American Bulk: Essays on Excess

by Emily Mester

A tender, critical, and curious window into the American ethos of quantity over quality.


To be American is to hoard, to collect. But what if that wasn’t a bad thing? Emily Mester’s American Bulk asks readers to see our national consumer obsession as more than a modern scourge—to consider consumption a complex character in a larger story of capitalism, imperialism, and technology. In sharply witty prose, Mester details how a seasonal stint at Ulta Beauty reveals the insidious performance of retail sales, how Yelp reviews highlight the lengths we go to curate our personal ephemera, and why we can’t help but find joy at Costco. In a stark reexamination of diet culture and fatness, Mester recounts her teenage summer at fat camp and the liberatory body neutrality that surrounded her. And in Storm Lake, Iowa, Mester excavates her grandmother’s abandoned hoard, among other discoveries about her own family’s history. American Bulk asks us to regard consumption not with guilt but with grace and empathy.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Audiobook, Short Stories, Biography Memoir, Adult

230 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 26, 2024

About the author

Emily Mester is a writer from the suburban Midwest, where her family went to Costco every Sunday. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, where she was the winner of the Prairie Lights Nonfiction Prize. She lives in New York.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Interesting and engaging essay collection revolving around class and consumerism. I liked how this book did what the best memoirs do, which is integrate specific memories and details with real emotion and vulnerability. Emily Mester wrote convincingly about a range of topics from going to fat camp as a teenager to working retail to eating at Olive Garden, and she tied it altogether through themes of class mobility and wealth.

The main thing I found a bit lacking about this collection was that I wished these essays just packed a little extra punch or critical analysis. For example, when Mester wrote about online reviews, I thought there could have been more analysis about how reviews can harm marginalized teachers/professors/workers/etc., or how reviews can be used to speak truth to power against those with privilege. In sum, even if this won’t top my favorites list, I think those who are interested by its synopsis may enjoy it.

[Christy fictional_traits · Rating 4 out of 5]

'If consumption would always make me feel guilty, then perhaps it was more gratifying to guiltily consume, which at least produced charged, frothy sensations...than to abstain...'.

Bulk: bulk buying, bulk waste, bulky body, hoarding bulk - we all have a relationship with consumerism. Emily Mester's essays synthesise her relationship with shopping and eating, the joy of purchasing, and the amplification of this pleasure through online accessibility. Drawing on not only her behaviour, but also reflecting on her father's mass consumerism and her grandmother's hoarding, Mester's stories are sometimes quite pointed and thought-provoking, while others read more like nostalgic reflections. From the hypocrisy of Costco's hyperbolic offerings, to the comfort of chain restaurants, to the search for authentic products from genuine reviews, your concept of amassing and definition of 'waste' will be challenged.

'American Bulk' is a well-written, easy-to-read book that offers a topical discourse, shaped by personal experience.

'There are so many things to buy and so many people begging you to buy them...and so hungry and insidious is the onslaught now...to know why and how and if you like the things you choose to purchase - is more of an afterthought'.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

PUB 11/26/24!

Never before have I had my vices laid bare like this, ouch.
Getting to the crux of the matter, Emily sifts through the many ways in which consumption has gone off the rails. Unique to these essays, I don't get the sense she's riled up. American Bulk is more of an elucidation than anything. A welcomed reprieve from the rousing (and rightly so) critique I've grown accustomed to.

Emily Mester dissects consumption with a nostalgic air. Drive thru ordering, guests visiting from out of town, online shopping. Our never ceasing transition from one screen to another. What a 3 star rating really means. The contagion that are bed people. Baby dolls with one "skill" that is a skill in the way a baby reaching milestones is a skill - not a "skill-skill", recognized by the masses. Our unfortunate front row seat to The Mall and online shopping's coup. The jump scare that is Spirit Halloween, fully stocked and open for business out of thin air. If you can't tell, I identified with a lot of it.

The description for this collection does seem a bit misleading in hindsight; a few times I felt my thoughts start to wander when the essays stayed on a personal tangent for too long. While most of the anecdotes did add something to the essays, it just wasn't what I thought I was signing on for. And if I wasn't also a white woman who grew up in the middle class, masquerading as upper, I'm not sure I'd have appreciated the tangents as much - if at all. "White American Bulk" may be a more accurate title? That being said, take my review with a grain of salt.

{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Emily Mester and W.W. Norton for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!}

[kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s no secret that America thrives off of consumerism and capitalism. In American Bulk, Mester challenges readers to look at consumerism with empathy rather than shame and disgust. Through the lens of nostalgia, Mester considers the comfort and safety that bulk provides and how it shaped her own life by reflecting on her dad’s shopping addiction and her grandmother’s need to collect any free item, the absurdity of Costco Wholesale, memories from her time at fat camp, and more. Mester meets readers with wit and a strong narrative voice; I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.

[Alyssa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmm. I'm struggling with how to rate this. This collection of essays was not really what I expected at all. This does fine as a memoir type of book, but I wanted more. She acknowledges American's overconsumption problem, but that's about as far as it goes. No analysis on environmental effects, economic effects, nothing really. Just that we consume a lot, and most of the essays, while interesting, were anecdotal about her hoarding grandmother and father, and again, no real analysis done or really any introspection. Another reviewer said this was a deep dive and thorough analysis, but where? She had the basis to reflect on the consumerism at different levels of economic privilege but doesn't at all. She acknowledged her dad's shopping 'addiction' when he had to go into considerable debt to do so and that it continued once he became well-off, but there was no analysis of this.

The chapter of her being at fat camp felt so jarring and out of place. I don't understand the reason behind it, I mean as maybe to provide another example of ways that Americans overindulge, but there was no deeper analysis done there either. The blurb also talks about excusing our overconsumption as "not a bad thing". We are dumping our trash and excess in places where it is damaging the environment and contaminating water sources for the local people. People in DRC are dying due to mining coltan and cobalt for pennies a day in order to have the minerals necessary for our electronics. Our overconsumption is a terrible thing - I don't care if it's a 'psychological issue' - it is quite literally destroying the planet and killing people. Just because "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism" doesn't mean that you keep going about spending and overconsuming from companies without a care, it means that you are aware that nothing will be ethical but you still do your best to make it as ethical as possible. This 'memoir' does nothing of the sort but actually quite the opposite. Serial killers also suffer from 'psychological issues' - doesn't mean that it's excusable or that we need to be sympathetic to it.

[CJ Alberts]

Really good

[Jillian B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir in essays was entertaining and thought-provoking enough that when I listened to it on the treadmill, it kept me from being miserable…and trust me, that is high praise!

The author recounts her upbringing as the granddaughter of a hoarder and the daughter of a wealthy shopaholic. But her essays also delve into other ways consumption has impacted her life, from her time at “fat camp” as a teenager to her stint as a saleswoman at Ulta. Parts of her story were relatable to me and the parts that weren’t were utterly fascinating. She explores themes like social class with care, wit and nuance.

I’m a big fan of this book!

[cass krug · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a bit different to what i was expecting, and i ended up enjoying it even more than i was expecting! for some reason i thought this would be more of an educational, bigger picture look at overconsumption, but it was a great mixture of personal writing about mester’s own experience with cultural phenomenons that will be relatable to a lot of people - chain restaurants, costco, working retail, online shopping, etc.

really liked how mester dove into her family’s relationships with each other and with the accumulation of stuff. it was interesting to see how both her grandmother and father both held onto items, but still clashed with each other because they didn’t see the value in what the other had. also really enjoyed the exploration of taste and why we like the things we like.

thought the author’s voice was super fresh and entertaining, excited to see what she does in the future! shoutout to sunny’s book truck for putting this on my radar with their book club!

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published November26, 2024.

4 stars.

Got unopened Amazon packages piling up at your house? I think I have eight on my dining room table as I type this. If you are anything like me, this is for you, because we are Americans, so most of us amass. The description of the book makes it seem like this will be a study on why we buy and gather and discard what we do, but that really isn’t accurate. The book is more a biography of the author’s life in commerce, and being raised by a dad and around a grandmother who were both hoarders. Her dad is rich, her grandmother was a teacher in Iowa, so they came at amassing goods from different perspectives, but they shared a common psychology; more is better.

Then the author recounts her time as an Ulta salesperson and her stint at fat camp, as well as family trips to Costco to look at her own relationship with stuff.

Really enjoyed this book. The author has a strong narrative voice and she kept me engaged even though I’ve read other, similar stories.

[Sabrina Pisciotta]

had some interesting takes on american consumerism, but she comes from such privilege that by the end it felt like she was on her high horse rather than offering insight

[Moonkiszt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emily Mester's debut American Bulk was not what I thought it was going to be - and yet it is simply a more personal consideration of the bulk, of the stuff that Americans long for, procure, collect, obsess over, and then protect with their lives and property. They keep it in homes, garages, outbuildings, spend thousands storing it offsite, fill their campers and cars with it. Anywhere it can be squirreled away safely for future retrieval - at just that right time - that's where that stuff will go. Because it WILL come in handy at some point - it WILL be needed. Just you wait.

The essays, chapters, sections - they are about the author's life experiences with family, friends and neighbors who have stuff, carefully curated, inventoried (or not, random works, too!), and piled precariously. Mester's observations are spot on, sharp and with no mincing of words. She's elected herself the narrator of the play that is in progress, the calling of a spade a spade and she does it well.

I expected, by the conclusion of the book, a judgy wrap-up, but was pleasantly surprised. I found something more mellow, more thoughtful. Something that doesn't dismiss the problematic work ahead of solution and cure, but makes room for an admission that there's a universality to the personal parts of this dilemma for which responsibility might extend also to the societal infrastructure within which we live.

Kudos for waving the flag, Iowa-style, for which my 4 stars brightly shine (not in a box, and not with a fox). Not exactly an intervention, but more rather an entreating encouragement that one might ought to be considered.

*A sincere thank you to Emily Mester, W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.* #AmericanBulk #NetGalley 25|52:41e

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hm. I've very conflicted on this one.

It was more lyrical than I was anticipating, and I think I was just not in the mood to sit with it as long as it needed to be sat with.

It's good, but I think the most frustrating thing was how vividly I saw myself reflected in the mirror Mester held up.

[Hannah]

When a friend from suburban Philadelphia decamped for a grad program in the UK, I tried several different ways of asking her - is it really so many villages, ancient stone homes, slate tiles, allotments, fields, sheep there? Or is that just what they show us on British TV, and really everything is a shopping center, a parking lot, a traffic jam, you know, like it is here? She hedged. I don’t think it was for lack of observing; I think it was that in America we overlook those things.

I mean that literally - we look over the shopping center, the freeway, the credit card statements, the bags of stuff piling up in the hallway, the virtuous 2nd hand shopping spree, the pants in the back of the closet we’ll never fit into again but who knows you never know maybe one day…the real part of town is the wood-fired pizza place, the bookstore, the park. Yes it’s bivouacked by highways and strip malls, but they don’t count towards anything, because they are no-place. They are everywhere, but they don’t add to place in any way, so they don’t count. But isn’t that strange, to be so full of things that don’t count? Junk food, empty calories. Sprawl. And what makes it all so much worse is that we can’t even really talk about it, how much crappiness overwhelms our days, our minds. There are little gems of realness, but mostly it’s aggravating crap that we’re not supposed to mention. Which is why this book is so welcome to me even as it’s also disgusting.

