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Hilarious and poignant, a glimpse into the mind of someone who is both a sufferer from and an investigator of clutter.
Millions of Americans struggle with severe clutter and hoarding. New York writer and bohemian Barry Yourgrau is one of them. Behind the door of his Queens apartment, Yourgrau’s life is, quite literally, chaos. Confronted by his exasperated girlfriend, a globe-trotting food critic, he embarks on a heartfelt, wide-ranging, and too often uproarious project―part Larry David, part Janet Malcolm―to take control of his crammed, disorderly apartment and life, and to explore the wider world of collecting, clutter, and extreme hoarding.
Encounters with a professional declutterer, a Lacanian shrink, and Clutterers Anonymous―not to mention England’s most excessive hoarder―as well as explorations of the bewildering universe of new therapies and brain science, help Yourgrau navigate uncharted territory: clearing shelves, boxes, and bags; throwing out a nostalgic cracked pasta bowl; and sorting through a lifetime of messy relationships. Mess is the story of one man’s efforts to learn to let go, to clean up his space (physical and emotional), and to save his relationship.
- Sales Rank: #449134 in Books
- Brand: Yourgrau, Barry
- Published on: 2015-08-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.60" h x 1.00" w x 5.90" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
Review
“A fascinating read by a hoarder about the psychology and culture of hoarding.” (The New York Times)
“My favorite Bohemian unpacks his life, and his heart. I will never look at clutter the same way again. I love this book!” (Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure)
“Terrifically funny…. What can we say: Hoarders seem to be hot.” (USA Today)
“Droll, engaging.” (Wall Street Journal)
“An absorbing look at a mysterious compulsion.” (People)
“Barry Yourgrau is America’s Kafka, if Kafka were hysterically funny, weirdly relatable, and had just a little bit of a hoarding problem. Mess is a total Yourgrau feast―I wept with laughter (but then why couldn’t I throw away my Kleenex?).” (Sandra Tsing Loh, author of The Madwoman in the Volvo)
“A funny, smart, and moving memoir about the accumulation of STUFF: what it means to us, why we keep it, and how we deal with our personal ‘collections.’ (Great book, btw.)” (Roz Chast, author of Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?)
“If Richard Pryor and Lydia Davis shared a hoarder’s body, this is the memoir of that wild gorgeous being. A great literary mind gathers the whole world into his apartment and then, like a Grimm’s witch, tries to make it disappear.” (Clancy Martin, author of Love and Lies)
About the Author
Writer-performer Barry Yourgrau is the author of acclaimed books of brief fiction, including Wearing Dad's Head and The Sadness of Sex, in whose film version he starred. He’s appeared on MTV and NPR, and written for the New York Times, Huffington Post, Paris Review, and Vice, among others. Born in South Africa, he lives in New York and Istanbul.
Most helpful customer reviews
39 of 40 people found the following review helpful.
The intimate power of objects . . .
By Theda Bara
The author of Mess isn't a typical hoarder if, indeed, there is anyone typical. We've been led to believe there is: those pathetic souls brought to light by Oprah and cable television who need the help of experts, conveying ever-so-slight superiority to the hoarder, measuring success by the sheer tonnage of the clutter removed from the now happier home. Barry Yourgrau admits he has some sort of clutter problem. It's not the worst kind, though, since he doesn't yet have the need for goat paths through the chaos. And he recognizes that his brand of clutter isn't being discussed at his local Clutter Anonymous group. There only the amount of trash removed has value; the value of the objects themselves is never discussed. For Barry, this is what, aesthetically, will keep his collection out-of-reach of the clutching fingers of the Declutterer his long-time girlfriend threatens to call in to solve the problem.
Barry has been extraordinarily lucky in his choice of companionship. Cosima is an employed food critic and cookbook writer who travels the world in search of the new and different. It is her job. It is not Barry's. He collects mementoes from his travels with Cosima, though, and these he brings home to an ever-expanding pile. It's not just clutter, he muses. It's colorful. It makes a wry and clever statement about the place visited. He chose it. There's the crux of the matter. Because this bit of clutter is in his apartment, it has intrinsic value. Barry chose it, brought it back from some exotic destination, and draped it over the treadmill in the living room.
The reader, of course, sees the fallacy in Barry's thinking. There are ways to turn one's collection of mementoes into one that's socially acceptable. One frames certain items, not every item. One buys a glass case to display the best of the lot, not the entire lot. And, eventually, Barry's inadvertent soul-searching as he tries to justify his trashy ways to himself results in some real breakthroughs in his thinking. For example, while looking for a particularly evocative foreign laundry bag that is brim to the top with sentimental and romantic value, Barry finds in a closet the cast off clothing and worn-out shoes belonging to his predecessor who frequented this apartment when it belonged to Cosima. (She now lives downstairs from Barry in the same building.) He is unable to justify keeping another man's clothes in his apartment, although he tries. Why, when he took over the apartment, did he not clear out this stuff? (By the way, why didn't she?) Giving up some long-held beliefs about his habit of collecting stuff and finally confronting a few unsettling insights into his own behavior, Barry haltingly heads down the road to manageability.
This book is a valuable addition to our national conversation about clutter. We're both fascinated and repelled by those who keep trash in their homes. Then we eye our own messy corners with distaste and either energetically clean and discard, or we continue to ignore and collect. This is not an easy problem to solve, whether it is a minor clutter problem that keeps the sufferer from entertaining guests for dinner or the truly pathological full-on fourth circle of Hell-style pile that can fall on you, smother and kill you in a final dump of unavoidable and lethal irony.
