Writing Exercise: Cabinet of Curiosity

Every little boy—or girl—has a special trophy case: marbles, sea shells, buttons, rocks.  It’s an obsessive habit that reminds us of time and place, of history and chance.  That sea shell with the speckled markings that recall the waitress who flirted you up for an hour at the shore—it is something that will always remind you of the mole where you kissed her softly:  it is the souvenir of an older woman, a young boy and a lonesome pier.

Conch_shell_2

Some people never let go of their collections.  They become hoarders—obsessive and rapacious.  They become collectors—connoisseurs of the fine and beautiful and expensive.  They become trophy hunters—proud and vain:  creatures derided by vanity.

I just read a New York Times article about cabinets of curiosity—they are going through a revival and a museum show–and it inspired me to retool an old assignment I used to give my Creative Writing kids:  my trophy assignment.  Of course, cabinets of curiosity are trophies and, also, not.  They are displays of possessions you are proud of—just like trophies—but the significance of these objects—these things–remains enigmatic; they are mysteries that need to be curated, explained and unraveled.

cabinet

Every trophy says the same thing:  Behold This Great and Mighty Monument to My Amazingness.  It is a very public message—devoid of nuance.  My mom displays all my Piano Trophies on the little upright piano, still, beside my sister’s towering Beauty Pageant trophies; it is embarrassing because this grand display shouts her accomplishments with a megaphone to any and all who sit in her parlor.

Cabinets of Curiosity, though, are filled with beautiful, quiet secrets.  A piece of igneous rock; the dentifrice of a long-gone shark; a beautifully pleated Chinese fan—the multitudes inside a Cabinet of Curiosity speak of other voices, other rooms.  Cabinets of Curiosity—wunderkammer—were once the province of the uber-rich, those who could afford to finance explorers who brought back beautiful specimens as proof that there existed an eccentric world and that, yes, they had been to its edge.

By the Victorian era, Cabinets of Curiosity were delights, luxuries, that middle class people could afford—signs of worldliness and sophistication, signs of a flourishing colonial landscape.  If you didn’t have one, you didn’t have any class.  Perhaps that is why the opening of Bruce Chatwin’s amazing travel narrative In Patagonia begins with the young author contemplating a “piece of Brontosaurus” kept in his grandmother’s Cabinet of Curiosity.  This little artifact impels him on a journey and us, along with him:  Chatwin’s description reveals the intensity of a young boy feverishly wondering about that leathery piece of skin.

175px-InPatagonia

This exercise asks you simply to construct a Cabinet of Curiosity for any one of your characters.  In so doing, your character will have a history and a world; you will find that, if your character is alone, he will suddenly have friends, rivals and enemies; you may be surprised to find that your character will even develop a family tree.  You can write a saga if you do this exercise correctly.  Chatwin’s skin, for instance, is a wedding gift sent back by his grandmother’s brother–Charles Milward–during a period in the 19th Century when that ancestor immigrates to South America; it is supposedly part of a larger prehistoric creature, a Mylodon, dug up in a cave by Chatwin’s great-uncle, that the family had in their possession; the wedding gift, it was lost in a move; all that remains is a dessicated piece of skin with red hairs dangling from it.  Chatwin’s return to Patagonia also not only allows him to recapture the landscape of this long lost great-uncle but, also, puts him face to face with history:  many Welshmen settled Patagonia, where they even to this day, live in splendid isolation…tending sheep.

mylodon

All this in a piece of skin!  Remember that every object has a history—a set of relations; complications; loves and passions, regretted and cherished.  What things would your character put on display but, also, hide?  What talismans do they carry in the museum of the self?  These are important questions.  If you can’t answer them for your character now, this exercise will help you do that.  If you’re having trouble getting into it, ask yourself this:  what things do YOU display; what, in the act of producing spectacle conceals your own obscure, secret joy?

 

 

2 thoughts on “Writing Exercise: Cabinet of Curiosity

  1. Khanh – The mementos we keep are such an important reflection of who we are as people – of what lies within. And as you point out, it’s not just the particular things we keep, but also how many we keep. I think this is a terrific way to take a closer look at a character’s personality and pasat too.

    • Margot–Your idea aout quantity–“how many we keep”–rings most true now…though I never thought about it. I just finished a move–big place to little place–and that forced me to really look at the sheer quantity of stuff that I had to donate to Goodwill or put into storage: books, clothes, tchochkes…I admire people who keep very little in their life, mainly because I am a maximalist…and it is the fact that I love quantities of everything that say so much about me!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *