American Bulk: Essays on Excess

By escorting Olive Garden into the realm of acceptability, I’d revealed my belief that such a realm existed, and that I was one of its gatekeepers. True iconoclasm would’ve been my unqualified pleasure, but I couldn’t unqualify my pleasure.

we were not the kind of group who could comfortably sustain such blatant, undisguised togetherness. We needed a pretext. Costco was our play.

I’d learned this in high school when I’d looked for summer jobs only to find that summer jobs didn’t really exist anymore, because the people who fill them don’t really exist. If you have money, your summer job is pre-collegiate grooming rituals, all your unpaid internships and philanthropy. If you don’t have money, your summer job is the job you a

These entrepreneurs felt it important to be accountable to their clientele, not because of any business ethic, but because people were reluctant to open their wallets for caveat emptor.

But what are advertisements if not instructions?

Costco offers far more than a good deal. It offers the lulling comfort of permanent volume, the same bulwark against scarcity that draws us to the all-you-can-eat, the BOGO, the unlimited refill, the family size.

Dwight Macdonald coined the term midcult, defining middle culture by its aspirations to universality. Midcult lay between avant-garde and schlock, broadly likable, smart enough to feel elevated, bland enough to not challenge your palate.

Wealth was not leveraged to consume rarer or fancier things than the middle class, but to consume middle-class things in excess.

I felt, when I consumed, that while my individual participation in the system would unavoidably augment its power, revoking my participation did nothing to diminish it.