“..What happens to a man who compulsively collects comics, books, records and CDs?
He becomes very good at building shelves…
Comedian Stewart Lee on the challenges and hazards of extreme storage.
What are days for?” asks the curmudgeonly poet Philip Larkin in his poem Days, questioning the very point of living.
He is unable to offer any real comfort, concluding: “Ah, solving that question/brings the priest and the doctor/in their long coats/running over the fields.”
For Larkin the idea of days … and what to do with them … represents the problem of existence boiled down to its barest essentials.
I have a similar relationship with shelves.
I love shelves, and if only I could work out exactly which of the many books, comics, records and compact discs that I own I should fill them with …
… and how many shelves I require to do this … I have always imagined my life would be complete….
….But even as the shelves approach their final configuration, it seems the same doubts and fears about life and its purpose linger on …
… as if the answer to everything did not lie in the construction of shelving systems after all.
I wonder where this profound faith in shelving began.
When I was about five years old … I bought a copy of an American comic book called Captain Marvel off the lower rung of a revolving rack of True Detective…
… soft porn and pulpy thriller magazines … in a newsagent on the A34 just outside Birmingham.
I was snagged.
Not only did the tale of Captain Marvel … virtually crucified by aliens on a shiny chrome cyber-cross … blow my toddling mind …
… it also appeared to be part of a much wider cosmology … the Marvel universe …
… where thousands of colourfully clad characters wended in and out of the plots of each other’s interlinked monthly comics …
… creating a vast, multilayered, epic storyline … which I now ached to understand.
But it was 1973.
Spider-Man was not the all-conquering global brand he is today.
American comic books, regarded mainly as valueless filth … weren’t regularly distributed.
They made their way, usually to seaside towns and motorway service stations …
… as ballast in ships … or bundles of worthlessly discounted rubbish…”
go to source/story>>>Stewart Lee: my life on the shelf | Culture | The Observer
