shaved for a while turns into deliberately growing a beard—the boundary probably differs from man to man and from face to face—but one day you look in the mirror and you’re a guy with a beard. Who knows but that the infamous Collyer brothers, Homer and Langley, whose corpses were unearthed in 1947 from a moraine of newspapers, broken furniture, garden implements, medical equipment, umbrellas, gas chandeliers, rusting guns, and other rubbish—103 tons of junk, all told—heaped in their Harlem mansion, didn’t begin innocuously with, say, a few outdated phone books or the jawbone of a horse? (Yes, the phone books and jawbone were part of the booty that the cops shoveled out.) That is to say, I did not consciously covet the series and never characterized myself as a collector. But when I saw AR #1 in a bag of books a colleague was preparing to trade in for cash, a shiver of eagerness ran through my fingers as I snatched it and, with no bargain hunter’s pretense toward nonchalance, offered him the full cover price.
Around this time I formally subscribed to the periodical and cleared off a bookshelf to devote to it exclusively. In addition to the growth of my collection through the mail—for a collection it by now had most certainly become—there was the occasional swelling of the shelf due to the odd volume I’d find serendipitously. (This was before the Internet, of course, which has made collecting far easier, more systematic, and, assuming one has sufficient cash flow, dependably predestined to succeed.) As for the red-letter day when out of the blue I received a call from an old friend from graduate school alerting me to his having discovered at his campus bookstore AR #2, #3, and #4 huddled inconspicuously together on a sale table like in-laws kibbitzing over the cold cuts at a family reunion . . . well, the memory of that lucky find and lasting friendship still moves me. With a little effort, I believe I can still feel the texture of the checkbook as I gleefully signed off on his reimbursement.
Novelist Alexander Theroux would grant my small penchant greater profundity than I do. To his way of thinking, collecting is, variously, a quest for adequacy and identity, a disclosure of personality through what one accrues to bolster it, and an aspiration, however scaled down or trivialized, toward the Absolute. Or so he asserts at the conclusion of his essay “Odd Collections,” in which he inventories dozens of collectors, from the renowned to the otherwise anonymous, and thereby, in the form of his catalogue, creates an odd collection of his own. “The mere challenge of collecting may generate the impulse,” he muses, “the impossibility of success like the inevitability in high-jumping of failure guaranteeing a strange kind of buoyancy, because it is endless.” To put it another way, the essence is the process, the collecting rather than the collection the key. Indeed, the futility of ever having it all, the principle of inexhaustibility, ensures the sheer ongoingness of the enterprise, which, Theroux suggests, might be the real point of engaging in collecting in the first place. (Comedian Steven Wright may have hit upon the ideal balance between reach and grasp when he boasts of having the largest seashell collection anywhere. It is so extensive, he says, that he keeps it on beaches all over the world.) Thus to amend Camus’ interpretation of the myth of Sisyphus, the eternally condemned man’s confrontation with the Absurd would not result solely from his having finally successfully shoved his boulder to the top of the hill. We must also factor in the paralyzing realization that that single component completed his rock collection as well as his curse.
As opposed to accumulations of marbles or Mickey Mouse memorabilia, though, my own collection is relatively unambitious, being so concisely defined and circumscribed. Neither is it unique enough to warrant inclusion among Theroux’s chosen ones, since with the termination of the American Review in 1976, a comprehensive set could reasonably be had by anyone. As of this writing, I possess twenty-five of the extant paperbacks, AR #11 having eluded me for well over two decades now. As I say, I’m fairly certain that I could scare up a copy of the prodigal volume on Amazon, Alibris, or eBay, but somehow resorting to websites strikes me as not being truly in the spirit of the thing. The prospect rubs against the grain of my idiosyncrasy: in randomness and vague fortune I began, and so I will persist. My compensation for the hole in my holdings parallels that of Thomas Hardy’s Tess, whose slightly flawed features made her all the more fetching: “And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.” And should my collection forever remain unfinished, I shall content myself with my allegiance to those Native American artisans who purposely leave a flaw in their weavings so as not to offend the gods by competing with their perfection.
On the other hand, I might decide to sell off the lot, renunciation being the other side of the collector’s coin. Then I might be the Arobin of the bibliophiles, whom not acquisition but purgation fortifies, whom relinquishment frees.
The American-led war for the liberation of Iraq broke the government’s grip on its property as well as its grip on its people. As of this writing, tens of thousands of artifacts are still missing from the National Museum of Antiquities, many dating from the earliest civilizations. Some maintain that this illicit network must have roused to action the moment the bombing of Iraq began, so precise and efficient were the strikes on the museum’s most priceless objects. As archaeologist Paul Zimansky dolefully admits, “A whole industry developed after the Gulf War of people going out and digging up things at night. We’re talking about organized, armed teams.”
Rumors have been as prolific as the looting itself. It is said that pieces are trickling out of the country inside suitcases and spare tires, sewn into collars and cuffs, heading for the elevated netherworld of high-stakes art connoisseurs with an appetite for the forbidden. Because these items are instantly recognizable and because identifying information about them is spreading with unprecedented effectiveness, experts are hopeful of their ultimate recovery. “These things are radioactive from a legal point of view,” says William Pearlstein, co-counsel for the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art. “They are hot, hot, hot and simply unmarketable.” Should anyone try to sell clay tablets bearing the earliest cuneiform writings in existence, the 4,330-year-old bust of an Akkadian king, or the so-called Mona Lisa of Nimrud vase, intelligence agencies throughout the world, not to mention the global offices of the Art Loss Register, are on the alert.
It must be pointed out, however, that the fact that the thieves will never be able to broadcast or cash in such holdings does not necessarily mitigate but may actually intensify the delight of procuring them. Although legitimate dealers would never touch the major pieces, says Jerome Eisenberg, owner of New York’s Royal-Athena Gallery, “I could visualize some multimillionaire hiding a piece away and gloating over it.” Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; therefore, by confining ourselves to the getting alone, we keep more of ourselves in reserve.
For what consolation terminology is worth, it is more accurate to speak of the artifacts as “missing” or “transplanted” rather than “lost,” in that certain people undoubtedly do know where most of the objects are. In all actuality, with the exception of gold artifacts that may have been melted down to re-enter the bloodstream of international capital, they are not only intact but better protected in some hidden vault than they ever had been when their location was both familiar and open to public view.
Our most acute drives drive us into privacy. From the highest echelon of corporate embezzlement on down to pickpocketing in the street, from the tycoon who godfathers the pillaging of Mesopotamian heritage to the centripetal Collyer brothers holed up in their decaying freight, we steal to steal away, restricted to what we are surprised to learn is necessary. To reference Steven Wright once again, you can’t have everything. Where would you put it? So it is always a quirky version of the world that is too much with us, something about the size of our cellars and obsessions. And even though it may not be exactly or all we long for, we take it anyway, if only because it’s what there is.
7 Taking Pains
The soul is our capacity for pain.
—Marina Tsvetayeva
Going by human
