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The Error World: An Affair with Stamps Kindle Edition
From the Penny Red to the Blue Mauritius, generations of collectors have been drawn to the mystique of rare stamps. Once a widespread pastime of schoolboys, philately has increasingly become the province of older men obsessed with the shrewd investment, the once-in-a-lifetime find, the one elusive beauty that will complete a collection and satisfy an unquenchable thirst.
As a boy, Simon Garfield collected errors—rare pigment misprints that create ghostly absences in certain stamps. Then, in his mid-forties, this passion reignited—and it began to consume him. In the span of a couple of years, he amassed a collection of errors worth upwards of forty thousand British pounds. But as he was pursuing this secret passion, he was also pursuing a romantic one—while his marriage disintegrated.
In this unique memoir, Simon Garfield twines the story of his philatelic obsession with an honest, engrossing exploration of the rarities and absences that both limit and define us. The end result is a thoughtful, funny, and enticing meditation on the impulse to possess.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHoughton Mifflin Harcourt
- Publication dateJanuary 20, 2009
- File size3528 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
PRAISE FOR MAUVE
"Garfield has surpassed himself with his new subject matter: Mauve elegantly relates the tale of Victorian chemist William Perkin who, in 1856, failed to make quinine from coal tar but discovered instead how to synthesize the colour purple. Fascinating stuff."Esquire
"This engaging and airy history shows how the development of mauve, the first mass-produced artificial dye, ignited a 19th-century revolution . . . Garfield has inspired me to wear a bit of mauve this spring to honour this inventive man."The New York Times
About the Author
SIMON GARFIELD is a feature writer at the Observer(London) and the author of nine works of nonfiction, including Mauve: How One ManInvented a Color That Changed the World, which was a New York Times Notable Book, and The End of Innocence, which won the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1995.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Product details
- ASIN : B004IPPW56
- Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (January 20, 2009)
- Publication date : January 20, 2009
- Language : English
- File size : 3528 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 268 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,423,529 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #28 in Antique & Collectible Stamps (Kindle Store)
- #1,067 in Divorce (Kindle Store)
- #1,191 in Mid-Life Management
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
British writer Simon Garfield is the author or editor of more than 20 books of non-fiction, including the international bestsellers Just My Type, On The Map and Mauve. His latest book is All The Knowledge In The World: The Extraordinary History Of The Encyclopaedia.
His other titles cover an appealingly diverse and unpredictable array of subjects, ranging from the award-winning history of Aids in Britain, The End of Innocence, to the hilarious oral histories of British Wrestling and Radio 1. His celebration of letter writing, To The Letter, was one of the inspirations for the theatre show Letters Live with Benedict Cumberbatch, and spawned the BBC play My Dear Bessie with Cumberbatch and Louise Brealey.
His other labour of love is A Notable Woman, the edited lifetime journals of the remarkable Jean Lucey Pratt, whom readers first met (when she was named Maggie Joy Blunt) in Garfield's three popular collections of diaries from the Mass Observation Archive. Jean began her journal in 1925 when she was 15, and maintained it until a few weeks before her death in 1986. Throughout she wrote lyrically, comically and honestly about her world and her friends (and particularly well about the disappointments of men). She trained as a journalist and an architect, and ran a bookshop In Burnham Beeches for 20 years. Jean wrote well over a million words, and A Notable Woman, which contains about a quarter of her output, fulfils her long-standing dream that her writing would one day make it into print.
Much of Garfield's work reflects a desire to reinterpret human history in an unusual and addictively readable way, and to look askance at topics we may often take for granted. To this end, Timekeepers examines the history of our ever-accelerating world, and In Miniature looks at our desire to bring that world down to size so that we may better understand it.
His latest book is a history of a remarkable thing, the attempt to gather all the knowledge in the world in one place. The story begins in France in the 18th century, soon switches to Edinburgh (The Britannica), and, inevitably, ends up online with Wikipedia. The chapters cover the dedicated and obsessive men and women who edited and wrote these most ambitious of publishing enterprises, the sometimes brilliant but often inaccurate and outmoded articles they produced, and the underhand practices of the encyclopaedia salesman. It explains how Wikipedia is edited today, and examines how such diverse bedfellows as Arthur Conan Doyle, HG Wells, Monty Python and Taylor Swift have celebrated the encyclopaedia over the centuries. And it asks what one should do with an old set of encyclopaedias today, now that we can get almost all the information we need from our phones.
