Bloomsbury Academic

Bloomsbury Academic

English

Matthew Newton lets you know by Page 10 that he was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder as a teenager. These days, he’s a productive and well-adjusted married man and dad, doing great work at the Carnegie Museum of Art, and his skills as an inquisitive writer and thinker are evident from his latest work. But knowing that part of his makeup helps the reader accept his obsessive compulsion with shopping malls — particularly Monroeville Mall, the Valhalla of his childhood — and appreciate the insights that spill forth in this brief cultural study/memoir … Newton is the person to write this book because “the shopping mall, more than any other place, electrified my imagination” as a kid. His readers are beneficiaries of his experience seeing the mall “as a sacred place of curiosity and wonder.