A D’Agostino Supermarket Receipt Found Left Inside a Copy of Denis Johnson’s
Jesus’ Son
by the Previous Person to Check it out of the Library, Presumably Used as a Bookmark, and Perhaps Shedding Some Light on the Type of Person Who Reads This

1 COLAVITA X VIRGIN OLV OIL
1 L&P WORCESTERSHIRE SCE
1 HBEST GARBAGE BAG SMALL
1 EZ LOAF PAN 3 PACK
1 C/HEN X LRG EGG 6PK
1 TRKY SDY/BRK GROUND REG
1 ONIONS RED
1 DAG MUSHROOMS 12OZ
1 B/E CHOP SPINACH

The purchaser of these items (which totaled $21.13), we can postulate, lives in an apartment with a small kitchen, probably not an eat-in, hence the need for small garbage bags instead of large. This is in line with the theory that some unifying thread can be found among the readers of Denis Johnson’s “Jesus’ Son,” as the author of this piece also has a tiny kitchen. You couldn’t even call it a kitchenette, really. More of a kitchenette-ette.

However, here the similarities end.

The purchase of many items that fall into the category of “ingredients” (that is, things which are generally used in combination in the creation of more complex dishes, as opposed to “stand-alones,” which usually involve the slitting of a plastic cover and placement into a microwave oven, or something even less complicated than that) suggests a consumer who fancies himself a bit of a chef. This seems to be borne out by the “EZ Loaf Pan” purchase, which indicates someone who envisions himself cooking not merely one but * three * loaves of some sort. This portrait of a typical-Denis-Johnson-reader-cum-grocery-shopper is at odds with the habits of the author of this piece, whose purchases come overwhelmingly from the “stand-alone” category, as can be seen from the following sample grocery receipt from the local Key Food (which uses a 20-character column width for product descriptions rather than the comparatively generous 25-character D’Agostino standard):

1 HAIN MINI POPCORN RI
1 BEN&JERRY BROWNIE YO
1 CELESTE ZESTY PIZZA
2 CELESTE DELUXE PIZZA
1 TROPICANA RED G
1 RICE DREAM
1 AMY TEXAS VEGGIE BUR
2 DANNON YOGURT
1 BRANOLA COUNTRY
2 HAIN CHICKEN NOODLE

And this isn’t even one of the receipts with Pop-Tarts on it. Additional information can be gleaned from the subjects’ methods of payment. Both used cash, but the D’Agostino shopper paid for his $21.13 purchase with two twenty-dollar bills, suggesting a person in a hurry, a person with somewhere to be, whereas the author of this piece meticulously produced an amount of cash that would result in a mininum of returned change (in this case, a twenty-dollar bill, a five-dollar bill, and eight cents for a tab of $24.08), indicating a slightly obsessive personality.

Clearly, the subject of the grocery shopping habits of library patrons who check out Denis’ Johnson’s Jesus’ Son requires further study.