A Cultural History of Hoarding
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Possessed Possessed A Cultural History of Hoarding Rebecca R. Falkoff Cornell University Press Ithaca and London This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of New York University. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org. Copyright © 2021 by Cornell University The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International: https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode. To use this book, or parts of this book, in any way not covered by the license, please contact Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 2021 by Cornell University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Falkoff, Rebecca R., 1976– author. Title: Possessed : a cultural history of hoarding / Rebecca R. Falkoff. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020025167 (print) | LCCN 2020025168 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501752803 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501752827 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501752810 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Compulsive hoarding—Social aspects—History. | Hoarders—History. | Compulsive hoarding—Philosophy. Classification: LCC RC569.5.H63 F35 2021 (print) | LCC RC569.5.H63 (ebook) | DDC 616.85/227—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025167 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025168 Cover illustration: Carey Lin, Untitled (Screen shot 2009-10-19 at 1.20.48), 2011. Oil on canvas, 15 x 22 in., from the series Hardly Nothing to Do Without. Used by permission of the artist. In memory of my grandmother, Fontaine Maverick Falkoff, A poet, hoarder, and maverick. Fall from Grace While casing the fl ea markets For fabulous fi nds Priced for the penurious, I’ve felt little quick Subcultural Darts of desire For those delightful things. Avon bottles, I mean. Perfume bottles shaped like poodles, Turtles of aftershave, ships at sea, The rosebud with the honeybee. Well, today I fell from Grace. It cost me a dollar: Two green glass parakeets, Shining likenesses, Their screw-on heads of amber glass, And one still full of perfume. Is there shame on my face? No, I’ve a gleam in my eye. I see them as great emeralds, The very essence of parakeet. I think, now, I’ll be collecting All that shimmers, Dazzles and dazes, The daydreams of Demented artisans. This will be One of my phases. —Fontaine Maverick Falkoff Contents List of Figures ix Preface: A Book and Two Hoards xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction to Hoardiculture 1 1 Psychologies: The Personal Library 14 2 Economies: The Flea Market 54 3 Epistemologies: The Crime Scene 108 4 Ecologies: An Oikos for Everything 142 Conclusion: Archive Failures 170 Notes 181 Bibliography 219 Index 237 Figures 0.1 Clutter Image Rating, Living Room 7 1.1 Martin Hampton, Possessed , 2008 52 2.1 Paul Klee, Angelus Novus , 1920 59 2.2 Eugène Atget, Chiffonnier , 1899–1901 63 2.3 Eugène Atget, Villa d’un chiffonnier , 1912 65 2.4 Eugène Atget, Intérieur d’un chiffonnier: Boulevard Masséna , 1912 67 2.5 Jacques-André Boiffard, Marché aux puces , 1928 84 2.6 André Kertész, Marché aux puces , 1929 87 2.7 Untitled photograph, 1932 88 2.8 Alberto Lattuada, Fiera di Senigallia , 1941 91 2.9 Alberto Lattuada, Fiera di Senigallia , 1941 93 2.10 Alberto Lattuada, Fiera di Senigallia , 1941 94 2.11 Giuseppe Pagano, “Fiera a Milano,” Panorama, 1940 97 2.12 Giuseppe Pagano, Fiera di Senigallia , 1940 98 x Figures 2.13 Giuseppe Pagano, “Fiera a Milano” Panorama , 1940 99 2.14 Giuseppe Pagano, “Fiera a Milano” Panorama , 1940 100 4.1 Song Dong, Waste Not , MoMA exhibition “Projects 90: Song Dong,” 2009 164 5.1 Carey Lin, Untitled (Screen shot 2009-10-19 at 1.20.48), 2011 179 Preface a book and two hoards he fi rst two decades of the twenty-fi rst century have seen T an outpouring of interest in hoarding, and in those whose accumulated possessions overwhelm their living spaces, render- ing them unusable and often unsafe. Fatal accidents and residen- tial fi res across the United States drew considerable attention to hoarding, and cities and towns throughout the nation assembled task forces charged with reducing related safety risks. Hoarding is the subject of documentary and feature fi lms; novels, memoirs, and plays; guides for clinicians and self-help books; installation art, painting, and photography; stand-up and late-night comedy acts; episodes of television forensic dramas, sitcoms, and reality series; academic work in psychology and cultural studies. 