this book is like relish, i can't have enough but its incredible. probably because the characters are completely fabricated. but the sentiments, the nostalgia and hope and despair is all real and from somewhere true.
'The book emulates the celebrity auction catalog (think of the six-volume Sotheby’s catalog for the many personal collections of Andy Warhol and you’re on the right track). The twist is that Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris are fictional characters and their joint possessions, carefully itemized and offered in rough chronological order in the auction catalog, are supposed to reflect the arc of their relationship, beginning with “the first known photograph of the couple together” (Lot 1005) and ending with various lots suggesting two lives going in different directions.
Shapton’s auction catalog mimicry is pitch perfect; her lot descriptions satirize the dead-pan verbiage of the high-brow auction house. And, in fact, Shapton’s “auction catalog” appears to have fooled the Library of Congress, which catalogs the volume not as fiction but in the CT class, or Auxiliary Sciences of History: Biography. Shapton must have had a blast collecting or faking the items to be included in the 332 lots: fake snapshots, tourist postcards, lingerie, clogs, 18 bras for “Lenore” and 18 tee-shirts for Harold, cheesy paperbacks, vintage sunglasses, stuffed squirrels…
On the other hand, Important Artifacts and Personal Property is less successful in giving much depth to the relationship between the two characters. Auction catalog language is deliberately wiped free of emotion and subjectivity, so Shapton often resorts to personal notes, letters, and annotations by Lenore and Harold themselves, buried in the descriptions of the various lots, as a vehicle for depicting the status of their changing relationship. For example, here is Lot 1253:
An unusual chair and a handwritten note
A vintage 1930s leather and oak chair. Good condition, some marking to leather. A note on the back of a receipt for groceries reads: “You said you’d be back at 8, you could have called. Have gone to the movies. here’s your present – Happy Birthday. L 9:45”
24 in. wide x 30 in. high x 18 in. deep
$700-900
The problem, of course, is that most of our personal possessions don’t really say much about us in isolation. (The fact that I have a Hello Kitty mug of Badtz-Maru in my office won’t tell you anything about me unless I tell you the story behind it.) When items in Shapton’s book do point to biographical traits of their owners, the message often seems forced.'
From the http://sebald.wordpress.com/
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