In Flagrante Collecto (Caught in the Act of Collecting)

What do you do with your soap bars when they become too small to use? If you've ever lost a cuff link, what did you do with the one that remained? In ''In Flagrante Collecto'', Marilynn Gelfman Karp explores and catalogues our impulse to collect the incidental miscellanea of the past. In her words ''There are collectors of things with intrinsic value - gold or diamonds or baseball cards. Then there are a group of people who love the unloved. These are the purest kind.'' For these collectors, the hunter-gatherers of misshapen pretzels, do not disturb signs, and marbles, there is deep and satisfying value in collecting the arcane objects that most people overlook or forget. This book is a tribute to the realm of those ''unloveable'' objects, those that seem banal, common, corny, in bad taste, too familiar, or just invisible. Part observation, part confession, Karp's text takes us on a joyous journey of philosophical musings, cultural history, and personal memoir.