Owls Head [Hardcover]

Rosamond Wolff Purcell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2003

A derelict antiques and scrap metal business in Owls Head, Maine is the setting of this multi-layered word-portrait of its owner, William Buckminster, proprietor of an extraordinary collection of discarded and decaying items, no-longer-functioning remnants of previous lives. Buckminster's world, which includes both his vaunted talents in the local pool halls and his sure knowledge of the seemingly endless number of fascinating objects from his vast supply, are inspiration for Purcell's carefully crafted meditation on collecting and entropy, and the signals both send to those who are willing to pay attention. Rosamond Purcell is a photographer best known for her work in the back rooms of natural history museums.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Maine resident William Buckminster may be a mere junk dealer to some, but to photographer Purcell, he is a merchant-historian overseeing "vestiges from two hundred years of history" (e.g., skates and skillets, clocks without hands, 78 rpm records from the early 1900s, a miniature bed of nails, an iron lung, a corpse-like rubber baby doll leaking foam, a circular staircase, a bicycle planted up to the handle bars, a child's coffin, a fisherman's lantern, "the earliest existing brass foundry in the entire country"). Where another eye might see a trash heap, or, more generously, an unruly second-hand shop, Purcell finds "a garden of collective memories." At heart, this is a travel book, a meandering journey through "the vastness, disorder, and gentle melancholy" of Buckminster's 11 acres of sundry mutable matter, following Purcell from her first stumble upon it through two decades as she evolves from buyer to friend and as her studio grows to resemble a more composed version of Buckminster's collection. Reading Purcell is a bit like digging in Buckminster's mountains of stuff; readers come upon bits of his life, including his pool game, bits of genealogy and fragments of regional history. The end notes, peppered with about 40 photographs, were designed for scavengers as well; there's no telling what readers will find, whimsy or weight. Purcell is an acquired taste, rather like her own taste for old books ("Victorian paper tastes dry-better, actually, than the paper used in newer books"). Still, the book haunts; "perhaps," as Purcell observes, "a tea pot that holds no water is deeper than you think."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

A brilliant and astonishing examination of the structure of loss. -- Grace Dane Mazur, author of Silk and Trespass

A veritable alchemist with both word and image...Purcell's text is sweet-natured and sly and funny and wistful. -- Lawrence Weschler, author of Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders

Among connoisseurs of the timeworn, the unlovely, and the uncanny, of course, Purcell is a pioneer. -- Boston Globe, Joshua Glenn, 5 October 2003

Part of the pleasure of [Purcell's] photographs is in recognizing how...material decay can quicken our awareness of the immaterial. -- Agni 58, Sven Birkerts, 1 October 2003

Purcell's journey into the heart of trashland is a story of virtuoso collecting. -- Patricia Vigderman

Purcell's own memory palace..a book 'all to do with dreams.' -- Rikki Ducornet, author of The Fanmakers Inquisition

The same extraordinary eye she exhibits in her beautiful, eerie photographic portraits of museum specimens. -- Jennifer Ackerman, author of Chance in the House of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Quantuck Lane Press (November 11, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971454868
• ISBN-13: 978-0971454866
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,300,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A surreal trip to a small piece of Maine, December 6, 2004

By 

Corinne H. Smith (Athol, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Owls Head (Hardcover)

Rosamond Purcell's photography class was on a field trip when she and her students first came upon William Buckminster's land. The eccentric antiques / junk dealer of Owls Head, Maine, had eleven acres of stuff piled high, in mounds and mounds, in and around several buildings. At first the artist in Purcell was intrigued; she was moved to photograph individual objects or random groupings of items. Then at various times over 20 years, she continued to stop to buy things and to talk to Buckminster himself. She took the items back to her own studio in Boston, where she arranged and rearranged them into her own special kind of artwork. And we're not talking about "whole" objects here -- rather, they include broken toys, books in varying stages of disintegration, pieces of furniture, old lobster traps, window frames, rusted parts of machinery.

Gradually Buckminster took on a near-mentor role for Purcell, and it's obvious the two vastly different people came to care about each other. She took him to museums and doctor?s appointments, he took her to pool halls. And as they climbed around the junk piles and investigated nooks and crannies in the buildings, Purcell learned more about Buckminster's personal history. The result is a kind of dual biography pressed against the backdrop of both the antique business and the art world, sometimes questioning which is which.

Some of Purcell's b&w photos accompany the text. But only the photo printed on the cover flyleaves gives us a grander perspective, as a wide shot of the property shows a pile of indecipherable objects stretching from one building to the next, one story high. Reading this book could be a nightmare for neat freaks. It can be heartening to those of us who are ordinary pack rats by comparison; for even after just a few pages, we can say to ourselves, "Well, at least I'm not THAT bad."

This is an unusual book, and it's difficult to nail down what audience it might appeal to. Fellow photographers may be interested in Purcell's process and artist's eye. Fans of Maine life might enjoy the depiction of the eccentricity of a real Down Easter. Still others might enjoy a respite from typical genres. You will certainly look at junk yards differently after reading this one.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Collecting, Antiquities and "Other People's Junk", June 30, 2008

By 

M. Haines "a steady reader" (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Owls Head: On the Nature of Lost Things (Paperback)

You will never feel guilty again when you collect. After reading this book I will pick up anything anywhere that means something to me - no matter what others might think!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars fascinating, January 30, 2010

By 

B. Smith (Texas) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Owls Head (Hardcover)

I hoped there would be more pictures, considering the authors photography skills and other books. The story was fascinating.