reading Obsolete, readers will finally take in just how rapid the rate of change has become, and how the entire social world really has rewritten itself during the course of our lifetimes. Not just in the past few decades, but in the past few years.
Opening by giving us a glimpse into her own experiences, she shows us just how many things — both subtle and earth-shaking — have changed merely throughout the span of her own life so far. In the 11th grade, she shared an email address with all the other kids in her class (00111.8347@compuserve.com), listened to hand-made mixtapes, and could dial her friends on the phone with her eyes closed. To that she adds, “When the phone rang, I said â€Hello?’ The question mark was there because I didn’t know who was calling.” Like the rest of the book’s entries, this one made me stop and think for a second, only to realize that Grossman is right. How often do we answer our cell phones with “Hello?” anymore? The intimacy of caller ID has almost eliminated the need for that opening. The last few times I flipped open my cell I answered with a “yo,” a “dude, you’ll never guess,” and a familiar “hey.”
In her little pieces Grossman offers some opinions, but often leaves it up to the reader to interpret whether the change is good or bad. Is sex-texting (the new replacement for phone sex) less intimate, or more exciting? After all, you could be sexting while you’re sitting at your desk at work — no need to wait for the wee hours of the night. In another example, Grossman writes that printed newspapers may be facing a decline, but their reliability may just be matched by the Internet’s breadth and reach. If printing slows, “Still, one way or another, the information is being shared. And it won’t ever turn yellow.”
While she mixes in plenty of quotes and facts, nearly every entry ends with a lovely little witticism. For “short basketball shorts”: “The last holdout was Utah Jazz point guard John Stockton, who remained loyal to the short shorts look, but when he retired in 2003, so did the era of visible knees.” For “doing nothing at work”: “…after all, many of today’s workers would never have come into existence to begin with if their parents hadn’t been quite so desperate to pass the time.”
Obsolete seems to span two worlds: It reminisces on the tangibility and personal nature of times and objects past, and it lauds the approach of an exciting, new, globally interconnected world. Whether you’re a young one like me who can’t remember a day when hotel keys were actually keys and not plastic cards, or a more mature reader who recalls paying bellhops to carry luggage, you’ll find this book an intriguing window into both worlds.
