Word: collector
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...Thus collectors must be interesting, no? No, it turns out, in Geoff Nicholson's cheerfully loopy comic novel Hunters & Gatherers (Overlook; 215 pages). Nicholson's hero, a feckless would-be writer named Steve Geddes, has unwisely taken a publisher's advance to produce a book on collectors. But the collector collector finds that his subjects, though daft, are stunningly boring. An obsessed gatherer of sounds has recorded utter silence in Namibia, the Sahara and the Australian outback. One human rodent, who promises to show Geddes the world's largest beer-can collection, leads him to a completely empty room. Curses...
Quite understandably, Geddes is becalmed with writer's block. Becalmed with impotence too, though the beautiful Victoria, a collector of lovers, works tirelessly to cure him. Nicholson's tale is not so much a novel as a collection of loosely related fiction riffs, but it does not suffer at all from its lack of connective tissue. His imaginings are always peculiar, frequently droll, and on several occasions funny, about car freaks, salesmen, book critics, sex and the alarming sort who acquire the complete works of novelists. Worth collecting; first editions available...
...Thus collectors must be interesting, no? No, it turns out, in Geoff Nicholson's cheerfully loopy comic novel Hunters & Gatherers (Overlook; 215 pages; $21.95). Nicholson's hero, a feckless would-be writer named Steve Geddes, has unwisely taken a publisher's advance to produce a book on collectors. But the collector collector finds that his subjects, though daft, are stunningly boring. An obsessed gatherer of sounds has recorded utter silence in Namibia, the Sahara and the Australian Outback. One human rodent, who promises to show Geddes the world's largest beer-can collection, leads him to a completely empty room...
Quite understandably, Geddes is becalmed with writer's block. Becalmed with impotence too, though the beautiful Victoria, a collector of lovers, works tirelessly to cure him. Nicholson's tale is not so much a novel as a collection of loosely related fiction riffs, but it does not suffer at all from its lack of connective tissue. His imaginings are always peculiar, frequently droll, and on several occasions funny, about car freaks, salesmen, book critics, sex and the alarming sort who acquire the complete works of novelists. Worth collecting; first editions available...
...pampering paid off. Bruce became a wealthy coin collector while still in his teens. Then he collected a hockey team, collected a football team, collected race horses, collected Rolls-Royces and five residences and a private jet and well-placed friends -- collected, all told, a worldwide reputation as an expert in antiquities, a nice guy, a canny businessman and a fine judge of athletes and horseflesh...