Barry leads us through some of this tangle and points towards other books on the subject. (One entitled Stuff, for example, as well as books by Professor of Museum Studies Susan M. Pearce. Barry invokes Dr. Pearce to explain why yours may not, but his trash has archival value.) You know, it would be impossible for some of us to clean up that clutter-filled back room without first researching why that room is crammed full of my stuff in the first place, right? So, yes, I consider Barry somewhat of a kindred spirit, at least when it comes to justifying why my stuff is here in my living space rather than in the trash where, my husband argues, it belongs. I do think we should consider that no one collects rubbish just to log, eventually, the amazing weight of it, except perhaps the guy who collects rubber bands or string and I think those fellows might belong in a different book. As usual, Americans tend to simplify complex problems to make them palatable for mass consumption and entertainment. Barry Yourgrau's book is an attempt to re-complicate the issue and that's probably a necessary step towards understanding a crippling disorder, born out of anxiety about the way one can control liveable and comforting spaces in an increasingly disordered world.
28 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
I wish he'd dump just one more thing.
By P.U. - Patty Underwood
I really enjoyed this book until the last couple of chapters. Barry Yourgrau confronts his 'clutter' (piles of it simply souvenirs & remembrances from every conceivable 'trip' - whether to the grocery store or Europe) and struggles to understand where his tendency to 'hoard' originates. Being one who has often said, "It could be worse..." about my own mess, I could relate to the way he would pick up and hold the magnifying mirror uncomfortably in front of his reality and then put it down and pick it up and put it down and and and for years, as he takes pictures and throws things away a little at a time.
I LOVE how he studied and interviewed and researched and called and wrote to every conceivable 'hoarder,' friend of hoarder, relative of hoarder, great-great-god-child of hoarder and then visited every home, college, office, back yard, country, universe he could find where these people lived, breathed, died. Was all of this research really to learn about the condition, or to delay the discomfort of confronting the job? Either way, it was fascinating & funny & illuminating - when I could understand his French & Latin & Whatever asides and Brilliant People quotes.
The thing that made me slam the Kindle down and walk away angry at the end of the book was that after all of the heartache, self-searching, shrink visits, dusting, chopping of sweaters, finding of fish, he never realizes that he's actually still in the same horrid relationship that created the need to hunker down with things that don't hurt you. Rather than, "I'm so proud of you. I know you're working so hard at this," nearly every forward step was met by his 'lover' (really?) with "So what?" or a shove out of the way as she rushed to her finally uncovered treasure. It brings tears to her eyes when she can finally touch it again, but where was she while it was being covered??? How did all of this 'mess' suddenly surprise her?
I truly enjoyed getting to know Barry's story. He's someone I'd love to know. I enjoyed the history of 'hoarding,' and learning about some of the most complicated cases. But because I had to read about this horrible woman - whom I'LL call Cruella - nagging and belittling and then finally crowing about HER input and good judgment, I wish I hadn't read the book. It seems to me that he'll never, ever quite get it right in her eyes, and that's heartbreaking.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Progress and reflection, struggle and introspection: an entertaining read on a serious and fascinating topic
By Bookreporter
Perhaps millions of Americans exhibit hoarding behavior: the compulsive need to acquire coupled with the inability to discard. As we know from several reality television sensations, hoarding is a serious and potentially devastating problem, whether one is holding on to too many treasured items, garbage or animals. In the most extreme examples, apartments or houses are full and all but uninhabitable, and the mental and physical health of anyone in the home is compromised.
Writer Barry Yourgrau, like so many Americans, had trouble getting rid of stuff. His own New York apartment was full of souvenirs from his travels, paper of all sorts, and unpacked boxes containing family items too painful to sort. He downplayed his hoarding through clever language and justification, calling his hoard his “lair” or “archives,” but struggled to throw away a single broken bowl. When his girlfriend, whose apartment he had filled with his hoard, issued him an ultimatum, he decided to record his journey and his process. The result is the engaging memoir MESS: One Man's Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act.
By all accounts, Yourgrau's hoarding was merely moderate, but that didn't mean it didn't affect him and his relationships. His girlfriend's frustration and worry helped propel him towards de-cluttering and an understanding of what drove him to collect, save and hoard in the first place. His efforts, though well intentioned, are never easy; even clearing off the overburdened shelf by the front door proves difficult as he is attached to many of the items stacked on it and is too easily distracted to finish the job. The cleanup, which culminates in hosting his girlfriend and her mother for dinner, takes a very long time and is not yet complete by the end of the book. However, in that time, Yourgrau explores not just his own attachment to the things he has collected and saved, but also hoarding in general and his relationship with his father. He is honest in questioning his own motives as he swings between investigator and subject.
Yourgrau attempts to romanticize the disorder by cataloging literary figures who were or wrote about hoarders, such as Balzac, Dickens, Dante and Gogol. Infamous hoarders like the Collyer brothers and celebrity hoarders like England's Richard Wallace are found here as well. A passionate traveler, Yourgrau goes from his own Queens to the Harlem site of the Collyer mansion and to Wallace's “notorious bungalow,” from museums to libraries to private residents, always returning to his own hoard to continue his cleanup efforts. Many experts are consulted, and several meetings of Clutterers Anonymous are attended.
MESS is full of poignant and personal observations and realizations about identity, value, memory and letting go. Yourgrau is a funny and charming host to this tour of hoards and the people who have created them as he tries to understand why. Underneath his girlfriend's piano, covered up and hidden away, are the boxes he has been avoiding for decades; inside are the relics of his father's life and his family's history. Finally opening them is like opening a Pandora's Box: Yourgrau not only confronts his conflicted and complicated feelings for his father, but also learns that much of what he thought he knew about him may not have been true.
This strand of MESS underpins much of the rest of the story but is a topic worthy of its own book and remains unresolved here. In fact, this is not a book about resolution at all but about progress and reflection, struggle and introspection. It is an entertaining read on a serious and fascinating topic.
Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
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