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Title: Collections of Nothing
ISBN: 0226437000
Author:
William Davies King
Publicate Date: 2008-07-25
Publish: 2008-07-25
List Price: $20.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $11.99
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $14.06
Amazon Merchant Price: $13.60
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Kindred Spirit
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."
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2: For collectors...
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.
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3: A brilliant and eloquent treatise
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).
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