Collections of Nothing [Hardcover]

William Davies King (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226437000 | ISBN-13: 978-0226437002 | Publication Date: July 25, 2008

Nearly everyone collects something, even those who don’t think of themselves as collectors. William Davies King, on the other hand, has devoted decades to collecting nothing—and a lot of it. With Collections of Nothing, he takes a hard look at this habitual hoarding to see what truths it can reveal about the impulse to accumulate.

 

Part memoir, part reflection on the mania of acquisition, Collections of Nothing begins with the stamp collection that King was given as a boy. In the following years, rather than rarity or pedigree, he found himself searching out the lowly and the lost, the cast-off and the undesired: objects that, merely by gathering and retaining them, he could imbue with meaning, even value. As he relates the story of his burgeoning collections, King also offers a fascinating meditation on the human urge to collect. This wry, funny, even touching appreciation and dissection of the collector’s art as seen through the life of a most unusual specimen will appeal to anyone who has ever felt the unappeasable power of that acquisitive fever.

 

"What makes this book, bred of a midlife crisis, extraordinary is the way King weaves his autobiography into the account of his collection, deftly demonstrating that the two stories are essentially one. . . . His hard-won self-awareness gives his disclosures an intensity that will likely resonate with all readers, even those whose collections of nothing contain nothing at all."—New Yorker

 

"King's extraordinary book is a memoir served up on the backs of all things he collects. . . . His story starts out sounding odd and singular—who is this guy?—but by the end, you recognize yourself in a lot of what he does."—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

 

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, December 2008: One of the oddest memoirs of the year may well be the best. William Davies King is a theater professor who over his fifty-plus years has gathered, in countless binders and boxes, a vast collection of things nobody else wants: cat-food labels, chain letters, skeleton keys, cereal boxes, chopstick wrappers, the "Place Stamp Here" squares from the corners of envelopes. It's an obsession you might think was inexplicable--least of all by the one obsessed--but in Collections of Nothing King makes his mania seem nearly rational, and the personal drama of it wryly fascinating. (Imagine if Henry Darger had written witty, self-aware essays that analyzed his obsessions without puncturing their mystery.) King is an academic and he's been through therapy, but he writes free of the clots and cliches of both of those disciplines, contemplating what he calls "the cumbersummation of me" with the myopic elegance of Nicholson Baker and a moving understanding that this strange, apparently worthless collection--and now this lovely and wise book about it--are what he has to offer the world. --Tom Nissley

From The New Yorker

King, a professor at Santa Barbara, has spent decades collecting things that nobody else would want: food packages and labels (he has about eighteen thousand), illustrations snipped from old dictionaries (seven thousand), linings of "security" envelopes (eight hundred patterns), "the mute, meager, practically valueless object, like a sea-washed spigot, its mouth stoppered by a stone." What makes this book, bred of a midlife crisis, extraordinary is the way King weaves his autobiography into the account of his collection, deftly demonstrating that the two stories are essentially one. "I lost and found myself in remote topical aisles of scholarship-wreck," he says of his hours in Yale’s library, reading the most obscure books he could find. His hard-won self-awareness gives his disclosures an intensity that will likely resonate with all readers, even those whose collections of nothing contain nothing at all.
Copyright ©2008Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (July 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226437000
• ISBN-13: 978-0226437002
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #626,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kindred Spirit, September 6, 2008

By 

Anne Merle Bryant "Garage Lady" (Richmond, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Collections of Nothing (Hardcover)

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."

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Collections of Et Ceteralia, May 25, 2009

By 

takingadayoff "takingadayoff" (Las Vegas, Nevada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Collections of Nothing (Hardcover)

William Davies King is a collector. It practically defines him. In fact, that is how he normally describes himself. "I'm a collector," he says several times in his book, but it's not a boast, more of a rueful admission that he picks up this and that. You can see why he might want to play down his collecting. He collects what most people would consider trash: old discarded keys, cereal boxes, labels from cans of tuna, the stickers showing when your next oil change is due.

His collections take a lot of space and a fair amount of time, both amassing and curating. It would be easy to dismiss King's collecting as an unhealthy obsession. And yet it doesn't seem to interfere with his life, not in any serious way. Yes, he has trouble with relationships in the course of his memoir, but the collecting seems to be a symptom of his insecurities, not a cause. Not at all like Simon Garfield's resumption of stamp collecting in midlife in The Error World: An Affair with Stamps, another memoir that features collecting. Garfield spends more money than he has on stamps and is obsessed with completing his collection. His hobby causes him more grief than pleasure. This is not the case with King, at least as he tells his story.

Collections of Nothing is a book that is not easy to categorize. It's partly a memoir, although I found the memoir parts of it the least interesting, and the Freudian connections unpleasant. What fascinated me was the exploration of the phenomenon of collecting. Nearly everyone collects something at some stage of their life, usually as a child. Many continue their childhood collections into adulthood or start new collections. Completing a collection is a surprisingly unsatisfying accomplishment for many collectors. At what point does collecting become hoarding? When does a hobby become an obsession?

On the other hand, when does collecting "nothing" become something? When King and his daughters take his 1,579 cereal boxes and lay them out on the stage of the theater at the university, the effect is "a brilliant tapestry of eye-catching graphics." His scrapbook of drawings from discarded dictionaries is a work of art, or at least a work of craft. And the cover of Collections of Nothing is a pleasant assortment of colored patterns made of King's collection of envelope liners, the inner layer of security envelopes that keeps people from being able to read through the envelope. Who would think to collect those? He has over 800 different patterns. Is it art?

If King isn't exactly an artist (and who's to say he isn't?), he's a creative craftsman and has a way with words as well. A few of the words he uses to describe his collections are "et ceteralia" and "ephemerrhea."

As a non-collector, I started this book somewhat skeptically, but in the end, came to see the value in what King was doing with his collections. In an understated way, he even pointed out the relative harmlessness of his own collections in comparison with those of his brothers, whose "vast television screens, minivans and maxi-SUVs, hot tubs and wet bars...far outweigh the odd gross of saltine boxes I have..." But he goes on to appreciate the opportunity to raid their pantries for interesting boxes and labels to add to his own collection.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For collectors..., August 4, 2008

By 

Janet F. Guerrin (Holden, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Collections of Nothing (Hardcover)

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.