Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Mo... Book

You’ve (almost certainly) never heard of the movie “Repo! The Genetic Opera,” so let me elucidate: it’s a gory horror musical, the magnum opus of the director of the first four “Saw” flicks, set in a near-future dystopia where designer organs are available on the installment plan—but if you don’t make your payments on time, the repo man (played by Anthony Stewart Head of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and 80s Taster’s-Choice-commercial fame) comes a-callin’, to extricate the defaulted-upon pound or so of flesh, all the while trying to protect his beloved daughter from the imprecations of the world. Also, Paris Hilton is totally in it, and her face totally falls off. It’s not good per se—the music is grating and repetitive, for one—but within its palette of blacks and blues and bloody reds, it’s one of the most beautiful movies in my recent memory (seriously, I’d compare it to “Moulin Rouge” on the opposite side of the spectrum), and there is this to say for it, which means a lot to me lately: it’s like nothing else I’ve ever seen.
An equally singular but far more successful work of art, “Important Artifacts” starts with an ingenious concept: to chronicle the forging, progression, and unraveling of a romantic relationship through the cast-off possessions of the couple, told in the form of an auction catalog. In photographs, documents, and dispassionate explanatory prose, author Leanne Shapton brings food writer Lenore Doolan and itinerant photographer Harold Morris to heartbreaking life. Here, an envelope of confetti she mailed him for a New Year’s they were apart. There, the contents of his shaving kit on a trip they took to Venice; there are five different kinds of over-the-counter sedative. Two pairs of clogs: “One pair powder blue women’s, size 8, the other red, men’s size 11. Some scuffing to leather.” Perhaps my favorite “lot” is 1204, a set of duplicate paperbacks from Lenore and Hal’s blended libraries, ironically containing twin titles of Graham Greene’s “The End of the Affair.”
The meticulous collection and assembly behind the book is staggering, but it’s the stark poignancy of so many ordinary objects that really amazes me. This is the detritus of love: the battered toothbrush cup they shared, homemade mix CDs, scribbled conversations on theater programs. There’s no breakup “scene,” no final fight. After a few years of photos of the two on Halloween there is suddenly a sketch by Lenore of costumes for her and her sister. There are champagne corks and crumbling pressed flowers. There are, in the end, only indifferent things as witness to who these people were to each other.