Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.)

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!

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.

I let a friend of mine borrow this mock catalog, and he remarked, "What a mean thing to do to a tree, to turn it into a book as bad as this one!" Well, I didn't share his disdain but I will say Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry, was not what I was hoping it would be. Full marks for the originality of the concept, but after that, well, I don't know what else might have been included in the content that could have sustained the razor-thin plot and transformed it into an interesting book of this length. Reading Important Artifacts did, as my title shows, make me halt and ponder the question I asked up there, but beyond that....shrug. The book was just barely worth finishing.

With the outcome known if you have read reviews or featured articles about the book, it is with a voyeuristic morbidity you view the book. You know they will not end up together and so you look for the clues to the unraveling of the relationship. It makes you think about your own archeological digs when contemplating an ended love affair which is rather depressing. The mood captured, either by intent or not, is of a dated perspective on love and relationships. It as if two people, too in love with living a lifestyle that ended thirty- to forty-years ago found each other, and got lost in the affectations of love, as opposed to the working on the reality of a relationship. And, maybe that's the point. It was hard to determine who the real Hal and Lenore were. Were they two people who loved vintage, literature to excess, vintage clothing and expensive gifts that captured their current mask? Or, were they just two people who were too narcissistic and self-absorbed in the persona they present to the outside world to drop it inside a relationship?

Even with these questions, there is a sense of doom from the moment you open the book and see the black and white photographs. You read it, examine their lives, analyze the meaning behind the items to be auctioned off, and know it all is leading to the dissolution of their relationship. This does not lead to a sense of optimism, but instead a practical dread of inevitability.

Ultimately, you wonder why they would then dump everything to do with the relationship if it was that painful. And, the "artifacts" do not indicate this was anything other than a passionate infatuation for two people who were trying on a "relationship".

The most unique piece of fiction I've ever read, with a concept that I've never come across before. The `love story' of two people - Lenore and Harold - is told through a series of photographs and memorabilia that are up for auction. There is very little text (aside from the description of various items and photos) so there is a lot left for your imagination. I loved that part; the author allows your mind to completely wander and yet the memorabilia still manages to fill in the blanks. Is Shapton a good writer? We can't tell from such limited text, but she's certainly creative and for that alone it deserves a read. And yes, I will admit to thinking this was `real' when I first picked it up; the cover looks like an auction catalog, so I had no clue.. at first.

I looooved this book. Imagining the relationship between these two people, and their two characters, using the possessions and momentos as the only clues -- I couldn't put it down.

an imaginary estate sale from a 3-4 year long relationship between a 39 yr old photographer and 26 yr old ny times food columnist. brilliant idea. the female protagonist is played by canadian author sheila heti. the characters could have been a little--if not much--more interesting. still, the concept carries it through. a fun read about a kind of archetypal NYC lifestyle. also inspired me to be more of a pack rat.

The concept of this novel (photo essay? manifest? collage?) is to present the auction catalog of the property of defunct couple Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris as it relates to their relationship. Through the stark, material lot descriptions of the detritus of coupledom, the author presents the falling in and out of love in a plausible, understated manner. We see numbers exchanged on napkins, polaroids, emails, letters, gifts, menus, and agendas from the couple's 4-year courtship laid out in chronological order.

Some lots speak for themselves - letters exchanged by the couple, notes sent to friends, but the subtle nuances, the underlying evidence examines the psychology of a relationship. What the couple tells one another is contrasted and contradicted by letters sent (and, more poignantly, unsent) to friends, appointments made on the sly, possible betrayals (for example, Lenore makes a date with an ex-boyfriend, and later in the catalog we see Harold carrying an umbrella we are told belongs to the ex-boyfriend, left in Lenore's apartment - when was it left? did she cheat? we don't know). In notes to themselves, private musings, Harold and Lenore are ambivalent, doubt, make lists of pros and cons, visit therapists. But all the while, for a couple of years anyway, they present a loving, happy face to one another. Only later does the relationship collapse on itself, weighed down by the crushing force of incompatibility too long ignored. Harold reminiscences about ex-girlfriends, travels too frequently, gives Lenore gifts of things that belonged to other women in his life, resents Lenore's burgeoning career as a columnist. Lenore has a short temper, is much younger than Harold, cannot decide what she wants out of life, tries to daub the cracks in their love life with thoughtful gifts and food. Like most real world relationships, it ends not with a bang, but a whimper: trips ending in tears and indecision, a pregnancy scare, indifference, and finally a break that turns into a break-up.

One of the strengths of the novel is that the author has created a couple that puts on such a convincing show of functionality and appeal. If you knew them, you'd admire them. They seem so together and fun - they travel, fill their apartment with bizarre kitsch, dress in beautiful vintage clothing, photograph well, and in all respects put on the mask of perfection you so often see in couples with whom you're acquainted and wish you could be like. Perhaps the message is that underneath the trappings, the stuff, the facade, no relationship is ever what it seems.

All that said, I give this novel 3 stars, as it failed to arouse any strong feelings in me either way. Like a lengthy relationship that has long since reached its natural end, this book evokes neither love nor hate, just the resigned acceptance that it was what it was.

Of all the books I read last year, this has by far the best idea behind it, and is the one I'm grinding my teeth over for not having thought of myself! Leanne Shapton uses the device of an auction catalogue to tell the story of a love affair by listing its detritus and other possessions for sale at auction. Thus the only dialogue between the lovers appears as scraps of messages or inscriptions inside books: this is of course very telling. It makes you look around your own place and wonder what future generations might make out of your own stuff.... I bought this as a Christmas present for a dear friend and may easily retun and buy more as it is such an intriguing book!