ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris: Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton
This book was published by Bloomsbury in 2009 and I purchased my own copy.
Lenore Doolan, a food writer for the New York Times, meets Harold Morris, a photographer, at a halloween party in 2002. He is dressed as Harry Houdini. In Leanne Shapton’s marvellously inventive and invented auction catalogue, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore and Harold (who aren’t real people, but might as well be). Through photographs of the couple’s personal effects-the usual auction items (jewellery, fine art, and rare furniture) and the seemingly worthless (pyjamas, 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 Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris Leanne Shapton invites us to contemplate what is truly valuable, and to consider the art we make of our private lives.
This book was mentioned by someone on social media (I can’t remember who or where) and my interest was immediately piqued. The book is styled as an auction catalogue from a fictional auctioneers, Strachan & Quinn, and it lists items for sale from the collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris. These are everyday items: clothing, books, letters, postcards etc, basically everything from their life together as a couple. It doesn’t sound like much of a read so far, does it? But by providing photographs and listing details for each item, Leanne Shapton tells the story of a relationship from beginning to end.
The items themselves are sometimes fascinating, sometimes everyday, sometimes nothing special, but as a whole they provide a clear view of a relationship that worked for a time but ultimately was doomed to fail. I think it’s a very clever way to document a love story. It is fictional but I feel like Lenore and Harold are real people, are in fact a food writer and photographer.
This book is unique and original and must have taken ages to construct. I dipped in and out of it and so read it over a few days. It lacks some of the depth I really want in a book but it’s certainly memorable for its innovative concept.
Leanne Shapton is an illustrator, writer and publisher who was born in Toronto and now lives in New York. She is the art director of the New York Times op-ed page and co-founder of J&L Books, a nonprofit publishing company specializing in new photography, art and fiction. She is the author of Was She Pretty?
