What do you think?
Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall
A wonderful debut, this funny yet sad novel recounts a young man's attempt--as father, husband, and son--to put together the pieces of an ordinary, and at the same time, very puzzling life.
- GenresFiction
187 pages, Hardcover
First published May 7, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
January 20, 2013
?
Okay. Let me rephrase that.
WTF?
Better.
I'm either too smart, or not smart enough for this book. (Yeah, I know. It's probably the second one.)
That's what I get for choosing a book solely because it looked like a fast read and I'm sick to death of goodreads reminding me daily that I'm already behind on my challenge.
Anyway, the book consists of short little snippets - thought balloons from one man's mind. He's married to Tutti and has a little boy. He seems befuddled and passes that uncertainty onto the reader. One paragraph seems perfectly straightforward, discussing a dinner of macaroni and cheese. In the next, the narrator is referring to a mysterious "he" and "she." Is this a past episode between the author and his wife? Something that once happened to his parents? Or two other people entirely?
I'm so confused!
Then there's this:
Things ground into the carpet here include cigarette butts, just plain dirt, oil, wood chips, dead bugs, urine maybe, beer, possibly semen.
And this:
What I'm talking about is anything like a vase, in the sense that a vase is the last thing you would want to see.
And this:
I was thinking about Dad and suddenly I started trying to think about what it would be like to think about Dad if it was not Dad I was thinking about.
I should have just sent the book back to the library, but the whole reading experience was sort of like being on a bad date. You know there's no future, but every now and then the guy will say something really interesting, like:
The meeting room has the smell of a classroom. The smell of years of children being frightened into submission.
Or:
Sarah was like summer, because she looked warm and swollen and ready for anything.
Those are two beautifully descriptive and evocative phrases. Sentences like that keep you from saying you're going to the powder room and simply ducking out the back door. You stick around, hoping for more pearls of wisdom like that. Plus you really want dessert.
Just make sure you pay for your own meal. It's only fair. You'll NEVER be seeing this guy again.
Okay. Let me rephrase that.
WTF?
Better.
I'm either too smart, or not smart enough for this book. (Yeah, I know. It's probably the second one.)
That's what I get for choosing a book solely because it looked like a fast read and I'm sick to death of goodreads reminding me daily that I'm already behind on my challenge.
Anyway, the book consists of short little snippets - thought balloons from one man's mind. He's married to Tutti and has a little boy. He seems befuddled and passes that uncertainty onto the reader. One paragraph seems perfectly straightforward, discussing a dinner of macaroni and cheese. In the next, the narrator is referring to a mysterious "he" and "she." Is this a past episode between the author and his wife? Something that once happened to his parents? Or two other people entirely?
I'm so confused!
Then there's this:
Things ground into the carpet here include cigarette butts, just plain dirt, oil, wood chips, dead bugs, urine maybe, beer, possibly semen.
And this:
What I'm talking about is anything like a vase, in the sense that a vase is the last thing you would want to see.
And this:
I was thinking about Dad and suddenly I started trying to think about what it would be like to think about Dad if it was not Dad I was thinking about.
I should have just sent the book back to the library, but the whole reading experience was sort of like being on a bad date. You know there's no future, but every now and then the guy will say something really interesting, like:
The meeting room has the smell of a classroom. The smell of years of children being frightened into submission.
Or:
Sarah was like summer, because she looked warm and swollen and ready for anything.
Those are two beautifully descriptive and evocative phrases. Sentences like that keep you from saying you're going to the powder room and simply ducking out the back door. You stick around, hoping for more pearls of wisdom like that. Plus you really want dessert.
Just make sure you pay for your own meal. It's only fair. You'll NEVER be seeing this guy again.
November 10, 2012
Another book where I'm not exactly sure what to rate it. In some ways it's a frustrating novel because it lacks cohesion or movement or any sort of progression. Even the sentences are in this sort of stilted repetitious style. But, at the same time, it's interesting and peculiar enough to keep you reading. I finished the whole thing in two sittings and never felt bored or strained at reading it, but it'd be hard for me to really say what it is I read.