1 With the increasing visibility of hoarding, many who had long consid- ered themselves to be packrats, savers, collectors, and clutter bugs began to form support groups and seek out professional help. Others retreated into their barricaded isolation—now proud of their monumental lots, now embittered by the scorn of their thriftless neighbors, still helpless, still alone. Family members, too, saw their experience refl ected in all the talk of hoarding, and founded organizations like “Children of Hoarders” and “Squalor Survivors.”2 xii Preface I count myself among their numbers; my father is a hoarder, as was my paternal grandmother. Because of this personal connec- tion, I have been following the cultural discourse with an acute interest that oscillates between: “So that’s what that is!” and “Well, it isn’t quite like that.” As a child, I saw adventure in hoarding; my father and I spent weekends going to yard sales and fl ea markets. On trash days we would drive around looking for treasure, with mixed results. Once we found a Pepsi machine from the 1950s, which we restored to again dispense glass bottles for a dime. Another time, as I was climbing through some promising curb- side heap, my leg was gashed open by something razor-sharp. My grandmother, Fontaine, used to make regular pilgrimages to the town dump down the street from her summer home in Jefferson, Maine. Once she found a box with dozens of pairs of new canvas sneakers in black, white, and orange, and in sizes suffi cient to out- fi t me and my cousins through our walking years of youth. Last time I went to Fontaine’s house in Maine—more than thirty years after the wondrous boon—there were still a couple of mismatched shoes left in the closet. Fontaine died in 2005, leaving behind two houses brimming with the accumulated passion of her life. It had been years since she let anyone into her Auburndale, Massachusetts, home, and its months-long clean out after her death required the labor of her fi ve sons, three daughters-in-law, sixteen grandchildren, as well as the lease of a forty-yard dumpster. We found a rattlesnake’s rattle and seventeenth-century ecclesiastical books; stacks indiscrimi- nate with junk mail and stock certifi cates; decomposing vermin and rotting food buried under creaky antiques. Although Fon- taine’s eccentricities were a source of laughter at family gatherings, we occasionally recognized something sinister in her accumula- tions. As when she contracted spinal meningitis from the fi lth that Preface xiii surrounded her, or when my father found her body, comatose, at the foot of a too-cluttered staircase. For all its quirky fascination, there is horror in the hoard, and I shudder to think of the disas- ter that looms over my father’s house, with its exterior dominated by a rotting wood porch crumbling under the weight of salvaged plywood and bookcases, a dozen bicycles, a lawnmower, and the soundboard of a piano; and its interior strewn with the makeshift electrical fi xes of overextended extension cords. 3 Most academic writing grows from personal obsession or intimate pain; my own betrays these roots more materially than some. I began to explore these roots in writing in January 2010, when I launched If I Were a Hoarder. I conceived of the Tumblr blog as a compendium of all the intriguing detritus, all the irresistible bar- gains, and all the wondrous objects that would clutter my Berkeley apartment if I were a hoarder. I imagined the site as an exercise in restraint and empathy, a chronicle of my effort to understand the allure of objects, to heed the call of things. I fi gured I would save money and space—if not time—by transforming this call into writing. Almost immediately, the medium eclipsed the mes- sage. Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking platform. Users post video, audio, text, links, and other content that can be easily reposted by others. 4 Almost 80 percent of Tumblr posts are image fi les, and I quickly learned that images and videos were more effective in engaging other users than essayistic posts dedi- cated to appealing objects, my family history, or refl ections on the cultural discourse of hoarding. The blog distended haphazardly to include virtually any digital content I stumbled upon that seemed somehow relevant. Hoarders mingled with ragpickers, gleaners, scavengers, misers, fetishists, collectors, archivists, and makers. Discussions of academic works of new materialism, historical materialism, discard studies, and thing theory were punctuated by xiv Preface images of abandoned objects, cabinets of curiosity, and cluttered spaces. Photographs of landfi lls, junkyards, and brimming dump- sters attested to the allure of the broken, the threadbare, and the obsolete. Though initially intended to ward off what I feared was an inexorable disposition toward hoarding, I soon realized that the unwieldy accumulation of content reproduced the logic of a hoard.