Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry [Paperback]

Leanne Shapton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0374175306 | ISBN-13: 978-0374175306 | Publication Date: February 3, 2009 | Edition: First Edition

Auction catalogs can tell you a lot about a person—their passions and vanities, peccadilloes and aesthetics; their flush years and lean. Think of the collections of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Truman Capote, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

In Leanne Shapton’s marvelously inventive and invented auction catalog, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris (who aren’t real people, but might as well be). Through photographs of the couple’s personal effects—the usual auction items (jewelry, fine art, and rare furniture) and the seemingly worthless (pajamas, Post-it notes, worn paperbacks)—the story of a failed love affair vividly (and cleverly) emerges. From first meeting to final separation, the progress and rituals of intimacy are revealed through the couple’s accumulated relics and memorabilia. And a love story, in all its tenderness and struggle, emerges from the evidence that has been left behind, laid out for us to appraise and appreciate.

In an earlier work, Was She Pretty?, Shapton, a talented artist and illustrator, subtly explored the seemingly simple yet powerfully complicated nature of sexual jealousy. In Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris—a very different yet equally original book—she invites us to contemplate what is truly valuable, and to consider the art we make of our private lives.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2009: What is love? Artist Leanne Shapton may be the first person to answer this age-old question so persuasively, if not damn-near definitively. Her vision of love--that famously immaterial virtue--finds its best expression in the stuff of our daily lives. Which, of course, may not be as filled with the serendipitous charm that marks the courtship of her fictional lovers, but that doesn't make Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry feel any less universal. We meet Lenore and Hal after their relationship has ended; that the relics of their life--spent in fits and starts of togetherness--are presented in a Valentine's Day auction catalog has the potential to strike a bitter chord. What comes across instead is that these items, ranging widely from gifts, postcards, and photos to conspiratorial notes and precious evidence of daily rituals, deserve to be cherished for the love they still so clearly honour. --Anne Bartholomew

Review

“Taken together, the item descriptions provide a running, cumulative portrait of one couple’s glorious rise and deflating fall. . . For people who have ever thought that the little gestures, tokens and inside jokes of their relationships were unique to them, Ms. Shapton’s book comes as a poignant, jarring reminder of the sameness of the steps that so many couples retrace. . . Despite the mist of melancholy that floats amid this photographic record, there is also humor, caprice, knowingness and the implicit suggestion that changing feelings and fading possessions can’t rob a true romance of the value it had at its height. As Lenore and Hal’s remembrances show, a love affair is worth more than its trappings could fetch at a jumble sale.” —Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times

 

“Important Artifacts . . . from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris may look like an everyday auction catalog. But the auction itself is a literary conceit: What this book-type object really does is show us the trajectory of a failed four-year relationship — by showing us the physical detritus that two (fictional) lovers leaver in their wake.

    “Conceived and executed by the art director of the New York Times Op-Ed page, Leanne Shapton, the story concerns Lenore Doolan (a food writer for the Times) and Hal Morris (a photographer). Doolan appears to have been a clever and adoring girlfriend, who showered the often-absent Morris with confetti-packed envelopes (LOT 1126) and lavender pajamas (LOT 1061). Morris, who had commitment issues and a drinking problem, expressed himself via mixtapes (LOTS 1276 and 1044). What finally drove them apart? Each of the 331 lots provides another piece of the puzzle. Yes, breaking up is hard to do, but reading about it has never been so pleasurable.” —Very Short List

 

“[Shapton's] book tells the story of a hopeful young New York couple and their four-year relationship almost completely through their things, many of which end up unceremoniously, and improbably, under the gavel: books, pajamas, bedside lamps, a stuffed squirrel, an astrakhan coat, the winning half of a wishbone and lots of notes, inscriptions and e-mail messages that start out giddy and become slowly more complicated, angry and sorrowful.

