THE GOLDEN FLEA by Michael Rips A Story of Obsession and Collecting

THE GOLDEN FLEA by Michael Rips

A Story of Obsession and Collecting

“A wry and engaging ode to a bygone aspect of N.Y.C. culture.” —Publishers Weekly

“Extraordinary. . . . Michael Rips is a magician of seeing, and only he could have come up with this enchanted construction.” —Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland

“Michael Rips’s surreal style is perfectly suited to the wondrous world of flea markets. The Golden Flea delights with portraits of people on the margins of city life. . . . In describing his own fortunes and follies in that world, Rips captures the best and worst of what it means to collect.” —Kirk Wallace Johnson, author of The Feather Thief

“I love this book so much I decided to mark my favorite bits with asterisks and

ended up with something that looked like the Milky Way galaxy.” —Patricia Marx, author of Why Don’t You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It?

“Michael Rips writes with a unique combination of sly humor, close observation, and sympathy. . . . He finds gold in stories that might otherwise go unremarked. This book is exemplary in its inclusiveness, humanity, and wit.” —David Salle, author of How to See

Entrancing storyteller Michael Rips leads readers into the magical world of the Chelsea flea market and a memorable cast of characters who create an uncommon community centered around “a consumptive engagement with the unknown”. In THE GOLDEN FLEA: A Story of Obsession and Collecting [W. W. Norton & Company; April 21, 2020; $26.95 hardcover], Rips illuminates his decades-long obsession with and immersion in the flea’s “strange and chaotic bounty” and the wondrous vendors he meets along the way. “It was a place to display and create oneself”, Rips writes of those who become “knowingly, willingly, devoutly, the people of the flea”.

            Once one of the largest flea markets in America, the Chelsea flea inhabited a two-story garage and was flanked by a constellation of open-air parking lots and buildings housing hundreds of additional dealers. Booths contained expansive collections that Rips details with glorious specificity, including cuff links and costume jewelry, used napkins and tablecloths, rugs, chandeliers, jumbles of furniture, mug shots, vintage clothes, tools, sports memorabilia, and stacks of crumbling newspapers.

            Among the objects is a dazzling array of sellers and buyers. From Jokkho, the man who first leads Rips into the flea, the Diop brothers, the Prophet and Grandpa and the Cowboy, Rips poignantly describes the humans behind the facades, such as haberdasher “Paul, who could size up and clothe any customer, make them feel rare”, and Sophia, whose daughter dies of a horrific illness. Told with great empathy and compassionate curiosity, THE GOLDEN FLEA offers a touching portrait of people who are often ignored, and a space where they become a kind of family and find “salvation harbored in the chaos”.

            African boli, typewriters, a complete encyclopedia, sculptures, paintings, and old frames mix with all manner of other items. Rips enters into a relationship with each one. His passion—and rapidly filling apartment—leads him to consider the difference between collecting and hoarding, but neither feels correct. “The function of the two terms . . . was not descriptive but social; that is, to warn those in society against straying too far into the ambiguity of objects and the relationships they were capable of establishing with humans”. Rips delves into the belief that objects’ meanings lie in the relationships they express.

            Vendors describe these histories with fanciful tales. The breadth of knowledge contained in the flea is impressive: buyers who can instantly identify authentic paintings from any era; Eve, who lectures customers on clothing stitching techniques; and a picker who specializes in “trench art” made from the materials and debris of conflict by those affected. THE GOLDEN FLEA contains a multitude of miniature lessons in art and design history, and a cornucopia of information about the endless objects at the flea.

            A mysterious painting of a woman haunts Rips: “Her hair was full and black and curly, her skin light, and her eyes were purple garnets. She leaned forward”. After returning to the painting again and again, Rips purchases it, determined to find out who painted it—and why. His search takes him to auction houses and art assessors, yet to the flea he always returns, seeking the abiding mystery of the ineffable even as he continues to hunt for answers.

            As the decades pass, the number of vendors drops from twelve hundred to fifty, and then even fewer. Chelsea changes: real estate becomes unattainable, sellers are forced to move on. Rips chronicles the passing of the flea—and the passing of many of his longtime vendor friends—with sensitivity, showing how the seismic change in the neighborhood ripples outward.

Written by a spellbinding storyteller, THE GOLDEN FLEA asks readers to consider where we find home and how we create community. Rips honors the complex humanity of the people of the flea and how they are linked by enormous care—for each other and for the objects they so lovingly curate, keep, and share. Never worthless, the objects “were valuable, indeed singular, in terms of what they revealed about the people with whom they had lived and how they transformed those people and, in turn, were themselves transformed”.

About the Author

Michael Rips is the author of The Golden Flea, Pasquale’s Nose, and The Face of a Naked Lady. He is the executive director of the Art Students League of New York and lives in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City.

TITLE: THE GOLDEN FLEA

SUBTITLE: A Story of Obsession and Collecting

PUBLICATION DATE: April 21, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-324-00407-3

PRICE: $26.95 hardcover

PAGE COUNT: 224