Description
Book SynopsisAn enchanting tale of the search for forgotten treasures at one of the greatest flea markets on earth.
Trade Review"[Rips] has humanity, humor and the gift of a limpid, agile, unpretentious prose style…A captivating portrait." -- Ben Downing - Wall Street Journal
"[Rips] captured the singular vocational pull of the collector, and in doing so…show[s] us the whimsical and strange roots that run deep beneath stuff." -- Lauren Kane - Paris Review "Staff Picks"
"Discovering the flea through Rips's experience is magnificent, but the human influence on the transactions…give it true beauty." -- Shelf Awareness
"A tender, passionate, melancholy elegy." -- Luc Sante - Bookforum
"A wry and engaging ode to a bygone aspect of N.Y.C. culture." -- Publishers Weekly
"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, the eccentric and easy-to-ignore pickers, collectors, vendors, and others obsessed with laying claim to a piece of the past. 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?
"An extraordinary portrait of a New York filled with unlikely treasures, human and material. 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 writes with a unique combination of sly humor, close observation, and sympathy. He takes the philosopher’s long view, is impressively open, and treasures all manner of people and experiences. 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