    “If there were a real failed-relationship auction house named Strachan & Quinn, where the sale is supposed to take place on Valentine’s Day, the event might actually draw a modest crowd, if only because the fictional Hal Morris, a globe-trotting photographer in his early 40s, and Lenore Doolan, who is presented as a late-20s cake columnist for The Times’s Dining section, are generally more meticulous than conspicuous in their consumption.” — Randy Kennedy, The New York Times

 

“The task is daunting: How to render the dissolution of a relationship in a new way? Leanne Shapton succeeds against all odds with this wildly romantic and erudite book.”   —Dave Eggers, What is the What

 

“Leanne Shapton’s splendid book is completely sensational and over-the-top great.  I am nuts about it.  This is the stuff of life, literally.  Oh, love. Oh, despair.   Oh, stolen salt shakers.”—Maira Kalman, The Principles of Uncertainty

 

“Whenever I come across something of Leanne Shapton’s—an illustration in The New York Times, or the wooden books she makes—I feel like I have found a hidden treasure.  What a great idea—to create a fake auction catalog. It’s so original, and the items are perfect and brilliantly displayed.  Shapton thought of every detail. I truly am jealous.”—Amy Sedaris, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (February 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374175306
• ISBN-13: 978-0374175306
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #331,081 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too clever by half, March 7, 2009

By 

J. Brodie (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry (Paperback)

At first I was charmed by "Lenore's" penchant for writing down every morsel of food that passed her lips, the flea market knick-knacks and the post-modern paperbacks... but by the time I got to the Paul Smith sock collection and the vintage Kitchen Aid coffee grinder it was just too much, and I began to feel like I was trapped next to the annoyingly hip and brilliant dinner guest who can't stop pointing out just how hip and brilliant she is.
"Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris" may be a satire on modern love, but I think Shapton also meant to write a real romance -- and in that it falls short. "Hal" and "Lenore" are excruciatingly precise shoppers who somehow can't get past the petty-squabbles stage of a thirtysomething relationship. There are moments ("I love his legs... I hate his drinking") that suggest an actual person lurking beneath the things, but these moments, though well observed, don't add up to a full portrait. The stuff -- the vintage hats and Smythson of Bond Street planners, the cake stands and martini sets -- just overwhelms the people, and the people disappear under its weight. Clearly, Shapton meant to do the opposite -- have the stuff subtly illuminate the characters' inner lives -- but the props have drowned out the players.
It doesn't help to have photographs of actors playing the lovers, either; that only made "Lenore" and "Hal" seem even less probable.
It's a neat idea, though. Tried with characters who have lost something more resonant than a teacup or a trip to the Bosporus, it could really be something.
(As a side note: Shapton is a very talented illustrator and her series, "A Month of..." for the New York Times, is worth checking out.)

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet, nostalgic and real, March 4, 2009

By 

Virgina Colson (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry (Paperback)

Much has been made of how original and unusual the format of this book is--an auction catalog, selling off the ephemera of a failed relationship--and that's true, but it's also deliciously fun to read and a great love story. The particulars, such as 10 postcards sent by Hal to Lenore during an early business trip, one to "my gray-eyed princess" one reading "Pissing rain here, work boring, missing you and thinking of your face all the time/ all the time /all the time..." feel universal, and will be sort of heartbreaking to anyone familiar with early-stage besotment. About halfway through, I found myself starting to feel sad and worried that they're going to break up (you know it's coming) and wishing that they could just work it out. And not to give anything away, but the breakup is just as caddish and dirty and over-articulated as breakups are in real life. Leanne Shapton has proven herself to be brilliant with the telling, hilarious details of relationships (her last book entitled "Was she pretty?" for the question she asks about a boyfriend's ex-girlfriend) and the items in the catalog (the silver-plated cup the couple kept their toothbrushes in, Valentines Day menus, a collection of hotel key cards) are often as poignant as the words. I loved this book!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A little twee & too clever for it's own good, June 11, 2009

By 

Lolly "Lolly" (nyc) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry (Paperback)

When I read about this book, I was struck by what an incredible idea it was. It is a good piece of conceptual art, but a little cute with too may name brands, which ultimately make this feel like yuppie porn. Rather than making the characters specific, all of the high end name dropping makes it kind of smarmy and in the end hollow where it should be touching and universal.