Mess: One Man's Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act
Bary Yourgrau, 2015
W.W. Norton
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393352900
Summary
Hilarious and poignant, a glimpse into the mind of someone who is both a sufferer from and an investigator of clutter.
Millions of Americans struggle with severe clutter and hoarding. New York writer and bohemian Barry Yourgrau is one of them. Behind the door of his Queens apartment, Yourgrau’s life is, quite literally, chaos.
Confronted by his exasperated girlfriend, a globe-trotting food critic, he embarks on a heartfelt, wide-ranging, and too often uproarious project—part Larry David, part Janet Malcolm—to take control of his crammed, disorderly apartment and life, and to explore the wider world of collecting, clutter, and extreme hoarding.
Encounters with a professional declutterer, a Lacanian shrink, and Clutterers Anonymous—not to mention England’s most excessive hoarder—as well as explorations of the bewildering universe of new therapies and brain science, help Yourgrau navigate uncharted territory: clearing shelves, boxes, and bags; throwing out a nostalgic cracked pasta bowl; and sorting through a lifetime of messy relationships.
Mess is the story of one man’s efforts to learn to let go, to clean up his space (physical and emotional) and to save his relationship. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1948-49
• Where—South Africa
• Raised—U.S., Europe
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in New York, New York, USA; Istanbul, Turkey
Writer and performer Barry Yourgrau is the author of the 2015 memoir about clutter and hoarding, Mess: One Man's Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act. His books of short fiction include Wearing Dad's Head and The Sadness of Sex in whose film version he starred.
He's appeared variously on MTV and NPR.
He's also written for NY Times, Paris Review Daily, Vice, Spin, The Independent (UK., Salon, Artforum, and elsewhere.
Born in South Africa, he moved to the US as a child. He lives in New York and Istanbul, and travels widely with his girlfriend, Anya von Bremzen, a food writer.
Book Reviews
A fascinating read by a hoarder about the psychology and culture of hoarding.
Melissa Clark, food writer - New York Times
In this hilarious memoir, Yourgrau regales readers with tales of his tendency to collect objects and keep them.... Eventually, as he explains with wit and honesty, he begins to deal with the clutter...as he makes space for himself and [the] girlfriend he shut out five years earlier.
Publishers Weekly
This isn't a how-to book.... Yourgrau shares histories of famous hoarders, psychological theories about clutter.... [The author] provides engaging company..., but the actual decluttering in the book might have taken less than a chapter.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
The following questions for Mess were generously submitted to LitLovers by Jennifer Johnson, Reference Librarian, at Springdale Public Library in Arkansas. Thank you, Jennifer!
1. What are the author’s goals for the book? Are these goals clearly defined or ambiguous?
2. Do you think the book has at least some level of therapeutic value? Who would this book most benefit?
3. Did you notice that slowly throughout the book the author reveals all of the emotional and physical triggers for his depression, mental illness, and hoarding? What are some of those triggers? Can we relate to his situation?
4. After reading it, do you think the author is guilty of oversharing? Are there some areas where he overshares information that is not related to the focus of the book?
5. Does the author, after going through and completing his "project," truly grasp his mental illness and emotional baggage? If he does not, does he have the right to write a memoir that timidly walks the line as a self-help book?
6. Consider the relationships depicted in the book—are they healthy relationships? Think about the relationship he had with his parents, "Cosima," and himself and the role of transitional objects. Do you believe he truly had no idea that there was a relationship between his emotional baggage, childhood, inability to have healthy relationships, and the stuff?
7. Considering transitional objects, do you think we are all guilty of some type of hoarding? Do we save items that have an emotional trigger?
8. What stereotype(s. does this book show that is reflective of our current society? How is hoarding viewed in society and culture?
9. Does society have expectations for hoarding? How do reality shows depict hoarding and other mental illness issues? Is there a level of voyeurism in the commercialization and authorship of hoarding?
10. What coping skills does the author exhibit? Have those skills benefitted him or hindered him?
(Questions by Jennifer Johnson for LitLovers. Please feel free to use, online or off, with attribution to both. Thanks.)