Slim, raffish and spirited ... Trash! has been compared to...Anthony Bourdain’s restaurant kitchen exposé. Usually, comparisons to Bourdain are fatuous. This time it’s accurate.There are topics I wish Paré-Poupart had found room to explore ...It’s been a long time since I’ve read so good and rowdy a memoir about blue-collar work.
Trash! is an intriguing attempt to broaden the parameters of this kind of book. Paré-Poupart has a distinctly 21st-century knack for swirling together theoretical and visceral language ... His grab-bag writing is reminiscent of the internet at its rare, educational best. Paré-Poupart’s style gives his book a rambunctious spirit, a sense of a hungry, catholic mind at work ... Paré-Poupart’s constant need to connect and contextualize can be a little exhausting, as I imagine his dumpster-diving lifestyle might be. Still, the book is exhilarating (also like dumpster diving?) on every page.
Despite its political thrust, the writing is suffused with literary oomph and good humour ... I zoomed through Trash! in a couple of hours. Paré-Poupart does that magical thing that great memoir writers always do: he offers you a keyhole through which to peer into an unfamiliar world. My only complaint? I wish he had written more.
Trash! A Garbageman’s Story is a chaotic, contradictory memoir that accomplishes author Simon Paré-Poupart’s goal to shatter the fantasy that trash magically disappears ... The author’s choice of breadth over depth allows readers to dip their toes into the world of trash collection though it doesn’t permit for more than a quick visit, making the book feel like a series of short stops on Paré-Poupart’s collection route ... At the end of the day, Trash! A Garbageman’s Story is exactly what the title states, not a blueprint for overhauling the work conditions of trash collectors or curbing waste production, but simply a garbageman’s story.
In this arresting book, he makes that invisible work something you can’t look away from. A sharp and engaging reckoning with the detritus of our times—and the people who clean it up.