Not a novel. Not even intending to be one, despite the word novel being printed on the front. It's more a collection of musings on a marriage and family that seems to be failing. It's the narration of a man losing to depression, trying to just be something. He's not trying to get better or worse, but it's more that the world and life sort of overwhelm him constantly. He loves his son but doesn't know how to be a father. He doesn't really love his wife but doesn't know what to do about that. He could leave but he knows he won't.
And then it ends, as if it never happened. But I have the feeling this little book is going to haunt me in the oddest ways.
Not a novel. Not even intending to be one, despite the word novel being printed on the front. It's more a collection of musings on a marriage and family that seems to be failing. It's the narration of a man losing to depression, trying to just be something. He's not trying to get better or worse, but it's more that the world and life sort of overwhelm him constantly. He loves his son but doesn't know how to be a father. He doesn't really love his wife but doesn't know what to do about that. He could leave but he knows he won't.
And then it ends, as if it never happened. But I have the feeling this little book is going to haunt me in the oddest ways.
March 22, 2013
I find a book on my kitchen table. It is thin and orange and has some kind of pseudo-retro cover art. My son says it is his. He says he checked it out from the university library. He says he likes this kind of book. Outside the kitchen window, I see the bird feeder leaning in the yard.
~
Inside the book are little slips of paper torn from a bigger piece of paper. They are marking certain pages and sometimes they fall out as I read this book. I wonder what these pieces of paper are marking as each marked page offers nothing remarkably different from the others. I wonder if my son has marked these pages. I wonder if maybe the person who checked out the book before my son checked out the book has marked these pages. I wonder if I am wondering about things that I wonder about when I am wondering about them or if these are things that I wonder about when I am wondering about other things that I am wondering about.
~
On page 131 is a note card with the word "Reductionism" written on it. It appears the smaller pieces of paper in the book have been ripped from the edges of this note card. The handwriting on the note card may be my son's handwriting. I think of a poem I have read by Lorine Niedecker about condensery. I like this poem. I dislike this book. On the television screen, the Cyclones of Iowa State are beating Ohio State. I have the Buckeyes on my bracket.
~
This book reminds me of things I do not like. I think of poetry by Ron Silliman and Rae Armantrout. I think of not liking this poetry and wonder if this is because I am not smart enough to like these things. But then I think of David Byrne's Music for the Knee Plays and think sometimes I like things like these things I do not like.
~
I wonder if Jeff Mangum went to a week-long Nick Adams Summer Festival for Young Writers and had Ernest Hemingway as an instructor but learned all the wrong things about writing during that week, would he write a novel like this thin orange book?
~
My bracket is slowly collapsing. I will not be in the money this year. Outside it is the coldest spring that I can remember.
~
Inside the book are little slips of paper torn from a bigger piece of paper. They are marking certain pages and sometimes they fall out as I read this book. I wonder what these pieces of paper are marking as each marked page offers nothing remarkably different from the others. I wonder if my son has marked these pages. I wonder if maybe the person who checked out the book before my son checked out the book has marked these pages. I wonder if I am wondering about things that I wonder about when I am wondering about them or if these are things that I wonder about when I am wondering about other things that I am wondering about.
~
On page 131 is a note card with the word "Reductionism" written on it. It appears the smaller pieces of paper in the book have been ripped from the edges of this note card. The handwriting on the note card may be my son's handwriting. I think of a poem I have read by Lorine Niedecker about condensery. I like this poem. I dislike this book. On the television screen, the Cyclones of Iowa State are beating Ohio State. I have the Buckeyes on my bracket.
~
This book reminds me of things I do not like. I think of poetry by Ron Silliman and Rae Armantrout. I think of not liking this poetry and wonder if this is because I am not smart enough to like these things. But then I think of David Byrne's Music for the Knee Plays and think sometimes I like things like these things I do not like.
