The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith

Author:Zadie Smith [Smith, Zadie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Picaresque Literature, Autographs - Collectors and Collecting, Humorous, General, Literary, Tandem; Alex-Li (Fictitious Character), Fiction, Autographs
ISBN: 9780375703874
Google: JM6YVPx_clMC
Amazon: 037570387X
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2002-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Keter

CROWN • Jimmy’s Antiques • Highballs with Lola-Lola • Conspiracy theories • The youth brand • Zen radio • Flying into nothing • Zen Casablanca •

The collector saves

1.

Late that night, in the queue to check in, Alex-Li reflected with pleasure on the glories of the day. After seeing the rabbis, he had caught the train to the east of the city and walked into Jimmy’s Antique Market (est. 1926) feeling every inch the conquering hero. Through the covered arches he walked, past the ratty stalls hawking every kind of nostalgia; clothes, glassware, records, posters, stamps, badges, coins, autographs. He had known some of these traders for almost fifteen years, from the days when he came as a boy to spend his pocket money. He had always felt a kinship with them, however reluctant. But today he felt different. He had been set apart. How many of them had found the item they dreamt of, their personal grail? Had Lola-Lola worn Marilyn’s air-vent dress? Had Stuart Pike played Hendrix’s guitar? Had the popular writer J. D. Salinger ever once penned poor, devoted Oliver McSweeney a friendly note?

The peculiar thing about such obsessions is their specificity. Just as a man with a fetish for slight, downy-armed Japanese women is left cold by a big, brassy blonde, so the man who has spent his life in the pursuit of the tap shoes worn by the popular musical star Donald O’Connor can muster no real enthusiasm when the man at the stall to his right shows him the ruffled shirt Henry Daniell wore in Camille. All fandom is a form of tunnel vision: warm and dark and infinite in one direction.

ALEX TRAMPED THROUGH the market, looking for interested parties. Jimmy himself (grandson of original Jimmy) informed him that Lovelear and Dove were around here someplace, but he couldn’t find them. For the first time in his life, he really wanted to see Lovelear—or at least he wanted to show Kitty to someone who would fall to his knees and clasp his hands together in prayer.

But Stuart Pike spotted him first. Under duress, Alex stopped at Pike’s stall, with its mountain of twentieth-century tat (Beatles wigs, cocktail shakers in the shape of hula girls), and sat with him awhile, looking through his serial-killer correspondence. One of the more infamous of Stuart’s “friends” had recently been executed in the state of Texas. The man’s trademark had been to carve the name of his victim into her own forehead. On death row he was married twice and proposed to a dozen times. Stuart was inconsolable.

“Every letter he sent me,” said Stuart, showing him an example, “I could get an American to buy it. Four, five hundred dollars. Roaring bloody trade.”

Stuart was a Yorkshireman of good family. He had been in a glam rock band, once. He owned three paintings by the popular psychopath John Wayne Gacy.

“Do you know who Kitty Alexander is, Stu?”

“Is she the Arizona baby murderer?”

“No, no, she’s, she was, an actress. In the fifties.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.