Link This |
Email this |
Blog This |
Comments (6)
Introducing: The Never-Heard-Of Must-Read
July 1, 2008
Consider this the first of a regular irregular series about my favorite oddball book of the moment.
Entry #1: Collections of Nothing by William Davies King. Published just last month by the University of Chicago Press, and briefly and fondly noted in The New Yorker, this slim volume is a weird and wonderful booklength essay/memoir about the joy of collecting. . .no, not just jewels or paintings or even, say, ceramic frogs, but real, honest, forthright junk. Stuff like balls of wire. Old food labels. You get the idea.
But it’s more than some strange story of a guy with the 21st century version of OCD: it’s also a memoir of an American adolescence as lived through stuff. A sentimental education, even. Reminiscent of early Nicholson Baker in its obsessiveness, Collections of Nothing is a collection of thoughts, words, adventures, observations that would add up to, well, nothing, were it not for the author’s slightly subversive nature. And, of course, his wit.
Do you have a secret favorite read of the moment? I'm listening. . .
Posted by Sara Nelson on July 1, 2008 | Comments (6)