When my grandma died, grandma of Nova Scotia peasant origins who made it big with her former RAF husband, who trained to be a journeyman electrician at a GM plant on the Rouge River, who then started their own company doing new build commercial electrical work, good timing, Detroit was booming, they wired Albertsons, they wired new suburban junior high buildings, they boomed, their houses grew, the lanes on the freeway grew, their waistlines grew, the memory of sleeping next to the woodstove in Canada faded in vividness but grew in fear, and haunted them, or offset the goodness of growth, reminded them of the point of it all, which of course goes down the drain when you die, because you can’t take it with you. When she died, we lived in a basement with a pool table for two weeks. The only time I’ve ever been good at playing pool. Nobody went outside. Everyone hired landscapers and the grass was mown and the hedges were geometric but everyone was inside. And my hunger grew! My hunger for something like real life grew. My cousins probably would have said my snobbishness grew. Not inaccurate. The subject of what we were going to eat was the only intrigue, and my aunt would say she was thinking about making chicken breasts again.

When I realized we could just go to Dearborn every day instead, I may have cried. Downtown Dearborn was real, but the land of chicken breasts and basements big enough for pool tables and so many highways and so many parking lots and chain restaurants, that was not real, that did not count.

But of course it does count. The previous inhabitants of a suburban housing development are memorialized in the street names, and if anyone had been interested when it was still possible, tey could have been counted. Elk View Drive, Babbling Brook Lane, Owl St. The radiant heat bouncing off all those parking lots and TVP roofs of mega stores, that’s real and countable too. The distress, the dissatisfaction, the confusion, the automatic desire, the manipulation of people - that’s all too real. And yet we overlook it, because some part of us refuses to accept it’s real. Or so I believe. I have eaten processed food while watching BBC shows about murders in cobbled villages. The food - fake. The show - an indicator of the real, but of course. Not really real.

Anyhow. Good stuff, this book, real stuff. But confronting crap in this way is emotionally work-y, so bear that in mind. If I were going to read this for the first time, I would have cautioned myself to go slower. Instead, like a good American, I binged it.

[jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

recently i’ve been consuming a lot of financial content, as have many other people (re: the virality of underconsumption core) so i was interested to read this. i enjoyed how anecdotal it was and that there was a narrative thread throughout all of the essays, that thread being mester and her family’s real-life experiences. i found myself relating to pieces of the essays, especially “shrink” and the commentary on retail work. i also thought it was cool that the theme of overconsumption tied into subject matter other than just buying things, like the fast food industry, obesity in the united states, and mester’s own experience at a fat camp. we are a country based on excess.

that being said, i did find myself wanting and expecting more facts, statistics, psychology related to scarcity mindsets and the compulsion to consume, to hoard. there were bits of that, i feel, but as i said the essays were primarily anecdotal, personal. i think all of these essays could have been strengthened with an added mix of research. there was discussion on the significance of advertising, but why do we feel compelled to spend money? what do companies do, exactly, that gets our brains to buy? what drives hoarders to hoard? mester analyses the differences between her father’s hoarding and her grandmother’s hoarding, but what is the psychological reasoning behind different types of hoarding?

i didn’t not enjoy this collection, i just feel as though it would be a lot more compelling if there was a balance between statistics and anecdotes, while this remained heavily anecdotal. the anecdotes did allow for a lot of relatability, which i enjoyed, and the fact that it was so narrative heavy drove me to keep reading, but i was just expecting a bit more. i do still recommend this though, especially if you want to influence yourself to spend less.

[Gabriella · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think everyone can relate to parts of this!! Any day of the year, you can log onto TikTok and watch a low buy tutorial right next to an ASMR “restock” of cleaning products you didn’t know existed. In American Bulk, Emily Mester goes beyond the haul and home shaming, tries to uncover why we have come to associate accumulation with safety.

This really is Mester’s most fleshed out take—that states of excess are the logical conclusions for people who live atop this exploitative world. Mester refuses to moralize either gluttony or asceticism, but simply observes what she sees happening all around her. She movingly captures how some families even bond through their consumption, such as during her own family’s weekly trips to Costco.

To Mester, American Bulk isn’t just about what we can accumulate from stores, but also about what we gather from those around us. The political, emotional, and financial inheritances at the heart of the Storm Lake chapters help these essays come alive. I also appreciated Live, Laugh, Lose—this essay looks at the punitive weight loss industry, and how many camps and classes are being sold to “fix” one’s physical bulk. (This may not be relevant to many others, but I also loved the points about sensory avoidance and eating at the start of this essay.)

