Thursday, July 31, 2008

Warning to collectors


“I love it all. I love you, for what you do not love, what you throw away. There’s a sad paradox in that. I love you for your lack of love for what I love.”

William Davies King is a professor of theatre at the University of California who can’t throw things away. His collection includes 18,000 food labels, 500 bottle caps and 800 distinct envelope linings. As King wistfully comments in his book Collections of Nothing, “I dearly want my collecting to be a selling point, like a mountain cabin ... or Goya prints… instead, I have to anticipate [my wife] coming to terms with 30 years of Cheerios.”