Observations about “Supermarket” part 2: the plot

*This part contains spoilers.*

So the book is basically the story of Flynn, a guy from some remote corner of Oregon who’s an aspiring writer. He always starts writing great novels and comes up with good ideas but never finishes them, which is brought to his attention by Lola, his ex-girlfriend who breaks up with him just after allowing him to realize this. However, he does actually get a book deal with this publisher from NYC who’s willing to pay for his trip and stuff. He’s given a time limit of about 7 months sharp to finish his novel. His idea for the novel is telling the ordinary lives of people, all of whom work at the same supermarket. To make his novel more realistic, he begins to work at a grocery store called “Muldoon’s”, in which he meets Frank, the protagonist of his novel.

He bases his book on the events that happen in the supermarket. One day, Frank shows him that he has a gun in his locker, and when Flynn asks what it’s for, he says “In case some schizophrenic maniac shows up to rob the store or shoot some people, I just want to be prepared.” A couple days later, Frank shows Flynn how he has almost stole 20,000 dollars from the store over a period of a couple of years. He sneaks fifties and hundreds, and has saved up to 20 thousands dollars. One day, while talking to Flynn, he begins to fantasize about robbing the store. It would be so easy, he says. He knows where the security cameras are, he knows when they’re not being watched, he knows how to delete the recording, and his fingerprints are already all over the place so nobody would suspect him. He then laughs about it, saying how he was just kidding. A lightbulb turns on in Flynn’s mind, because he had been looking for an ending for his novel for quite some time. He constantly looks for ideas for his novel and regularly experiences stress, panic attacks and series of derealizations. Because nothing out of the ordinary happens in the supermarket, he wants to think of something big that’s going to be the climax to his novel. He decides that the only thing not overlapping with reality in his novel is going to be the ending, ie. the robbery. One day, after work, he comes home and sits down to write the ending to his novel. He begins to wear black clothes, almost as though he is actually robbing the store, and drinks a ton of scotch. He gets inside Frank’s head, and writes. Just after Frank robs the store, the original conclusion Flynn thinks about, which is Frank running off to Canada without revealing his identity, changes. He decides that Frank should show his face to the world. Frank takes of his black ski mask and flips off the cameras.

The next day, Flynn wakes up in front of his computer, hungover. He goes into work, only to find everyone having gathered in a circle with police cars out front. When he asks what has happened, he learns that there was a robbery last night. He goes to his locker within the store to process all this, and when he opens it, he finds Frank’s gun inside. Ted, the store manager, then asks Flynn to “come with him”. They tell him that it’s no use to run, because they know that Flynn was the one that robbed the store. He was the one that flipped off the camera, the one whose fingerprints are on “Frank’s” gun, and so, the one who robbed the store. The one who’s being handcuffed. The one who’s fired. Just as police take him away, Frank tells him “Good job, Flynn.”

Flynn wakes up, tied to a bed with white clothes. He soon learns that he’s been in an insane asylum for 2 years, after his robbery of “Muldoon’s”. He learns that ever since he’s been hospitalized, he has been replying the same scenario of being called by the publishing agency, beginning to work at Muldoon’s, meeting Frank, making new friends, finding an ending to his book and then actually robbing the store. The nurses tell him that due to the pressure of having to finish his novel, he invented “Frank”, the perfect protagonist for his novel. They tell him that he is Frank.

I don’t want to give any more spoilers, but the novel moves forward in a completely immersing manner. It was so refreshing to be able to read something this out of the ordinary. The novel’s plot was truly creative and shocking, but it also made me question concepts like derealization, or the value of life, or the goals of individuals in life without explicitly stating those.