~
I wonder if Jeff Mangum went to a week-long Nick Adams Summer Festival for Young Writers and had Ernest Hemingway as an instructor but learned all the wrong things about writing during that week, would he write a novel like this thin orange book?
~
My bracket is slowly collapsing. I will not be in the money this year. Outside it is the coldest spring that I can remember.
June 28, 2011
It's hard to say what I might think of this book. It's there. I read it. Twice, actually. And thinking about a third time. What it is about this book? There's no plot. There's no building of suspense. There seems to be no reason for it having been written in the first place. It's more like a photograph of book. Or maybe a pencil sketch. Or one of those amazing, 3-D drawings that one guys does on the sidewalk in big cities, where there's a cave or a cavern that someone sitting near it seems to be about to fall into, or a dolphin jumping into a little girl's hand. I've never seen those drawings in person, only in photos on the internet (thanks, Al Gore). But then, I don't live in a city so I probably won't ever see one, but here, in the remote backlands of America I can read, and surf the web, and that seems to be more of what this book is about, except we don't have a mall nearby. I do have a son, but he's grown up and married and on his own now. There aren't any pictures in this book, unless you count the illustration that opens each chapter.
October 11, 2026
a delight
January 22, 2010
I don't know how or why I picked this up, but I'm glad I did, if only for the handful of vignettes that I thought were really amazing. Unfortunately, a lot of them were offset by scenes that struck me as being not done or not really well considered.
I'm not the right kind of reader for this book, because it's a lot of seemingly disconnected flash fiction-y moments strung together, suggestive of meaning. I'm a cynic. Sometimes when someone hands me a story or a book full of stuff like that, I think, "hey, why don't you provide some meaning instead of just vomiting up all these words and forcing me to do the work for you?"
Or maybe a better way to explain my response. If we discussed this in workshop, I could picture half the class talking about how amazing it was and saying "it had so much meaning" and "I really loved what it was doing," without anyone ever saying what it meant or what it was doing.
Too harsh, maybe. By the end, the tone of kind of overwhelming despair was pretty clear, and relatively affecting. I just didn't actually enjoy the reading of the book all that much.
I'm not the right kind of reader for this book, because it's a lot of seemingly disconnected flash fiction-y moments strung together, suggestive of meaning. I'm a cynic. Sometimes when someone hands me a story or a book full of stuff like that, I think, "hey, why don't you provide some meaning instead of just vomiting up all these words and forcing me to do the work for you?"
Or maybe a better way to explain my response. If we discussed this in workshop, I could picture half the class talking about how amazing it was and saying "it had so much meaning" and "I really loved what it was doing," without anyone ever saying what it meant or what it was doing.
Too harsh, maybe. By the end, the tone of kind of overwhelming despair was pretty clear, and relatively affecting. I just didn't actually enjoy the reading of the book all that much.
March 16, 2026
"I wanted to celebrate my life. The little mundane day-to-day crap that goes on." 1996 interview, Id Magazine
Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall balances precariously on the brink of whimsicality, but somehow keeps its footing.
Snippets of prose – passing thoughts, kitchen conversations, odd memories – are cut and pasted into chapters. Each snippet is brief enough to be easily read. And each is followed by another that's equally easy to read. And so on.
From it emerges a sort of scrapbook of suburban life, with the banal set against the peculiar, kids and comic domesticity set against a growing sense of unease and failure.
It’s nicely judged. It works. Having Gordon Lish as editor probably helped.
"'I think eventually, for whatever reason, you have to give up everything. You have to say, I am not this and I am not that. Then, after that, you can sit back and wait to see what happens.'"
Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall balances precariously on the brink of whimsicality, but somehow keeps its footing.
Snippets of prose – passing thoughts, kitchen conversations, odd memories – are cut and pasted into chapters. Each snippet is brief enough to be easily read. And each is followed by another that's equally easy to read. And so on.
From it emerges a sort of scrapbook of suburban life, with the banal set against the peculiar, kids and comic domesticity set against a growing sense of unease and failure.
It’s nicely judged. It works. Having Gordon Lish as editor probably helped.