Unfortunately, even with these strengths, this collection doesn’t rise to a truly stellar level. Too many of the essays seemed to fit the topic, but lacked a strong emotional core. Mester is obsessed with and repulsed by the place she grew up, but she doesn’t have anything unique to say about suburbia. I just wanted a more compelling, incisive examination of how we’ve gotten to this place of excess in our country. I’m not asking for economic theory, I get that’s not everyone’s lane. But surely we should AT LEAST be talking about manufactured control and financial abuse when mentioning credit card debt and binge shopping amongst suburban moms, no?!? Like where is the deep consideration of your subjects!!!

Overall, I’d recommend American Bulk to my fellow suburbanites, (grand)children of hoarders, and/or people who just really like books about our societal behavior as consumers. There are likely stronger books on all of these subjects, but for right now, I appreciate this contribution, and will enjoy the search for similar work.

[Siobhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

American Bulk is a series of personal essays about consumption and the American family, as Emily Mester explores her own history with consumerism and the ways it has been part of her life and upbringing. In short essays exploring topics like American chain restaurants, working in retail, and hoarder family members, Mester exposes herself and her family to look at appetite and consumption, and things we might automatically see as bad or shameful, whilst asking why this happens.

I was intrigued by the concept of exploring American 'bulk' culture and consumption, though actually this book is more focused on personal history and is more of a memoir in essays than 'essays on excess' more broadly. That's not to say that it isn't engaging, but it doesn't really draw what it depicts into comparison with wider American culture that much, and I think there were obvious areas where it could've gone deeper, particularly as many of the essays seem to start to reflect on class and its relationship to consumption, but often returns to the personal rather than go further with that. However, it is more of a memoir that focuses on an ongoing story of Mester's grandmother's abandoned house and what it says about her wider family's hoarding and consumption, which I think some people will prefer, but for me I wanted more of the cultural stuff.

As an ending note, there is an essay about leaving reviews which makes reviewing this book almost ironic, particularly as the conclusion of that essay seems to be not to review because you don't know the impact of that review. So, I suppose, take this review with the grain of salt that maybe we shouldn't be reviewing at all...

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is based on an advance copy.

Mester's brutally honest vignettes of her family and life are punctuated by some very poignant observations, but I don't think her experience has really been that of the typical American family. As she admits, her family is wealthy and has a tendency towards hoarding. While hearing about her family and experiences is interesting, it wasn't what I was expecting which was a more in depth look at typical American impulses and tendency to excess. This was more of a personal story. I did learn something about Midwest culture though, and Mester raises some thought provoking points.

Overall, not a bad book, but not well represented by the title and the blurb.

[ruby]

thorough deep dive on contemporary consumer culture, particularly thought-provoking analysis on american bulk, labor, and our psychological relationship to the material

[katherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank god I read this. How else was I supposed to learn that rich people have feelings too?

