Hoarders and the Business of Keeping Memory Alive
Hoarders
By Kate Durbin
May 2021
Wave Books
ISBN: 978-1950268139
184 pages
Reviewed by Tryn Brown
Kate Durbin has made her literary mark by meticulously investigating what happens to the human condition when capitalism backs it into a corner. Her latest poetry collection, Hoarders, is artfully material and moving. It follows the narratives of fictional individuals living with compulsive hoarding disorder and lists the many particular and seemingly random objects they stash away. While its pages are packed with nostalgia, just beneath the collection’s outer shell lies a far more sinister commentary on love and loneliness under an economic system that forces its members to confront antiquation head-on.
The characters in Hoarders are mainly middle-aged and older people living in isolated areas of the United States, and they are drawn to objects both old and new. One man stockpiles his paintings of naked women, while another brings home broken yard-sale finds he suspects he’ll be able to fix. A pair of bibliophiles stacks up books so high that they’re unable to walk through much of their home. A woman’s property overflows with collectible dolls. Most of the items seem like harmless, worthless junk because for a lot of us that’s exactly what they would be. But Durbin tiptoes ominously into the hazards of hoarding disorder using striking imagery, like mountains of rotting food being saved for later consumption or forgotten cat corpses lining hallway walls.
Compulsive hoarding is another bullet on the long list of severely misunderstood psychiatric disorders whose public image often takes the face of the hoarded objects themselves. News segments and reality television shows have broadcasted houses that are constipated with clutter, concluding that the solution to this problem is simply to clean up—which is another way of saying, “You are completely responsible for what has happened to you. Stop ruining your life.”
Hoarders has the decency to dig deeper. One of its characters, Alice, laments, “I just feel awful, I’m a failure and that’s how my whole life has been” [italics in original]. Marlena, from Topanga Canyon, California, states bluntly, “I want desperately to change.” Hoarders, like other individuals with compulsive or addictive behaviors, know that their behavior is likely getting in the way of a happier and healthier life. The problem is not that they don’t want to get better; hoarding functions like any other addiction or disease, and many of these people have experienced traumas that suspend them in painful moments. Some individuals in the collection hoard to erase such moments, while others hoard to pay homage to them: “I made it so you can’t help but remember me.”
The poems themselves are structured in a manner that blurs together objects and personhood. Each line is made up of italicized narrative dialogue that is abruptly cut off by a vivid description of an object or objects that person is hoarding. Durbin then creates contextual variations using a technique that resembles Gertrude Stein’s in Tender Buttons, making it so that each of the lines contain several possible meanings. It’s notable that hoarders also tend to struggle with categorizing objects based on a single attribute, and there are countless instances throughout the collection where, even with the break between the character’s narrative and the objects, the sentence appears to be continuous. In Linda’s section, the first line reads, “My name is Linda and I love cooking rotting food.” Does Linda love to cook already-rotting food? Or did the presence of rotting food derail (or inspire) her love of cooking? The line leaves open the possibility that these truths can coexist simultaneously.
Later, the beginning of Craig’s section reads, “I’m Craig, I’m 58 years old, and I’m tattered American flag next to a boot.” The metaphorical implication of the flag right after Craig’s introduction is more than relevant; hoarding disorder is, after all, a phenomenon that is only worsening in the United States, affecting more than 13 million American adults. While social separation is one of the key contributing factors for developing the disorder, there are moments within Hoarders where the narratives connect with each other. For instance, one hoarder sees images on the television screen of a woman being evicted from her house due to a cat infestation—an allusion to a hoarder that had been previously featured.
Some of the questions that Durbin poses throughout the collection are ones that, in part, answer themselves: when do objects take precedence over human beings? And when will our concern for other people revolve less around the objects they’ve acquired and more around the conditions that spurred such behaviors? America is rampant with poverty, loneliness, and unfilled space. Absence can be ruthless, and for many Americans, acquiring objects online or otherwise is a way to make contact with the outside world. Similarly, pouring effort into unwanted things can give people a sense of autonomy and power: “When I see things grow, I feel like God… Because I’ve created.”
The emotion that is sewn deeply into each story allows the narratives both to interact and to stand individually as the collection delves into the inner workings of hoarders’ minds. Durbin is careful not to imply that hoarding can be reduced to a single cause, or that hoarded objects don’t carry meaning; in fact, she seems to suggest that all items carry something with them, which hoarders assign meaning to. Capitalism remains functional because it’s able to convince us that items are meaningful until they become too old, too out of fashion, too outdated. There is a strange and eerie beauty in the tendency to attach memory to all strands of life and in the inability to cast something away because society claims it is useless. The belief at the center of hoarding is that everything is capable of being used or fixed—even people themselves.
The strength in Durbin’s writing is its ability to capture such desperation and joy in one fell swoop. One of the more striking moments in the collection occurs when a woman named Hannah describes one of her posters, titled “I AM ME.” It contains a long paragraph of positive affirmations and encouraging self-talk:
BECAUSE I OWN ALL OF ME, I CAN BECOME INTIMATELY ACQUAINTED WITH ME—BY SO DOING I CAN LOVE ME AND BE FRIENDLY WITH ME IN ALL MY PARTS—I KNOW THERE ARE ASPECTS OF MYSELF THAT PUZZLE ME, AND OTHER ASPECTS THAT I DO NOT KNOW—BUT AS LONG AS I AM FRIENDLY AND LOVING TO MYSELF, I CAN COURAGEOUSLY AND HOPEFULLY LOOK FOR SOLUTIONS TO THE PUZZLES
Hannah’s story quickly becomes one of the most difficult narratives to grapple with in Hoarders. She describes, “Feces everywhere, garbage everywhere, bloody tampons on the floor,” due to a septic system issue that she cannot bring herself to deal with. The underlying problem that Hannah faces can only be treated with respect, empathy, and encouragement—not a one-time clean—but she, like many other hoarders, is denied these interventions by friends, family, and local government (which slaps expensive fines on her). The poster in Hannah’s possession indicates her desire for internal reflection, but a lack of support often dooms people with psychiatric disorders from the get-go.
In the media and elsewhere, hoarders are likened to the “garbage” they collect. America loudly insists that they, and their messes, should disappear in order to keep away physical clutter and emotional baggage. Durbin bluntly asks us: what does it mean to live in a culture that dooms every object and every person to obsolescence?
Because we live in a system that treats us as objects, it’s no wonder that people begin to question which entities hold potential and which don’t. And why shouldn’t they? We might do better to pause and take stock of all that has entered or escaped our lives every once in a while. After all, “When you leave doors open, things come through.”
Kate Durbin is a Los-Angeles based writer and artist. She is the author of four books of poetry and fiction. Her most recent poetry book, Hoarders, is out from Wave Books. Kate’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Art in America, Art Forum, The Believer, and elsewhere. Her website is www.katedurbin.la.
Tryn Brown is a writer based in San Francisco, CA. Her work has been featured in The Adroit Journal, sidereal magazine, Wrongdoing Magazine, and others. She is marketing associate and copywriter for an independent publisher, and you can find her on Twitter @themeasures.