"'I think eventually, for whatever reason, you have to give up everything. You have to say, I am not this and I am not that. Then, after that, you can sit back and wait to see what happens.'"
July 25, 2021
I'm thinking of a word that means less than mediocre, but better than terrible. Whatever that word is probably describes this book. Actually, for most of this book I really disliked it. To call it a novel is to insult novels. There are characters but no plot, and without a plot you can't have a novel.
Partway through I realized that this book is the epitome of postmodernism. It's a mishmash of ideas - you make of it what you want - there really is no meaning. From there, I figured that this book is one of those the-emperor-has-no-clothes types of books, where most people who read it will feel compelled to praise its originality and daring and it's-ever-so-deep-of-you-just-get-it-like-I-do nature. Looking at the average rating here I'd say I'm not wrong.
The thing of it is, there are some really good bits scattered throughout. Mr. Sparling knows how to engage readers and tell stories. I wish he had done more story telling here because he really could have had a hit. And, too, there is a goodly bit of humor scattered throughout. Most of the humor is because the writing is so unexpected or even ultra mundane with twists thrown in that cause a chuckle.
By the end of the book, I found the writing to be almost endearing, and I can see why some people like the book. It's still an insult to novels to boldly call it such on the cover, but this interesting book isn't so bad. You pretty much could read it backwards or skip around willy nilly and you won't be any more lost than if you had started from page 1.
If you are looking for a unique book, this is for you. If you are looking for a good novel or a well-told story, look elsewhere.
Partway through I realized that this book is the epitome of postmodernism. It's a mishmash of ideas - you make of it what you want - there really is no meaning. From there, I figured that this book is one of those the-emperor-has-no-clothes types of books, where most people who read it will feel compelled to praise its originality and daring and it's-ever-so-deep-of-you-just-get-it-like-I-do nature. Looking at the average rating here I'd say I'm not wrong.
The thing of it is, there are some really good bits scattered throughout. Mr. Sparling knows how to engage readers and tell stories. I wish he had done more story telling here because he really could have had a hit. And, too, there is a goodly bit of humor scattered throughout. Most of the humor is because the writing is so unexpected or even ultra mundane with twists thrown in that cause a chuckle.
By the end of the book, I found the writing to be almost endearing, and I can see why some people like the book. It's still an insult to novels to boldly call it such on the cover, but this interesting book isn't so bad. You pretty much could read it backwards or skip around willy nilly and you won't be any more lost than if you had started from page 1.
If you are looking for a unique book, this is for you. If you are looking for a good novel or a well-told story, look elsewhere.
August 12, 2025
“I was trying to write this poem. It was going to be about everything. Just a simple description of everything in my life. Some of the things I have been watching on TV, for instance.
I have to go to work now.”
“After you go out and do things, you get home from
doing them and you go away from the people you did things with, back to the people you live with and the things you have done are done and they are nothing but memories of things that were done and where you are is at home with the people who have never done anything and you can try to remember the things you have done and tell the things you have done to the people who have never done anything—but what's the point?”
I have to go to work now.”
“After you go out and do things, you get home from
doing them and you go away from the people you did things with, back to the people you live with and the things you have done are done and they are nothing but memories of things that were done and where you are is at home with the people who have never done anything and you can try to remember the things you have done and tell the things you have done to the people who have never done anything—but what's the point?”
October 31, 2023
This book is far better than the majority of reviews written here, in my opinion. Yes, it was disjointed at times , but the narrative was always there. I think it is worth the read, especially with the feeling I was left with at the end.
October 9, 2012
This book isn't for everyone. It moves in clips and broken pieces that thread together haphazardly but in a beautiful way. Some of the clips are just heartbreakingly beautiful, some made me laugh, others I had to reread because they were so profound. Because of the repetition of certain sentence elements or words, because of the switching between 1st and 3rd person (there is even some second person in there), a lot of readers will be thinking "wtf?". I'd urge those readers to stick it out. There are real gems hidden in those clips, just need the time and space and freedom to think about each, digest them separately, then piece them all together, like a delicate patchwork of beautifully domestic ideas.