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir about the author's personal experience as a budding hoarder (revealed in the last chapter), the daughter of a hoarder, the granddaughter of a hoarder, the product of a society that creates hoarders. A memoir about suburban malaise by a kid so submerged in it that she can write a whole introspective memoir and insist she's writing about overconsumption and not sheer banality. Emily is the suburban malaise where teens can't do anything, go anywhere, see anyone, unless someone gives them a ride, but her adolescence is so embroiled in a weird two years being an outcast in a WASPy prep school, coming to normal high school late, and finally fitting in at fat camp. There's a lot here. If she'd done more research, this would be a book about American overconsumption, but she didn't, so it's mostly a book about Emily and her insane family. Her grandma started hoarding before it was such a known pathology. As a child, her family drove to visit grandma's house but they couldn't go inside because it was "messy." Grandma is a wonderful person, a beloved retired schoolteacher, an older person led by propaganda to an insane MAGA world and a Facebook page to post about it on. She's a great character in the book, and Emily goes about as far as she can with her grandma until she arrives at her hoarder house and doesn't go inside to get crushed by five decades worth of free samples. Emily's father is a lawyer who buys everything he can off Amazon because he can. He's a MAGA Republican who is so excited to cosplay redneck that he buys a piece of farmland to put storage sheds on and rides around on a tractor. Emily's sister says, "He's so happy. It's like when Marie Antoinette built the fake farm." Emily herself buys online and returns online, filling herself with the virtue of not keeping everything. She's a product of an environment and generation where shopping is one of the only rewarding things to do, but she's trying to be good about it, be virtuous, create a cool self who is different from her family, while still loving the same suburban chain nonsense she grew up with, trying to distance herself from both the young Emily who wrote an undergrad essay about how cool she was to *hipster head nod* love Olive Garden ironically, and the Emily who's trying to be reflective enough to admit that the Olive Garden was meh the last few times she went. She also worked at Ulta Beauty Supply, which is an interesting reflection on class and retail. And her wee history of online product reviews was actually pretty interesting, even though buying anything based on the review seems absolutely insane to me, but I know it's something that younger people do. And then she virtuously erases her reviews after inadvertently negging a small burrito shop.

[Carly Knight-Carrier · Rating 4 out of 5]

i already felt like i was the target audience for this book THEN there’s a whole chapter about the very ulta (& surrounding shopping center) i grew up going to!!!

[Autumn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can’t decide if it’s ironic or fitting that someone so privileged would write a book about excess. A lot of the analysis is good but the lack of self awareness is uncomfortable.

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays that at once are an analysis of consumer culture in the United States and also a coming of age story. Mester writes about consumer culture (specifically re: retail & food) through the lens of herself and her family. She writes about her grandmother’s hoarding, her father’s shopping addiction, her experience at fat camp, working retail, also more generally about taste, class, generational wealth, and the act of transaction. My favorite essay was the second to last one While Supplies Last - about mall culture and the cultural shift away from malls, that is to put it incredibly simply. I would read a whole book of this essay. I really liked Mester’s voice, it felt relaxed and compassionate while still feeling well researched. The collection wasn’t exactly what I was expecting when I started, in a good way though.

[Shalyn Falloon · Rating 2 out of 5]

American Bulk wasn’t quite what I hoped for. Going in, I expected a sharp, cohesive collection of essays exploring themes of excess, but what I got felt more like a memoir with occasional reflections rather than a focused essay collection. Out of the nine essays, only two really resonated or felt in line with what I anticipated. The rest meandered or leaned too heavily on personal narrative without the depth or insight I was looking for. As a memoir, this book is more successful—but as a collection about “bulk” and excess, it fell short.

Rounded up to 2/5 stars.

[Zachary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit underwhelmed. It was okay. Queer which was a nice surprise, but I expected essays about excess from a less personal perspective and more from a general philosophical perspective. And the personal perspective was rich too, which. Meh. Felt like the author was coming to conclusions anyone might come to. But maybe that's just because I also have thought about this stuff a lot.

[Lisa of Hopewell · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Interest
I’m going through a very real crisis right now–I’m sick of everything in the US being over-the-top. Especially in regards to decor. Never a blank wall. Ugh! I’m sick of our discarded fast fasion clothing and home decor devouring swarths of the African continent.

I miss the great malls of the 1970s–it was a fun place. Grab and Orange Julius or a big pretzel, buy a record or a new shirt, run into a friend or two shopping with their Mom. What’s not to love? I miss the elderly people mall-walking in the 80s and 90s. There is only one traditional, indoor mall that I know to be alive and well in Cincinnati. No accident that it’s the high-end one. The rest of use go to strip malls to shop at Homegoods or TJ Maxx/Marshall’s or Shoe Carnival or wherever now. Too many food choices to count. I hate the new faux-downtown outdoor malls. Terrible parking and you have to wear a coat–all to go to Trader Joe’s or Old Navy or some normal store.

