Collections of Nothing

I LOVED this book from page one. One measure of a book is whether the reader sees some of himself. I saw more than I wanted to! Highly recommended, and now linked to on my blog "Dull Tool Dim Bulb" (which I'm sure the author would enjoy, maybe a bit too much) Fortunately, I learned how to part with "nothings" and keep the good stuff, but it took a while. Jim Linderman Dull Tool Dim Bulb

William Davies King is a collector. It practically defines him. In fact, that is how he normally describes himself. "I'm a collector," he says several times in his book, but it's not a boast, more of a rueful admission that he picks up this and that. You can see why he might want to play down his collecting. He collects what most people would consider trash: old discarded keys, cereal boxes, labels from cans of tuna, the stickers showing when your next oil change is due. His collections take a lot of space and a fair amount of time, both amassing and curating. It would be easy to dismiss King's collecting as an unhealthy obsession. And yet it doesn't seem to interfere with his life, not in any serious way. Yes, he has trouble with relationships in the course of his memoir, but the collecting seems to be a symptom of his insecurities, not a cause. Not at all like Simon Garfield's resumption of stamp collecting in midlife in The Error World: An Affair with Stamps, another memoir that features collecting. Garfield spends more money than he has on stamps and is obsessed with completing his collection. His hobby causes him more grief than pleasure. This is not the case with King, at least as he tells his story. Collections of Nothing is a book that is not easy to categorize. It's partly a memoir, although I found the memoir parts of it the least interesting, and the Freudian connections unpleasant. What fascinated me was the exploration of the phenomenon of collecting. Nearly everyone collects something at some stage of their life, usually as a child. Many continue their childhood collections into adulthood or start new collections. Completing a collection is a surprisingly unsatisfying accomplishment for many collectors. At what point does collecting become hoarding? When does a hobby become an obsession? On the other hand, when does collecting "nothing" become something? When King and his daughters take his 1,579 cereal boxes and lay them out on the stage of the theater at the university, the effect is "a brilliant tapestry of eye-catching graphics." His scrapbook of drawings from discarded dictionaries is a work of art, or at least a work of craft. And the cover of Collections of Nothing is a pleasant assortment of colored patterns made of King's collection of envelope liners, the inner layer of security envelopes that keeps people from being able to read through the envelope. Who would think to collect those? He has over 800 different patterns. Is it art? If King isn't exactly an artist (and who's to say he isn't?), he's a creative craftsman and has a way with words as well. A few of the words he uses to describe his collections are "et ceteralia" and "ephemerrhea." As a non-collector, I started this book somewhat skeptically, but in the end, came to see the value in what King was doing with his collections. In an understated way, he even pointed out the relative harmlessness of his own collections in comparison with those of his brothers, w

From that dreadful, yet witty opening garage scene to the bittersweet account of King and his daughters carefully laying out those 1500 cereal boxes on stage, I was touched deeply by a complex mix of reactions: dread, tears, outright laughter, quiet smiles. How masterfully the author delves beneath the tarnished surfaces and worn edges of his prized collections of nothing to reveal a powerful story of the lasting imprint of family dynamics, social interactions, self-perceptions and the ultimate meanings of a life. Indeed I discovered valuable insights and a palpable connection to King's personal explanation of his assemblages of things, people and life learnings. Despite his sometimes rambling close to the book, he clearly made his point: each individual's ongoing search and inevitable ups and downs of intellectual, creative and emotional fulfillment is a unique, irreplaceable collection of emptiness and satiety, fear and faith, hurt and healing. It's how we treat and care for these experiences, and how we choose to store and display them that determines the richness of our lives. King has offered up a treasure in his "Collections of Nothing."

I read this straight thru, finding examples in myself as I read along. His analyses and memories are varied and interesting. His writing style is smooth and never interrupts his topic.

William Davies King is an eccentric genius who bares his soul in this astute, frightfully intimate, and painfully honest exploration of the psychology of collecting. The writing is exquisite and witty (e.g. "They would become playful wrights, and I would knot" and "What I was missing was the middle ground, the female body, the something into which I could locate my nothing, the nothing into which I could stick my something.") and the insights disarming. This is a book about collecting, yes, but also about the touching commonalities of life's perplexing journeys. Collections of Nothing is a masterful work that has bearing on the searching we all engage in. King makes us complicit in his collecting, and for most of us, reading this book is the closest we will come to a kitchen table conversation with a person as brilliant as likes of Levi-Strauss, Joyce, or John (Lennon, Prine, or the Baptist).