May 18, 2016
Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall is the sound of a wandering mind. It's a floppy disk of stored banalities.
Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall is like reading the sounds of someone remembering, recollecting banal memories, attempting to find meaning and comfort, trying to connect each memory to something meaningful and larger. Sometimes looking out the window at trees becomes transcendent. Sometimes talking about your kid's lost Pogs is just hysterical. Sometimes coming to terms with the fact that the "universe keeps striking the same note" is devastating.
This book makes me wonder why I remember certain things. It makes me wonder if because I remember them, they might have significance. Probably not. But they're mine.
Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall is like reading the sounds of someone remembering, recollecting banal memories, attempting to find meaning and comfort, trying to connect each memory to something meaningful and larger. Sometimes looking out the window at trees becomes transcendent. Sometimes talking about your kid's lost Pogs is just hysterical. Sometimes coming to terms with the fact that the "universe keeps striking the same note" is devastating.
This book makes me wonder why I remember certain things. It makes me wonder if because I remember them, they might have significance. Probably not. But they're mine.
Read
November 25, 2012Eventually, she said, you'll have to leave. You'll have to leave, and I'll have to leave. We'll both have to leave.
But as we leave, she said, we'll both be leaving. You'll be leaving and I'll be leaving. But, she said, we won't, each of us, be leaving the other. It won't be an exponential kind of leaving, where the one leaves the other and the other leaves the one, and there's a leaving of one from the other and the other from the one. It will be more a concurrent kind of leaving of everybody from everybody else, where everybody is leaving and nobody is staying.
That's how desperate things are, she said.
May 27, 2013
I read somewhere somebody called this book an anti-novel. I definitely agree that it is anti the typical novel story structure. I also like how Sparling himself describes the book as being like a beautiful tree. People would never ask, "what is the tree about? What's the rising action?" They would just enjoy the tree for being what it is: a beautiful tree.
Dad Says... is a beautiful book. It reflects on a life in the tiny fragments of memory that one accumulates over time. Memories of childhood, adulthood, and fatherhood all rattling around and recalled in no particular order.
I'm so glad I found this book. It's so good.
Dad Says... is a beautiful book. It reflects on a life in the tiny fragments of memory that one accumulates over time. Memories of childhood, adulthood, and fatherhood all rattling around and recalled in no particular order.
I'm so glad I found this book. It's so good.
March 9, 2013
Like a lot of folks who've commented on this book (what can rightly be referred to as a cult classic / and impossible to read without feeling the influence it has had on dozens of writers of the alt and indie set) this book is hard to comment on in very many concrete terms. I can say for my taste, this was perfect. I WISH more of the contemporary folks were as thoughtful with their slice-of-life fragments of narrative. Hard to read without appreciating the odd and often deadpan humor of the work as a whole. Wow. I could probably just as well have reviewed by only saying, "Wow." Wow.
November 21, 2012
It took a bit to get used to. I'm not used to reading paragraphs of random thoughts that don't really connect to each other, and don't really make a story. I found it easier to read if I read it as poetry, which in a way it was--where each paragraph was its own separate entity, only sometimes kind of relating to another poem/paragraph/entity in another part of the book.
February 13, 2015
This isn't the sort of book you're supposed to be ambivalent about. This is the sort of book that you're supposed to love or hate. I love the idea of it, the shape of it, but the language just didn't speak to me. I wanted it to be beautiful or true or punch-my-gut familiar-I wanted it to resonate-but it only ever got close, sometimes.
March 5, 2008
He's my guru, basically. Forever in debt.
January 2, 2009
I am currently rereading this. I think I liked it the first time.
June 30, 2011
Enjoyed this, but had to return it to the library before I got all the way through. May come back to it at some point. Don't have any specific thoughts right now.
July 20, 2016
if you like things that make you feel sad but can't explain why, read this book
Want to Read
October 16, 2012from publisher
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