This essay kind of describes this sort of store as one would describe a walk through the woods. But the purpose of a walk in the woods is so distinct from the purpose of shopping that no comparison can be made.
I see where you're coming from, living in a big busy city and shopping regularly in such stores you get desensitized, but your comparison to a walk in the woods is perfect.
A walk in the forest can teach you a different way to see, and so can reading a book. A more systems-minded person might see an entirely different world of hidden machinations than Annie Ernaux if they walk their local megamart like they would in the woods, but it would be equally fascinating to read.
It has the same essence as the hacker's posture of curiosity and play.
Next time I want some thing that masturbatory I’ll go straight to a porn site.
And sure enough, coulda won bingo with those assumptions.
Usually some sort of tie back to "the Real", in either the Lacan / Zizek sense, or the Baudrillard sense. Didn't get any of those, though; kinda disappointed.
Lol. Boy Howdy, you nailed it and I love your Bingo card. In my weak defense, I hoped that, since it had been vetted by the good denizens of Hacker News, it would’ve been a bit better than average.
That’s going into the history books.
(the context is that the author's parents seem to have disliked the store, and ran a press that published a book that was sharply critical of Wal Mart, with the result that the author went many years without visiting one—this context is presented right before that entirely reasonable and appropriate use of "transgressive")