The Golden Flea: A Story of Obsession and Collecting
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3.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A lovable oddball cast of characters is at the heart of this treasure-hunt through the last days of one of the greatest flea markets on earth. "[Rips] has humanity, humor and the gift of a limpid, agile, unpretentious prose style.… A captivating portrait.”—Ben Downing, Wall Street Journal
Across America and around the world, people wander through flea markets to search for lost treasures. For decades, no such market was more renowned than the legendary Chelsea flea market, which sprawled over several blocks and within an old garage on the west side of Manhattan. Visitors would trawl through booths crammed with vintage dresses, rare books, ancient swords, glass eyeballs, Afghan rugs, West African fetish dolls, Old Master paintings, and much more.
In The Golden Flea, the acclaimed writer Michael Rips takes readers on a trip through this charmed world. With a beguiling style that has won praise from Joan Didion and Susan Orlean, Rips recounts his obsession with the flea and its treasures and provides a fascinating account of the business of buying and selling antiques. Along the way, he introduces us to the flea’s lovable oddball cast of vendors, pickers, and collectors, including a haberdasher who only sells to those he deems worthy; an art dealer whose obscure paintings often go for enormous sums; a troubadour who sings to attract customers; and the Prophet, who finds wisdom among all the treasures and trash.
As Rips’s passion for collecting grows and the flea’s last days loom, he undertakes a quest to prove the provenance of a mysterious painting that just might be the one.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this thoughtful memoir, Rips (Pasquale's Nose) recalls New York City's Chelsea Flea Market, a legendary bazaar held in a two-floor garage that Rips visited each weekend for almost 20 years beginning in the early 1990s. "Many in the flea called me a collector. Those outside the flea, a hoarder," he writes. Among the treasures he found there are the Romanian film collection of pornographer Al Goldstein, and many examples of boli, a type of African tribal fetish art. Over the years, Rips developed friendships with "the pious society of the flea and its people," including Jokkho, the flea's grumpy gatekeeper; Paul, an erudite haberdasher; and the Diop brothers, who sold African art and antiquities. Rips's flea-market craze reached new heights when he acquired an unsigned and seemingly worthless portrait of a woman and became determined to know its provenance. His sleuthing revealed that the painting is an early work of postwar abstract painter and printmaker Sam Francis. He declares the portrait "a symbol... that the flea was something more than how others saw it." Though some of this work is about the birth of a borderline hoarding lifestyle, Rips doesn't suggest much about causes of his compulsion, nor does he offer more than a few obligatory quips about how his wife and young daughter live with it all. Still, his narrative is a wry and engaging ode to a bygone aspect of N.Y.C. culture.
Customer Reviews
A narrow window into a vast ecology.
I’m glad this book exists. Not many like it do. Perhaps none. For those of us who called the Chelsea Flea our weekend home for years on end, this is our high school yearbook.
But it left me wanting. The circles I traveled in at the flea never intersected with the author’s. And while he hinted at the synergy and serendipity of the flea, he does so in such a curated, club-like way, that it leaves a reader who experienced the flea in a different way feeling like he’s writing about a completely different place.
This isn’t a landscape painting of the entire market. It’s a detailed sketch of a few vendor’s trials and tribulations. It’s less a love letter to the market than an insular portrait of but a few colorful characters.