Stilled Life: Important Artifacts and Personal Property
One of my New Year's resolutions is to read more for pleasure. I spent most of last year limping my way through the novel Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, which turned out to be quite enjoyable when I finally got my teeth into it, but which still left me unable to compose anything interesting for this blog after so many months of invested time.
So this year I thought I'd start with something a bit different: the story of a romance recommended to me by one of my fellow 100 Hours researchers. But this was no ordinary romance novel. I'm not even sure it classifies as a novel. Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris: including Books, Street Fashion and Jewellery is, you see, presented as an auction catalogue. The story of the couples burgeoning, established, and then slowly disintegrating relationship is told over four years through the series of their possessions; and it is mesmerising.
I have to admit to being sceptical about how such a seemingly contrived format could meaningfully tell a complex story without being obviously forced. The artefacts and possessions included range from clothing, books, furniture and gifts, to lists left in the front of books, notes on napkins or event programmes, and the occasional printed email. Leanne Shapton manages to give the sense of two people with distinct tastes and interests, quirky - and it must be said at times intensely irritating - personalities, and overwhelming careers, while at the same time creating the atmosphere of a time period, a city, and a modern way of life. In fact, she fascinatingly captures a lifestyle on the cusp, in which the couple still send each other postcards and leave handwritten notes about being locked out, while also writing emails. They buy vintage objects and make each other mix CDs. As you watch their relationship slowly break, there is a sad inevitability. Most poignant is Lot 1306 'A white noise machine ... kept by Morris in the bedroom ... Irreparable damage to top and sides, as if struck by a hammer. $5-12.'
The lots contain just enough text to keep the narrative momentum, whether it be as the content of emails or notes that are part of the objects themselves or as the occasional attached catalogue note, but it is the objects that do the work. Invitations to mutual friends' annual Halloween parties give you a clear sense of the passing of the years; their differing careers develop through Lenore's collection of books on baking (she writes a cake column for the New York Times) and Hal's expanding shelves of photography works (he's a freelance photographer). Their differing styles are shown through selections of suits, swimwear, shoes, jewellery, but also shared jumpers, often accompanied by a photograph of one or the other wearing the clothes in a particular setting. Gifts to the couple or to one or the other from each other's families emphasise how their lives increasingly intertwine.
The catalogue ends rather enigmatically. After the couple's relationship has clearly fallen apart, and Lot 1328 of real estate listings has shown them searching for separate flats, the final double-page spread shows simply dried flower petals collected by Hal and pressed four-leaf clovers kept by Lenore. They nicely symbolise the fragility and ephemerality of the relationship, bound up in shared jokes, lists and objects, but also enshrined forever in these fragile artefacts. This book makes you look afresh at your own accumulated stuff. It is fiction as modern still life.