I’ve been in a cycle of over-spending. Not as in become homeless [well maybe if Trump does in Social Security] but more than I should on a very liberal budget. So, I recently asked my friends what some “free” recrecational ideas were. This is a tough one for me–I took microeconomics years ago in college and the first thing we learned was to calculate the true cost of our education–not just tuition and room and board and books, but the wages we could have been earning and more. Here’s what we came up with:

Read library books
Not free–we pay property taxes that support the library
Must use gas and car depreciates going to get them
Clean the house
Even cleaning with plain old water costs where I live
Play with the cats
Visit my grandson
Must use gas and car depreciates going over there (about 10 miles)
Watch youtube of other “free” videos
Electricty costs money
I don’t count the cost of internet access because I have to have it for work–you could argue this gets me a bigger bang for my buck
All of these options ignore that, theoretically, I could be working to earn money instead.

You see, like most suburban Americans my hobby is shopping. Never mind the dollar amounts. When Americans get bored today, they go shopping. I don’t have Coscot but I have it’s twin–Sam’s Club. (My brother gives me a membership so he doesn’t have to shop for Mom which is fine with me). I’m now wholey dependent on them for my cups of avocado mush for toast in the morning, for huge bags of blueberries when I’m in smoothie mode, and for the salad mix I love is $2 cheaper than at Kroger. TWO DOLLARS. Plus its right on the way to work.

So, when I read about this new collection of essays in a Guardian article (linked), I went straight to my library’s e-audio app and downloaded it. From the beginning it blew me away.

The Essays
The individual essays are part opinion and part memoir which is what made them so engaging. The big tie in for me was her family’s Sunday ritual of going to Costco. (My day is Saturday if I’m going to shop for the day or Monday before work if I’m being good). She likens it to her family’s weekly religious observance. The other biggie was that she speaks the language of suburbia–of the mall, of strip malls [If you are not in the USA this is noting related to s-&-x–it just means a strip of stores on a road]. My world. I’ve never lived anywhere else. I live rural now, but in a rural suburban enclave.

Note: I stopped writing this review here several days ago to make dinner. Sadly, I cleaned up and lost my notes on all various essays. I’m sorry.

Emily’s family is that of one of my employers–a very, very successful attorney [I do not mean to say I work for her father–just a similar firm]. She was sent off to St. Paul’s, a prep school [UK readers think Public School] on the East Coast similar to the schools the Kennedys, the Bush family, the Roosevelts and even Trump’s religious “advisor” [aka stooge] Franklin Graham [I love his ministry, not his politics], attended. The wealthy. The people who play polo, race yachts, have a huge home in Cape Cod or Maine for the summer.

She also went to fat camp. Now, she doesn’t claim to have ever fatted out of normal sizes. At a Prep School being larger than Catherine, Princess of Wales, would see the powers-that-be tut-tutting over your weight if you are a girl. It is very well documented that thin women are higher achievers–just like tall, athletic men.

But the most interesting aspect of the story was the hoarding. Yes as in those grizzly t.v. shows of homes over-run was 18 years of pizza boxes or millions of pairs of shoeleaces or too many pets or whatever. Her grandmother, who was apparently ana appalling parent, was a hoarder. So, too, is her father–though he had sufficient funds to just move to a bigger house and build or rent storage facilities.

Just a domestic partner abuse is not simply a problem of poverty, hoarding affects people at all levels of income. For her father, it was compulsive shopping–and the income to do so without affecting his family’s standard of living, that made it all happen. He didn’t keep trash or have 71 cats. He had warehouses full of products. I totally understand the “high” he got from online shopping–it is a double dig. You get a high when you click to checkout and second high when the big brown truck pulls up with your box. Thankfully, I don’t have the income to fill my house with endless phone chargers or packages of speaker wire or whatever like he bought. But I do have a room to organize my “hobby” which is packing pencil packs and shoeboxes for Operation Chirstmas Child. I had to take a long step back for 2025. This book reinforced that decision.

