On Page 42: The Collector Collector
[The Collector Collector by Tibor Fischer, Vintage 1998, paperback]
Tibor Fischer’s The Collector Collector follows the journey of several women through the point of view of an ancient sentient urn. While telling the story of its current lugal, it reminisces about previous lugals. Each compounding the urn’s understanding of humanity and shapes its understanding of any proceeding lugals.
The Collector Collecter’s page 42 sees the Urn pawned off to the Tatman by Nikki, a young lady that stole it from the Urn’s previous lugal. In all it’s wisdom, the Urn mulls over the idea of shapeshifting to scare the Tatman into refusing Nikki’s offer. Fischer formats the book in sections and subsections (with titles for each). This page lands squarely at the beginning of “The Tatman.”
The word, ‘lugal’ (which the narrator uses to describe its ‘owners’) means king or ruler. Its derived from Sumerian. Fischer uses a lot of particular vocabulary and wordplay to help sharpen the antiquity and history of the narrating Urn.
The Urn comes off somewhat empathic. It is able to judge character and intent off from appearance rather than only actions. It determines the Tatman is “disappointed he couldn’t wring more tears out of” Nikki; judging him to be sadistic. Although the Urn narratively chastises Nikki for her promiscuity and career path (robbery), it is after noticing Tatman’s intent that it considers transforming to frighten him:
“There are few things as scary as turning around and finding an eight-foot-high
amphora behind you when there wasn’t one before, especially when the amphora is
making faces at you.”
Even being stuck in the Urn’s “head,” its mostly a cold narration, (outside of the affection that grows for its current lugal and the joy it gets in reminiscing) but you get subtle moments like this scene where the Urn considers acting in response to how one human is treating another.
In the text, there is this odd need for the Urn to number and count everything. It chose to play these tricks “once every three hundred years or so” to “treat” itself, but in this moment, it was less for the pleasure and more for someone’s comeuppance. “Before [the Urn] can summon up the three hundred nineteen situations worse than this one” it is interrupted in thought, but its the history which truly makes the decision. Although, it doesn’t seem to have much emotion it still is able to hesitate with a sense of respect toward the downtrodden like Nikki.
Fresh perspectives and creative directions are what make some stories incredibly interesting. The Collecter Collector plays with linguistics and vocabulary while discovering what history would shape the mind of a sentient object. Its weird and beautiful, but this moment shows that even the inanimate can be written with a sense of empathy.