A relationship put on auction, literally
Posted at 4:07 PM Mar 27, 2009
By Andrea Grimes |
That's why I love NPR's "Books We Like" feature about the amazingly titled Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by a NYT art director named Leanne Shapton. The book is a faux auction catalog containing the heartbreaking literal pieces of a relationship gone awry. Quoth NPR:
"For decades, fiction teachers have assailed their students with the admonition to "Show, don't tell." Now, that charge has reached its ultimate expression in the dazzling Important Artifacts, the second work by New York Times op-ed page art director Leanne Shapton. Foregoing narrative entirely, Shapton tells the story of a couple's relationship in the form of a staggeringly precise ersatz auction catalog that annotates the common detritus of a love affair -- notes, CD mixes, e-mails, photos, books-- and places the objects up for sale."Ohmygod, my heart breaks just thinking about it. What a brilliant idea and a lovely way to imagine a lost love, not as an individual or even as two individuals in the past, but as living objects. Up for sale, no less.
So go forth, Heartless Doll readers, into the weekend, and may you acquire many meaningful artifacts along the way. Or maybe just get some tail. Whatevs.