Simon Garfield was born in London in 1960. He lives with his wife Justine near Hampstead Heath in London, and sometimes in St Ives, Cornwall. His favourite typeface is Albertus and his favourite football club is Chelsea. He enjoys reading most things by Tracy Kidder, Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout, Nicholson Baker, Michael Chabon, Simon Armitage, and is seldom disappointed by The Kills, The National, Elvis Costello or Lucy Dacus.
www.simongarfield.com
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Simon Garfield has written many interesting books about a variety of subjects - ranging from the color mauve to AIDS in Britain to attitudes in Britain during and after WW2 to his latest, a book on type fonts. He's a clever writer about subjects that are not of general interest but are of interest to a large enough subset of readers who have the coin to buy his books and the time to read them. Along the way, he managed in his personal life to lose three members of his family - parents and older brother in the span of a few years - and to marry, father two sons, and then have an affair and divorce his wife. During this busy time, he also collected stamps - off and on - and returned to his collecting ways during his marital problems.
Okay, returning to Mendicant's question, is this the stuff of memoir? To me the answer is "yes", because this is Simon Garfield's memoir and he has addressed odd stuff before - though not in a personal way of a memoir. Memoirs are "sticky wickets", the author must know that most people don't much care about an author's life and attendant joys and woes. If it's a famous person - say Bill Clinton - there's more interest in the memoir because he's FAMOUS. (As an aside, as much as I liked Bill Clinton, I found his memoir one-big-yawn because he seemed to include everything with little editing. I like "editing"...) The best memoirs - to me, at least - are those by little-known people. We don't go into them with any preconceived notion of the person we're reading about.
So, yes, I think Simon Garfield's memoir, "The Error World: An Affair about Stamps, is a well-written read. If you care in the very least about the intricacies of stamp collecting - actually, about collecting anything - and don't mind reading about a man's mid-life crisis being told in the terms of stamp collecting, this is a book for you. If you don't care a bit about mid-life crises, then don't pick this book up. It's actually very easy.
And thanks again, Mendicant, for asking...
To someone who, like me, has no interest in stamp-collecting, the prospect of reading a book such as this might seem a little daunting. But this is not just some worthy tome written in the fusty code of those already in the know. Part memoir, part journalism, part social history, this is an engaging and often funny read.
On more than one occasion, the author worries about the apparent decline in his hobby. Stamp-collecting is not cool these days; there are not many iconic footballers who admit to an interest in philately. Reassurance that he is not alone in his collector mania has Garfield on the look out for similarly afflicted people. We learn of a man who collects light bulbs, and of a well-known British wrestler's collection of rusting cars.
Garfield's childhood memories contain a rich seam of anecdote: "In 1968 I had a crush on a girl who was frightened of the Post Office Tower," begins one excursion into the past. And there are some wonderfully funny teenage reminiscences about furtive visits to the grubby rear section of a bookshop in the Finchley Road. Here, well-thumbed second-hand copies of various men's magazines were available ("`Men Only', `Club International' `Health & Efficiency' at the last resort"), the owner turning a blind eye to his underage patrons.
There are also some interesting interviews included. Among them is one with a woman who, as a child, won a `design a stamp' competition on television's `Blue Peter'. Garfield had also entered the competition and fully expected to win it.
The postal reformer, Rowland Hill, seems to be a bit of a hero to the author. Garfield has included a small biography of the great man, coloring it with some fascinating British social history on the effects of the introduction of the postage stamp.
It would be stretching it a bit to label this book as stamp-collecting's answer to Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch , but Simon Garfield manages to take a dull (for us non philatelists) subject and imbue it with warmth and wit as he marks out his life with constant reference to his collection. I must admit, I did feel a little jaded towards the end of the book. The constant conversations and meetings with dealers in his search for an illusive item began to pall. Overall, though, this is a splendid read and, if you're looking for something a little different, this may well fit the bill.
I've always liked stamps but had no urge to collect them. Reading about the different kinds was interesting though. Collecting errors certainly appeals to Simon but personally I would want the Queen's head on my copy.
He tells with great candor how he went to a marriage counselor (not to save his marriage but to save his life). She wasn't interested in stamps either....
He also tells some of his past life when his parents were still alive. The writing style is easy and even though I was appalled at some of his stories...like when a parent died and he was upset but not upset enough not to collect the grievance card envelopes (for the stamps, you see). Appalled yes, but tickled too because of the way he described it.
Read it, you'll love it!
Top reviews from other countries
For me the book's primary themes are his exploration of the links between collecting and grief - and the meltdown of his marriage. Garfield's specialization is stamp 'errors' and the way in which they are a manifestation of his own pathologies, an area (partially) explored with their marriage guidance counsellor. Garfield doesn't join up all the dots - he leaves an open field as much for himself as for the reader - and as with any counselling / analysis this is as it should be - he has the rest of his life to work this out - at the least he now has the map(s).
Many other people appear - David Hockney, Will Self (they used to walk to school together) - a host of eccentric collectors, as well as various personalities he has interviewed in his career as a journalist. He is also interesting on the world of auction houses, as well as buying and selling in general.
Did it help with my own addiction? It's clarified the need to focus my collecting - so armfuls of books are now on their way to the charity shop, and I've just ordered another of his books...
4.5 stars