Detail from a photo by Eileen Townsend
“Ordinary estate sales are like pop-up museums of our lives as unremarkable consumers.”
Yeah, that’s the kind of great “I wish I’d written that” line that gets you noticed by the Paris Review.
If you haven’t seen it yet, this short essay about the recent, appropriately weird Graceland Too estate auction, by Memphis Flyer art writer Eileen Townsend is a heckuva good read. In not very many words I think she gets to the heart of a strange, not very happy story. Townsend’s to-the-point encounter with Holly Springs librarian Robert Patterson is just devastating.
“I feel that [Graceland Too owner Paul MacLeod] considered me a friend,” Patterson wrote in a Facebook post that he printed and gave to Townsend. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to know him better.”
Good stuff.
