Collections of Nothing by William Davies King

Author:William Davies King
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Literary Criticism, Art, General
ISBN: 9780226437002
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Published: 2008-07-25T07:00:00+00:00

wall behind. Those paintings send a signal about the purchasing power of the burghers who owned them. My labels too refl ect the Horn of Plenty, and they too have rarity and elegance. I could and actually did buy a Reggie bar.

I talk about how the collection helps us see the world anew and recognize rarity and richness in the things of common life.

Though once they were common and cheap, some of my labels would be as diffi cult to replace as a Cimabue altarpiece. Who else out there owns an authentic early 1980s Glamour Puss Fish and Liver Flavor canned cat food label? (Yes, fi sh and liver.) The manufacturer no longer exists. Mine might be the sole surviving example of this quite ordinary, unusual label, unique in the world.

Here my date might perk up. “How much are they worth?” she might wonder, or even ask. We might have met through match.

com, where there is no line on the profi le page (an oversight?) to record the metric tonnage of one’s accumulations. I might have listed collecting in a “hobbies” paragraph. “That could be interesting,” she might have thought, or “cute,” picturing a decorous shelf of antique bird decoys or Depression glass or, hey, rare editions of the Kama Sutra. Still, the subject will not be broached until it is time to wonder whether we dare order refi lls for our

“grande” cappuccinos.

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Then, it comes: “So, you collect?” Perhaps it’s a real question.

She may be wondering if I was instead the one who mentioned hang gliding as a hobby.

Or I offer, “No, I collect,” perhaps to diffuse the awkwardness of her having asked how I got into hang gliding.

“Oh,” she says, before gulping the last of her cappuccino. “I have a niece who collects key rings. She’s ten.”

In such a moment, I dearly want my collecting to be a selling point, like a mountain cabin (“There’s only a wood stove, but I fi nally installed an indoor toilet and Jacuzzi last year”) or Goya prints (“But I’m thinking of selling them, because they’re too expensive to insure”). Instead, I have to anticipate her coming to terms with thirty years of Cheerios.

“Ohmigod,” she pants, her eyes turning to liquid pools, “you have the original Honey Nut. They are so delicious. And yes, I’ll have another grande. ( Singing) Can’t get enough of that Sugar Crisp, Sugar Crisp, Sugar Crisp. . . .” This dialogue, of course, never takes place.

i look closely these days at the worlds of the people in my life, for example, the house of a woman I dated for a while. Her perfectly proportioned bungalow is fi tted with just the number of carefully accumulated and displayed objects the eye would wish to see, not one more. She has one true collection, souvenir

“fl oater pens,” the sort in which some tiny part moves in a fl uid medium under clear plastic on the upper part of the pen. Her entire collection fi ts neatly on one shelf in a labeled rack.

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