Her thoughts on the mall brought back floods of memories of those places. I recall our first ever trip as a family to an indoor mall near Milwaukee in about 1968, It was amazing! We could rent a locker and not have to wear our big coats. There was a movie theater–we saw the Love Bug and entered to win a “Herbie” look-alike. What’s not to love? My friends and I went to the Mall in the 80s–often driving a half-hour to Castleton or Greenwood where the “good” Indianapolis malls were. While inititally outside the mall, Castleton had the first Border’s Bookstore–God’s gift to my generation [because having to buy books at Walden’s or Daltons in the mall was a crime].

My Thoughts
Maybe it came out too late? I was really upset to see this was NOT on NPR’s list of best books of the year, yet whiny-silver-spoon-up-the-butt Charles Spencer’s book was. I believe this collection is actually significant and has a lot to say about current, and recent, America culture.

If, in 2025, you are only going to read one essay collection, let it be this one.

American Bulk: Essays on Excess by Emily Mester

I listened to the audion version of this collection.

[Ella Crabtree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classic essay problem: some were amazing and some were not. Started very strong and became repetitive. The olive garden essay (my favorite) should be required reading for the nuanced insights on taste, wealth, and ~bicoastal elite~ culture

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Bulk: Essays on Excess is the book Joan Didion would’ve written if—or when—she shopped at Costco, ate at the Olive Garden, ordered off of Amazon. Honestly, it’s the one I wish I would’ve written and could’ve if you subbed out Iowa for Connecticut, a grandparent for a parent, a failed retail stint at Ulta for BJ’s Wholesale Club.

I often see “razor-sharp commentary” lobbed at essayists in the Didion tradition, whatever that is, but the praise rarely lives up to the hype. There is nothing particularly new about Emily Mester’s premise here—Americans’ overconsumption and how what we consume ultimately consumes us—and I suspect that's why it hasn't received much attention in book media or pop culture. But I was thunderstruck by the angles in which she tackles these concepts, forcing (and I don’t say that word lightly) the reader to confront something ugly but universal about ourselves and the world in which we live—syphoning these shared concepts down to our lived reality. Her skill in putting words to feelings I have known intimately all my life but could never describe truly astounded me; I will not forget anytime soon her approach to and understanding of hoarding behavior, what she calls the paralysis of "deep ambivalence":

As [Kylie] slept next to me, I opened my laptop and decided, finally, to watch Hoarders. A lot of their messes looked like the one I’d just seen, though many were even worse. But while Kylie had marveled at the hoarders’ psychology, I was startled now by the disconnect between mess and maker. Where the homes were extreme, the hoarders themselves were often not. In a group that was supposed to be driven by obsession and compulsion, I was struck by how often the hoarders didn’t seem abnormally attached to their messes. By how many of them did see the mess for what it was and were just as bothered by it as the viewer. The man with the pizza boxes didn’t seem to keep them because he loved them. The mother of two shook and wept at her kingdom.

The TV show wanted me to see people obsessed and compelled, but far more than that, I saw people who, somewhere along the normal cycle of consumption, had been paralyzed into a deep ambivalence. Our living naturally creates piles of disorder, and it requires tremendous effort to work against that entropy. Sometimes it still amazes me how quickly the laundry basket fills, how easily milk spoils, how if I forget to take the bags out for trash day one week, their amount will have doubled by next time. The hoarders’ messes might’ve been extreme, but they were rooted in painfully familiar inertia.

Of course, I bought it immediately after returning to the library.

[Steve Comstock · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow wow wow!

A germane, intelligent reflection on modern capitalism told through the lens of a family memoir of consumption. I was blown away so many times in this book. Mester puts language and contours to so many of the abstract senses of alienation I've felt but could never put my fingers on.

Mester picks and prods at the experiences of online shopping, suburbia, retail work, and online reviews, but avoids preachiness with a masterful use of her own personal stories and those of her family in a way that diffuses and lends an affability to the whole book.

A book that will be sitting with me for a very long time.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

more anecdotal and observational than analytical. her writing is very good. but I struggled with feeling nauseated by the overwhelming waste and environmental destruction of the lifestyle she describes, and didn't feel that her quick acknowledgments of that took out the sting of obscenity